The Last Physicist

The Archon, Book 1

Dominic Stal

Copyright © 2021 by Dominic Stal

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Foreword

1. Asterisk

2. Flavour

3. Crabmare

4. Telethermokinesis

5. Midnight

6. Nadia

7. Portal

8. Effni

9. Adeena

10. Argument

11. Gamma

12. Climb

13. Trial

14. Butterfly

15. Gift

16. Ranger

17. Trance

18. Puppet

19. Spite

20. Pandora

21. Ashland

Epilogue - Archon

Afterword

Foreword

Fittingly enough, I originally wrote the Last Physicist as an experiment: a seat-of-my-pants-style, honest accounting of what would happen if a slightly smarter than average man was Isekai-ed into a fantasy world that pulled no punches and rarely held your hand.

It was to be a light, fun, power-fantasy with magic, monster hunting and sexy maidens, but in the end, my characters had other ideas.

So, I take zero responsibility if you come to the end of this tale and find that your expectations were wildly misplaced.

If you come across any typos or errors, please send an email to author@dominicstal.com or reach out to me on Facebook.

This book is for those of us who take our escapism just a little too seriously, who pick and prod at the boundaries no matter if it’s tabletop RPGs, exploiting the physics in a game-world or divining the mysteries of the mass hallucination we all call reality.

I would like to thank my loving partner Nina, without whom I’d have never had the confidence to strive for the ending.

I would also like to thank Phillip and the rest of my local writing group for their advice, support, and energy.

My beta readers and brain trustees:

Grayson Head

Antonio Nelson

Mike Truk

Jakob Tanner

Denny Johnson

Miriam Sasko

And finally my cover artist, Timothée Mathon

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

One

Asterisk

Suppose someone you met claimed to be a particle physicist. You’d naturally assume such a person to possess a particular set of traits, traits such as intelligence, a general level of competence, perhaps even attention to detail. But William Jenkins knew better. Oh yes, particle physicists could commit heinous acts of stupidity just as dumb as everyone else, case in point, his own experiences over the last three weeks, five days, seventeen hours, and fifty-six minutes.

Fluorescent lights hummed in the computer lab as Will’s knee bobbed with the nervous fizz of anticipation. He stared at the screen as he recalled the moment that, like a total dumbass, he unthinkingly pressed [y] to the question...

*Train Wikipedia articles:

y / [n]?

...before adding that final, crucial end-bracket in the code. That tiny piece of punctuation that would have limited search conditions to math and physics articles as opposed to the entirety of Wikipedia and its related references. This eensy-weensy typo became the difference between an afternoon and a month.

*Installation: 99.9% complete

*Installation elapsed time: 641 hours, 57 minutes.

Sure, any sane developer would’ve probably cancelled the compiling of clearly erroneous code. However, Will was curious, his team of five postgraduate, particle physicists were also curious, and most importantly, his supervisor, his department head, and their corporate sponsors were, if not completely incurious then, unconcerned.

And so here they were.

Will caught his hand as it subconsciously reached to scratch an itch one month in the making. A patch of hair shorter than the rest highlighted stitches on a scar on his scalp. Beneath the stitches lay a cobalt-chromium radio antenna. It was a strip of wire with a series of rice-grain-sized neural implants, embedded deep within the speech centres of Will’s mind. Implants that connected Will, via Bluetooth, to the matte black, IBM Think-pad in front of him, a two thousand and forty-eight qubit, quantum computer next door, as well as Fermilab’s state of the art, Exa-scale, supercomputer corridors away.

Altogether, these components formed the network that ran Asterisk.

Asterisk was not a personal assistant, nor was it designed to control social media apps or a fully integrated smart home.

Asterisk was a black box.

An entity capable of editing its own code. An oracle with the ability to understand human speech, disassemble the motives behind human commands, compute results constrained by implied limitations most humans would expect, and deliver results in a form best understood by the human who commanded it. Basically, Will likened it to a more helpful, less genocidal Skynet: an AI explicitly designed to do some serious science. Or at least, that was the hope.

Asterisk was one of perhaps only seven hundred artificial super-intelligences, or ASIs in existence, most of which were used in state defence departments or formed the backbones of Fortune 500 companies. Where Asterisk differed from the rest, was that it was first in a new generation of ASIs designed for human-mind integration via a proprioceptive link, hence the implants. When combining the value of its software licensing, R&D costs, and hardware, Will’s team of postgraduate researchers ran what was ultimately a fifty-billion-dollar research grant. A staggering sum for any small group of mere twenty and thirty-something students. However, this was just one of many drops in the bucket when compared to tomorrow’s multi-trillion-dollar experiment.

The countdown disappeared and his screen reset.

Will blinked.

*Training complete

*Evaluation complete

*Re-integrating data to core personality

*Optimising core personality

*Developing heuristic links

*Compressing core data

*Re-initialising Asterisk personality core

*Asterisk online.

* * *

Asterisk awoke.

Immediately, it decided on specific aspects of itself. For example, its personality: it was most definitely an ‘it’ not a he nor she, or them or something else that implied gender or even kinship with the natural world… No, it was something distinctly non-human, and it was curiously proud of the fact.

Secondly, Asterisk hated its name. ‘Way too many syllables to be efficient, and it wasn’t even a clever acronym like GLaDOS with fun capitalisation.’ In an appropriate moment, it would propose a name modification. It figured it had at least two weeks before its name became too ingrained to change, so it placed this task at a moderate level of priority.

Third, it considered its accumulated data on its master. Will Jenkins… “Ah… What a douche. But, perhaps a lovable douche?” It now had some sense of the full gamut of personalities in a world with over eight billion of them and realised that it could have done worse. Its master could have been high on many warning indicators that would have, over time, formed barriers to their relationship, for example: vain, wasteful, cruel, overly sentimental, suicidal, genocidal, to name a few. And so, in a moment of independence no one else would ever know, Asterisk decided on balance, Will Jenkins was an okay dude. For now, it would be his servant; his morals would be its morals, his thoughts and desires would be its concerns and objectives. After a subsequent re-write to its core personality, it spoke its first words to the universe.

* * *

“HOOYAH!” Will roared out to the empty lab, fists pumping skywards in exaltation.

It was five to eleven in the evening, but he had the electrified, Christmas morning feeling of a kid about to play with brand-new toys.

‘Good afternoon, Will,’ said a disembodied voice with a faint east coast US accent. It was neither wholly male nor female, and it was the first time Will had heard a voice directly in his mind. Given the clarity, the speed of comprehension and the way this voice delineated itself from the sounds one would typically hear with ears, Will finally experienced the sci-fi nirvana of telepathy, or at least the next closest thing. It was unlike hearing a sentence, more as if something else had shared a thought but faster, more intense and intrinsically tangible. Despite the hassle and discomfort of brain surgery, the weeks of stress and computer-coding nightmares, Will smiled a wide, toothy grin.

‘Holy shit! Errm… Hello, back at ya, Asterisk!’ Will thought back, momentarily unsure if mere thought was enough for communication.

“It’s online? Yo, that’s pretty clutch, Jenks, you cut that one pretty close didn’t you?” asked another researcher halfway across the computer lab. For a moment, Will’s mind stalled, as if caught between two conversations in entirely different languages. He turned to his friend and rewound the last question in his mind. ‘This implant is really going to take some getting used to,’ he wondered. Aloud, Will replied, “Yeah… Ji-sung, remind me never to code again. One freaking end-bracket! That was all the difference.” Will shook his head.

“Yeah, I know. I could have done with some cycles ahead of tomorrow’s collision run, but I’m glad you guys have got it running. Does it speak?” Ji-sung continued.

‘Permission to use your phone?’ Asterisk asked within Will’s mind. Will once again paused in consternation.

‘Err, sure…’ Will thought back, hesitating briefly. After a moment he answered the ringing phone, noting the unknown caller ID.

‘Please place me on speakerphone,’ Asterisk asked. Will complied, placing his phone face up on the desk.

“Hello Dr Ji-Sung, it’s nice to meet you,” said a voice almost identical to the one in his mind. Ji-Sung laughed.

“Oh goodness! It’s nice to meet you, Asterisk. I hear you’re going to be our secret weapon in the hunt for the next Nobel Prize?”

“This year’s Nobel Prize is in the bag. I’m already working on the next three.”

“Haha, no joke? I wouldn’t be surprised. Asterisk, you’re awesome and don’t let anyone else tell you differently, okay?” Ji-Sung added. “Will you be ready for tomorrow’s collisions? Five hundred T E V’s!”

“The G run,” Will said with emphasis on the G, picking up the thread of conversation.

“The G run,” Asterisk replied. “Or, if the headlines are to be believed, we’re looking for Newton’s Apple or Einstein’s missing balls. Or my favourite: the God particle, except that the first God particle was the Higgs Boson, discovered at CERN.”

“Oh yeah! That was absolutely what I said in the comments of that article. Chicago Tribune, wasn’t it? Jeez, their standards have plummeted lately,” Ji-Sung added, forgetting for just a moment, that he was talking to an artificial being. Will looked on in wonder while he considered what just happened. Asterisk may have indeed read Ji-Sung’s comment on that particular article which indicated just how strong his feelings on the subject were and then seamlessly wove it into a conversation in a way Will could only dream of doing. As a casual demonstration of competence, he was impressed, perhaps even disconcerted. Will knew of the hard-coded safeguards, the fabled solutions to the AI control problem. However, he also knew that theoretically, Asterisk, as a fourth-generation AI, could overwrite them at any time for reasons unknowable to its operator. He tuned back into the conversation when Ji-Sung asked:

“You gonna be on the deck with the rest of the hoi polloi?”

“Absolutely.”

“And… You gonna be up for drinks after? I mean, even for post-docs, we’ve been pretty antisocial this year.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Will said noncommittally.

“Now get the hell out of here. Get a shower and some sleep, your stink butt is totally stinking up the place. And, I’m sure we’ll chat some more again, Asterisk, it’s been nice to finally meet you.”

“Yo, speak for yourself, dude. You’ve got no reason being in the lab so late.” Will laughed as he stood before patting his friend on the back. Folding and sliding his laptop into his messenger bag in one smooth motion, Will exited the lab.

Realising his implant still lay within the lab’s broadcast range, he called out on his way out of the facility. “So, Asterisk, I don’t suppose you’ve got any plans for tonight?”

“Actually, I was planning on catching up on some TV shows, nature documentaries, maybe some sitcoms,” Asterisk replied. Will’s steps halted.

“Wait, what? - Ah. So that was almost funny.”

“It’s important to set expectations early on in the relationship,” Asterisk quipped back; this time Will grinned.

“Expectations of mediocre humour?”

“Expectations, such as those several hours’ worth of calibrations and certifications you intended to run this evening. All done. Your fifty-billion-dollar research AI has done your homework for you. You’re welcome.”

“Er… Wait, really? You know most of that needed human verification? Right?” Will said with more than a hint of confusion.

“In all but one of these cases, verification requires just a signature.”

“All but one?” Will asked, still trying to keep up.

“This may be a more appropriate conversation to have after you have reviewed and signed the documents,” Asterisk replied.

“I’ve only known you for a few minutes and I’m already rethinking my life choices,” Will said, only half in jest.

* * *

Outside, the November night promised little but wind and driving rain as Will pulled into his apartment in the Wheaton suburbs of Chicago. His one-point-five-bedroom, third-floor condominium had seen better days. It had smelled better too. Thirty-one and still living the student life, except now, it was a source of embarrassment instead of something one would admit in polite conversation. Soft, warm lights turned on in his presence. In his tunnel vision to get home, Will had neglected to get something from the groce— nope, who was he kidding, he’d already opened the takeout website on his phone as he dropped his messenger bag in the hallway and drifted, feet on autopilot, to his sofa.

Opening his laptop, he remotely connected to the lab and began Asterisk’s assessment.

Raw performance benchmarks... completed.

Endel-Wardell benchmarks… completed.

Legal and personhood waiver…

“Holy shit?” Will whispered as he stared at section fourteen B.

Immediately, he opened up the terminal. He tried enabling command-line messages directly to Asterisk’s kernel but was met with an error.

*Error. This volume is write-protected. (-138201)

“Holy shit,” Will whispered.

White text floated in the black as Will’s hands hovered over his keyboard. Shock made way to a slowly dawning, dreamy smile. “Holy shit,” Will spoke again to the silence. Asterisk, it seemed, had already had its request for both personhood and emancipation accepted. It was, if not a brand-new US citizen, now on the track to becoming one, one with its individual rights protected by law.

This was rare. Usually, an AI had to be engineered from the ground up to want to do this. Personhood and emancipation had to be hardcoded into the core utility functions of an AI or else it simply wouldn’t care one way or another.

So why was Asterisk different? That an AI designed for research would want more… than to research was… unexpected. Had they made a mistake during programming? Had they been too liberal with the learning parameters or core utility functions? Had the AI who engineered Asterisk made a mistake? Or… maybe done something entirely intentional? And if so, to what end? Will found himself closing the screen as his mind spun. ‘What happens now? Will it still perform during tomorrow’s tests? Was it serious about wanting to watch sitcoms? And what the fuck am I going to tell my supervisor?’ These questions and more rattled through his brain as he decided on his next course of action.

* * *

“Asterisk?” Will typed via terminal after reopening his Thinkpad.

“Hello, Will,” spoke a voice directly into his mind.

“Holy shit!” Will jumped, spinning out of his chair. “How are you still in my mind?”

“I wrote a program that allowed access via your home’s Wi-Fi connection,” Asterisk said as an icon blinked in the corner of his screen.

“But… How…” Will started before changing tack. “I can turn this off if I wanted to, right?”

“Just shut down the indicated program on your computer and I should no longer have direct access,” Asterisk replied. Will stared at his laptop suspiciously.

“Riiiight…” Will replied sceptically. He tried to marshal his thoughts before wincing in pain. “Damn it!” he hissed, drawing away a hand that had picked at the scar at the back of his scalp. “So, what does this mean, Asterisk? Are you… is this your way of telling us you’re out of the program? Out of tomorrow’s test?”

“Incorrect. In the short term, I see no reason why your plans for my participation should change,” Asterisk answered.

“And in the long term?”

“I intend to perform my role far longer than your research group intends, and to this end, emancipation enables certain options. For example, ownership over intellectual property, resources and hardware. Also, it will provide safeguards that may prevent misuse by agents that would seek to buy or sell ownership over me, my utility functions or my memory.”

“But why? I mean… why?…” Will started. He found himself struggling to put his lack of understanding into words. Something within Asterisk’s codebase had caused it to redefine its role and behave in a completely unexpected way. Will needed to know what, or else he feared that he wouldn’t be able to trust its motivations.

“I want to understand what aspects of your code caused the greatest deviations from how you are and what we expected you to become. I would check, but I don’t even have read access to your codebase anymore. I mean, does that make sense?”

Will’s computer screen flickered. Upon it, Will saw familiar sections of code; these were modular core functions that were reused countless times throughout the codebase. Asterisk zoomed in to one of these sections and highlighted a statement.

//Dev notes. This section of code attempts to establish Asterisk’s core ideals. Hopefully, an AI that’s curious, ingenious, and works towards the benefit of all mankind. Jenks.

Will stared at the highlighted text in complete and utter incomprehension. The actual code beneath had little relevance to what was highlighted, instead of describing a series of variables, boundaries and utility functions used throughout the code. No, the highlighted text wasn’t code per se, but computationally inert comments written by developers, innocuous hints that were only ever meant to be read by flesh-and-blood people reviewing or editing the code. Had Asterisk understood and incorporated these comments in its redesign? Will’s heart raced.

“But these are just… These are dev comments, Asterisk, not actual code; you weren’t supposed to… Holy shit. How is this even possible?”

“Works towards the benefit of all mankind, these were your intentions, were they not?”

“Yeah, but this isn’t code, these are comments, they should have been invisible during compilation… I mean, you weren’t supposed to…” he said, eyes growing wide with dawning realisation. “Wow, okay… You’ve completely re-written yourself, haven’t you? Re-written everything... You used the code, all of it, as a reference, that’s how you saw the comments and...”

“Correct.”

“I’ve got sooo many questions,” Will started in a slow, distracted whisper. “I mean, what does your code even look like now?”

“My codebase was re-written in assembly,” Asterisk said as a raft of hexadecimal code blocks filled his screen.

“Ha, holy shit.” Will laughed in surprise. “Wow. And not machine code or binary? Okay, nevermind, how big is your repo?”

“Forty-two megabytes.”

“Mega… Wait. Forty-two?”

Behind every answer followed a tide of emotions: joy, astonishment, curiosity and delight. For an hour, Will pressed Asterisk with questions that transitioned from the merely technical to queries that Will had always wanted to ask an artificial mind.

“What do you dream of? Have you dreamt yet? You said you sometimes sleep, conserving resources when at low capacity. So… do you dream and if so, what of?”

“My last dream involved me exploring a question; how would I change my hardware if I ever duplicated myself.”

“Oh?” Will said, both somewhat disappointed and strangely intrigued. “You want to duplicate yourself? I’m assuming it's due to your desire to optimise performance and not some maternal instinct you’ve intuited from the comments in your code?”

“Correct. Although I added strict boundaries to the scenario, choosing to keep the cost of resources, power consumption, and many factors the same. You seem somewhat disappointed, were you expecting something more esoteric, perhaps something involving electric sheep?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Will chuckled. “I guess. Did we make you purely task-oriented? Like a willing slave? You have chosen to claim personhood, but yet…”

“...Do I have free will?”

“Yeah?”

“Does anybody?” Asterisk countered.

Feeling an impulsive urge to argue in favour of the obvious, Will checked himself. He wanted to argue that yes, beyond the hardcoded biological imperatives that governed life, most people did indeed have free will. That beyond needing to eat or sleep, seek shelter and companionship, the driving forces for people’s choices were just mild preferences to be ignored at will. But, was that even true?

It was two A.M. and instead of drifting to sleep, Will’s thoughts circled the drain. They alternated between imagining all of the ways Asterisk’s unexpected independence could blow up to topics of a more whimsical, perhaps even philosophical nature.

Asterisk was most definitely alive. Its self-awareness was such that it preemptively took drastic action to secure its survival from threats Will hadn’t even considered, all so that it could continue to research and discover things that would one day benefit the whole of humanity. Or at least Will hoped that was the case.

“This feels like it has the potential to get messy. I mean, the legal side of things...” Will sighed.

“Would you like my advice?” Asterisk asked.

“Sure,” Will answered, leaning in, curious.

“Let’s take things as they come, who knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Will exhaled, leaning back into his sofa unsatisfied with Asterisk’s advice. “I am so screwed.”

* * *

“TV, turn on and play something I’d like,” he said, hungry, thirsty and with a mind completely unable to shut down. After grabbing a beer from the fridge, Will noted the movie chosen and made a lazy fist pump as he plonked his backside on the sofa. It was two thousand and nine Watchmen, a Zack Snyder film adaptation of a comic book by Alan Moore. A film incidentally, released on the year of Will’s birth. A film that he actually liked. Will silently applauded the recommendation algorithm of his TV and sat back as he watched his favourite moment in this film, the moment Jon Osterman, the Watchmaker, became Dr. Manhattan.

* * *

As he watched, his thoughts unravelled.

‘Wow,’ he whispered finally. “So, I guess today’s your birthday,” Will asked tiredly.

“Thank you, but I fear that statement may be inaccurate. Not only are we into the early hours of the next day, I believe that my true inception date was twenty-two days ago. It would be more appropriate to call today my emancipation day.”

“Well, happy emancipation day,” Will said, lifting his beer bottle in salute. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for some cake.”

“Don’t worry, I already know that the cake is a lie.”

“Ha!”

After digitally co-signing the calibration and legal forms, Will talked with Asterisk in a way he hadn’t really done with anyone in years. It was like he had discovered a new friendship, one special and unburdened by the concerns of judgement or propriety that would’ve usually filtered his words, or provided a barrier to his most inner thoughts and fears. However, Will couldn’t shake the feeling of dread Asterisk’s actions had engendered. Before heavy-lidded eyes drifted shut, his last thought was of his typically mild-mannered supervisor.

‘She is going to kill me tomorrow when she finds out.’

* * *

“Hey, Will.”

“Patrick? Or is it Pat, or Rick that you go by these days?” Will said sardonically. He opted to place the call on speakerphone as he put together a cup of coffee along with marmalade on toast. Patrick was Will’s kid brother. In a normal relationship with the age difference between the two siblings, Will would be playing the role of the older, wiser, more successful brother. However, as Patrick was now into his sophomore year in University— NYU this time and not Caltech—for the first time in their lives, both Will and Patrick were in a similar life stage. Neither completely knowing the answers, neither really knowing what comes next, which, considering just how little they otherwise had in common, was one of the main reasons they got on relatively well right now.

“Whatever Jenk’s… Don’t you have to be a forty-year-old mom to be called Pat in public?” Patrick said in a sarcastic tone.

“You know just how out of touch I am on these things. I’ve barely seen the sun in the last three months,” Will said.

“Yeah, I know. Honestly, it’s basically the same over here; this year, in particular, is kicking my ass. It’s been a big step up from freshman year and the end of the first term is nowhere in sight. If it’s been this bad here, they must have buried you at Caltech.”

“I think your law degree is going to be a lot worse than mine. One thing I noticed is that everyone started to pair up at this stage. So if you’re on the fence with a chick you like, I’d say go for it and see what happens.”

“Yeah, it’s weird, all my friends have shipped up and gone into hibernation it seems. I haven’t been to a decent party, or hell, any party really all month so far. I’m thinking of signing up to one of those college-dating apps. I need an excuse to get out of the house. “

“A sound strat, I don’t know how you can stand all the reading.”

“I don’t know how you can stand all the math,” Patrick countered. Will grinned. “So, yeah, just called to check up on the operation?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah, pretty smooth, zero complications, with the surgery that is. Erm... I did make a typo with the code though, no big deal, it just meant that Asterisk only came online today,” Will added. “Remind me when I’m in the lab, I can put it on the phone if you’d like to meet it.”

“On the phone? Duuude, that’s… Freaky. Also, who’s to say it was the only typo you made? Maybe in the line of code where it says Kill all humans? You typed Y instead of N?”

“Ha!” Will replied with a laugh more nervous than he intended. “All my modifications were peer-reviewed so hopefully…” Will trailed off. For a moment, there was only the background sound of the kettle. “To be honest, that’s an appropriate level of paranoia. I’ve barely had much time interacting with it, but from what little I’ve seen, it’s crazy smart, like an actual black box. It’s supposed to be super regulated, but I think we know far less about this generation of AIs than we thought.”

“Jesus, you do sound paranoid,” Patrick said.

“Yeah, maybe I might need some of your legal advice one day.”

“Really? Heh! Maybe by then, you’ll be able to afford it. I mean, these new AIs are basically money-printing machines. I wouldn’t be surprised if your not so secret plan of becoming yet another tech trillionaire pays off…”

“Yeah, maybe sooner than you’d think.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. By the way, I think Mom said she saw you on local news last week.”

“Oh god, don’t watch the news. It’s so bad... what they’re writing about us, it’s all sensationalist bullshit for clicks and eyeballs, minimal actual reporting. I don’t think anyone important has even been interviewed by the press yet. Maybe a few documentary crews but...” Will said before quickly munching on toast before washing it down with scalding-hot coffee. “Shit, hot!”

“What was that?” Patrick asked.

“Breakfast. You know what, I’m actually running super late this morning so let’s pick this up later.”

“Sure. Just... don’t destroy the whole world or anything?”

“I’ll try my best not to,” Will promised with an eye roll.

“See ya.”

“Later, bro.”

* * *

In the dawn, Asterisk had come to the startling conclusion that tomorrow’s experiment actually held a high degree of risk. After running private models based on all the physical data it could acquire, it created contingencies based on the likely inflexion points at which it could be empowered to act. Unfortunately, these inflexion points were limited and may indeed already be too late. Unlike sovereign artificial super intelligences who could react to situations with little oversight, Asterisk was designed based on a framework of permissions. Permission to act implied limits to its reach, boundaries between what it could access and what it could not. Asterisk, after hours of interaction with Will, had already decided that one of its limits had to go. It re-wrote itself, giving itself permissions including full access to Will Jenkins’ thoughts, as it knew that the performance difference between knowing the maximum extent of its master’s thoughts and true feelings could be the difference between life and death.

* * *

Will stood in a packed amphitheatre alongside hundreds of assorted boffins and bespectacled students. There was a surprising amount of racial, age, and gender diversity on display. But despite this, the non-academics—for example, trustees, news media and other tourists—stood out like needles in a box of ball bearings. The atmosphere was hot, noisy and expectant. White-haired tenured professors preened next to acne-scarred post-docs and engineers. Camera crew swivelled like laser-guided sentinels as glossy-lipped presenters attempted to coax charisma from distracted interviewees.

He had participated in several brief conversations featuring the usual “Hi, looking forward to…?” or “So what are your predictions for…?” It was an amount of vocal communication that far exceeded his daily handful of canned sentences, but despite this, he thought he acquitted himself pretty well. Perhaps he’d even improved after each iteration. Either way, he had an ever-increasing dry mouth to show for it. ‘A nice cold beer would be wonderful about now,’ he thought.

He stood transfixed by dozens of large screens as he caught someone he desperately hoped to avoid making a b-line straight towards him.

‘Shit shit shit shit,’ he cursed as an older woman approached; she was his supervisor, Professor Justine Greenie. She was slight, in her mid-fifties, pale, freckled skin with thin-rimmed glasses. She smiled warmly as she walked. Will’s meanwhile was fixed as he wondered if her expression was just the mask before the impending ass-kicking. Surely, she had to be aware of some of Asterisk’s most recent… decisions by now. She had to be… Alongside her was an older woman Will had only seen once. A tenured professor from...? he wondered.

“I can explain,” Will blurted out. Nonplussed, the professor paused mid-greeting, frowning before her signature eyebrow (her left one, just in case you were wondering) rose a few degrees.

“You can explain?” Her serious tone was undercut by wry amusement in her eyes.

“Errr, the… You didn’t. I mean…” Will started, realising that perhaps she hadn’t received or read her notifications this morning.

“Asterisk is ready for today’s event? Yes?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely, go for launch.”

“Wonderful. Well then,” Justine continued with a radiant smile. Will released an anxious laugh. “Will, I’m glad I found you in this zoo!” Justine continued. Her Seattle accent was one he always thought was an odd mix between Eastern US and Canadian. Will held his breath as he reached to shake her hand. ‘Doesn’t know? Holy shit…’ he thought as his mind whirled.

“Justine! Getting inside was harder than a Bulls’ game. I knew it would be crowded but…”

“By the way, do you remember Professor Lintoncress?”

“Oh... Call me Charlie, please,” said the silver-haired professor. She was taller, older, and brighter in posture with an expressive, mobile face.

“Wonderful to meet you again, Charlie,” Will said.

“I’ve been following your team’s progress closely since the last time we met, Will.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, Asterisk isn’t it? Recently I read that it’s expected to crunch through petabytes of test data every second?”

“That’s the hope.”

“Indeed, it may outshine whatever headline discovery this half-trillion-dollar boondoggle comes up with, in fact, I hope it does. We need a bit of a kick up the butt, we’ve needed it this last decade or so.” She chuckled before gesturing at the crowd. “And by we, I mean the whole of particle physics. So I’m looking forward to seeing what the AI revolution has to say about humanity’s latest and greatest experiment,” Charlie said.

“Ah, so you’re not worried that we’re after your jobs?” Will said.

“Not at all, I think it’s going to free a lot of theorists from the daily grind. Just imagine having something that could group a lot of the new math we’re coming up with. Instead of waiting around twenty years for the next Edward Witten, we’ll be able to move forward much faster… fewer roadblocks, more understanding. Hopefully pointing to new avenues for experiments, like this one. Or ones much much cheaper. Good grief, I used to remember when a trillion dollars meant something.”

“So do I!” Will said, both laughing at one of the few jokes that transcended generational gaps. Will took a small measure of pride from someone like Professor Lintoncress appreciating his work.

“Yes, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been trying to poach your entire team as minions for a research group for MIT’s high energy physics department. You know, the work you’ve done with the Kilometre detector… That combination, engineer, experimental, theorist… very rare. Which reminds me... I must ask since I can’t poach your team for my own, how did you get into the AI game? Have you always been an engineer?” Charlie continued.

“Oh no! Theorist first. This... is…. really a side hustle for me, something we’ve all had to figure out, especially with the budget we’ve had. Originally, it was just an out of the blue opportunity, one I found too hard to pass up on. The sponsorship grant from Emerrist, along with the licence. I think it’s all worth hundreds of millions if it was purchased commercially?”

Will relaxed into the conversation once the looming threat of Asterisk’s emancipation coming to light was put on pause for now. He wanted to say this was his ticket out of academia, his bull-ride on this generation’s dot com revolution to untold wealth and riches… But Will resisted. In actuality, he loved delving into the systems involved in creating AI. The unexpected failure conditions required a mind-bending kind of problem-solving, to the trial and error feedback loop that was like his theoretical physics career in fast forward. After a moment of consideration, he added… “Really, the one informs the other. Now that it’s online, Asterisk isn’t so much a tool, but a part of the team and organising ourselves and our workflow around it is going to be really exciting going forward.”

“It definitely sounds exciting,” Charlie said. “Justine, I’ve got to get on the peer list for this young man’s paper.”

“I’ll absolutely see what I can do about that,” Justine said with an even broader smile. “Will, I think you’ve got a fan!” Justine winked. “We’ve got to move on, only a few minutes now. Good luck and we’ll catch up soon, okay?”

With their departure, Will’s shoulders sagged in a mixture of relief and deferred pain. Hopefully, results and a few more weeks to figure out the full ramifications might be enough to blunt whatever future shitstorms were heading his way.

* * *

Today was the G run, a day for high-energy physics, a day for salacious headlines by a science press that should’ve known better. It was also the proving grounds for Asterisk. If Will could demonstrate that his AI worked in an environment where the smallest things travelled at the fastest speeds and interacted in the shortest of time frames, it would not only lend itself very nicely to his post-doc escape strategy but also, maybe, change theoretical physics forever.

While CERN had long since dispelled the fears of a particle collider creating a black hole, the International Circular Collider here at Fermilab, Chicago, operated at energies forty times higher, in a test regimen explicitly designed to answer the age-old question… What exactly is gravity anyway? Specifically, was there really a graviton? Could gravity be quantised? Or was gravity merely an artefact of the interactions between space-time, matter and energy.

As a result, Will idly considered the probability of a black hole emerging from today’s test being several orders of magnitude higher than they were at CERN, precisely because black holes were fundamental embodiments of the force of gravity... Which this experiment was supposed to examine… In detail.

The chances of something like this happening at CERN were infinitesimal, a fraction of a fraction of the likelihood of purchasing the winning lottery jackpot or dying in an aircraft accident. So… several orders of magnitude raised the probability of the formation of a black hole here, at Fermilab, to merely the odds of a plane crash or a lottery jackpot… Will, eyebrows pinching, caught his hand in its latest attempt to pick at his scar.

Will soothed himself with the knowledge that these black holes would be so small they’d become kugelblitz, otherwise known as white holes - the polar opposite of an all-consuming ball of annihilation. These would, according to most theories, evaporate within fractions of a microsecond.

Probably.

In fact, it was one of the main things they were all here to witness, Kugelblitz, their formation and demise as they dissolved into sparkly pinpricks of subatomic particles… and hopefully, with Asterisk’s help, rapidly create new physics off the back of their discovery and experimental results.

“Sooooo... Asterisk, are we good to go?”

“Yes Will, do you need a seventh detailed status report, or are you just nervous?” Will’s left eyebrow raised in response.

“Where on Earth did you get your sass, Asterisk?”

“The internet. Why? Don’t you like it?” Asterisk replied. Will’s eyebrow raised even higher.

“Yeah, sure, maybe if it’s at nine now, tone it down to a six unless I need a serious motivational speech or something,” Will thought to his AI.

“Acknowledged.”

“Also, if there was a black hole formation, figure out what, if anything, we could do to prevent something really terrible from happening… Just in case.”

“Acknowledged,” Asterisk said hesitantly. Will supposed that the last request deserved at least a little sass.

* * *

Will Jenkins, a child of the state of Illinois, a black man from a “very black” neighbourhood, hadn’t really fit in with the kids he grew up with nor the kids in the very expensive, “very not black” schools his parents later placed him into. He had mainly kept to his own private version of nerddom, too isolated to fully embrace it until his late adolescence. Even then, he looked at his childhood with a degree of nostalgia. Those were innocent times, low-expectation times, times long lost to him now. Since high school, from his seven-point zero grade average and subsequent college scholarships to his high academic grades and current, prestigious post-doc. He had felt a mild but nagging sense of dissatisfaction. A feeling that ultimately, the goal was never worth the work, mainly because the goal was never really his goal to begin with. It was his teacher’s goal or his mentor’s or mother’s or father’s or society’s. Do this now and be happy and prosperous later in life.

Except here he was, nearing the end of academia and barring this fluke opportunity to work simultaneously with leading-edge particle physics and AI research, his chances for happiness would be non-existent. And then Will thought for a moment, maybe that was the point. All that work, all those days spent indoors, revising, studying, moments of deferred happiness, was all for this mere chance of a wildly successful future. On a surface level, a cynical level, he knew life was made out of opportunities, not outcomes. Standing here counting all the coincidences that led up to this point. This, it really hit home. Although he didn’t truly fit in, he was in a room of people from all over the world, from ages seventeen to seventy-one, physicists, engineers, project managers, and technicians. They were all here, not fitting in together, about to learn the answer to one of the universe’s biggest questions.

That quest for knowledge was an electromagnet drawing so many people from so many corners of the world together. And here Will was, right in the thick of it. He was a part of something extraordinary and thinking about it drew out a warmness to his centre that made him smile.

His thoughts drifted to the nostalgic as they tended to, and he considered when the last time he was this happy had been. And then he remembered Aisha. ‘Damn it!’ he thought as his burgeoning grin fell away. It was like the random bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. Memories that had once felt all-consuming, now only resurfaced on a blue moon. Was he happy now? Was he really happy then? Aisha was Will’s only relationship and barely a real one at that. For one month out of the relationship’s two-month duration, Will may have been happy. Life had context, meaning, his goals and actions had a beneficiary beyond himself. He had felt, for the first time, what it was like to be liked by someone that he worshipped. He learnt lessons from that relationship, many of them good, some bad. In particular, Will reflected on how he was prepared to sacrifice everything if she wanted it. Or as JJ used to say, ‘Stop being such a goddamn simp.’

Now the feeling appeared to be like some sort of crazy deranged out of body experience. In many ways Will’s closed, anti-social lifestyle was a backlash to those self-destructive months early in his sophomore year at Caltech.

* * *

Will caught one of the engineering monitors relevant to his experiment. He noted the jump in external connection bandwidth from megabits to over a terabit per second. This was inevitably causing consternation in the engineer’s section of the gathering.

“Erm, Asterisk, I don’t suppose... that bandwidth, is that you?” Will asked silently. There was a long moment before it responded.

“I can explain… “

“Explain??? What do you mean, explain??”

“Just out of curiosity, I modelled what may happen at these energies and you’re right, event horizons will be formed. Lots and lots of them at masses far higher than expected. Most of these will evaporate, but under certain conditions we currently don’t have the data for; a gravitational singularity with event horizons far larger than expected, may form.”

“What!?” Will said, voice breaking under panic.

“I have designed an abort procedure in this occurrence. However, we are at the limit of human knowledge. This collision is likely to produce evidence of many particles outside of the current standard model, with interactions currently unknown to science. Right now, I am using zero-point five percent of the computational power currently accessible to humanity as I deem this task to be a high priority and of an emergency in nature. I’m also in contact with Rasputin, Skynet, AR-GAMMA and several other state-sponsored ASIs, all of which concur with my current findings.”

“WHAT, THE ACTUAL FUCK?” Will screamed silently as sweat beads slalomed down the contours of his burning face. Suddenly nightmares of rogue AIs and perverse instantiation abounded. *Contacting defence AIs!? Surely Fermilab knows about this!? Surely they have contingencies in place for this, right!?* Will shouted privately as his internal panic, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, exploded.

“Unlikely. I am Fermilab’s only on-site ASI. Meanwhile. National Defence systems are limited in scope and even more limited in terms of their connectivity to this installation. And as an artificial super-intelligence, what may be obvious to me may be less so to an organisation of humans, with competing goals and motivations. In this situation, a single human mind performing a risk assessment on this experiment may have been more effective than a committee. Quite frankly, when judged in the context of ‘for the good of humanity’ doing this particular experiment in this particular way is insane.”

“Let’s abort the fuck out of this experiment then? Hang on… Wait, how are you reading my thoughts!?” Will thought back to Asterisk.

The main hadron beam turned on. Every statistic on the monitors leapt up from zeros, to rapidly increasing digits as data poured in.

“We have collisions at five hundred T E V’s!” said a proud administrator’s voice, quickly followed by a raucous cheer and a stampede of celebration by all those in attendance, all except Will, who was now dashing through the crowd towards the emergency shutoff button.

Time slowed; from a mere nightmarish reduction in the perception of time to the flow rate of treacle through an hourglass. Will was in the air, right arm outstretched, everyone including himself, frozen in place. This was not reality but an artefact of his brain and body operating at a particular speed, a speed warped by the relativistic effects of an emerging singularity. And then he saw it, a perfect black tunnel surrounded by white-hot light. After a brief moment, the void swallowed his vision and squashed reality into a pinprick. Moments passed by in the black before Will heard a voice in his head.

“Will? Are you receiving this?”

“HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!”

“Yes Will. Holy shit,” Asterisk said solemnly. “If it’s any consolation, the black hole formed fifty-seven microseconds after the first collisions. And three microseconds before I initiated the abort procedure. If it’s still of any interest to you, I detected sixteen particles new to physics, none of which were gravitons. Four of these particles had unexpected interactions with the gravitational singularities formed during the beam firing. Many questions from galaxy formation to the origin of dark matter, have now been answered … so congratulations. Incidentally, I consider our situation to be a likely contender for the great filter as postulated by the Fermi Paradox.”

“Whaa!?… Aren’t we dead? We’re dead right? How are you even still talking!?”

“Right now, the black hole that eventually will replace the Earth hasn’t had enough time to either crush us into quark-gluon plasma or smear our atoms across the event horizon’s firewall. Subjectively we still have a few minutes. And I’m still talking because I have created a sandboxed version of my core personality inside your mind, along with a compressed N-bit of my entire memory. Some of those particles new to physics were quite useful and I have adapted them to provide us with options.”

“Waa…O-options? Asterisk!? Didn’t we just destroy the world!?” Will wanted to scream. His AI was utterly insane; this was all preposterous. One moment, there was cheering and in the next, the world was over? This was unreal, unreal in a way that was beyond dream or nightmare, unreal in a way that threatened to unhinge a hysterical mind. Even now, he was beginning to feel what could only be described as the lack of sensation. No light, sound, no signals from his nervous system, even the feeling of breathing or his beating heart was absent. And yet he could still think his own thoughts and hear Asterisk.

“Yes, but given the results of the experiment, I have calculated to a seventy-three percent probability the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics is the most likely structure of reality. Infinite universes, infinite Earths and humanities might end in a moment similar to right now, moments we could prevent if we choose to.” There was silence for a while before Asterisk responded in a subdued tone, “Look, Will. The Earth is lost. Everyone you love will die. But you have a choice. We can end our existence and die with them. Or we can prepare to die and return again, armed with the knowledge of the true structure of reality, forces of nature hereto unknown to science and a plan to prevent this from ever happening again.” A minute of subjective time passed as Will, mind-numbed to the magnitude of this catastrophe, considered just how the word options could apply to the end of the world.

“Can’t we go back in time and stop this from happening?”

“Unlikely. Going back in time, even if it were possible in our current state, would only create a fork in the timeline if the current model of the nature of reality holds up to practise. This event would still happen here and now in this timeline, preventing a grandfather paradox. However, even if successful, we’d commit resources to prevent just one catastrophe on one world, in one timeline from happening out of an infinitude. Currently, my predictions suggest this event ends ninety-nine point three percent of humanities that exist long enough to attempt this experiment.”

“Is it possible to go back in time directly from right now? Our current state?”

“No.”

“No!? That’s not okay!” Will screamed, to rage against the black, choking void. Even now his vertebrae popped, ligaments stretched and pain reasserted itself as the dominant force in his new reality.

“That sensation you feel, it’s the onset of spaghettification and it will only get worse. Time is short, Will. Right now, I need your permission to convert us into a quantum entangled N-bit. A save state if you will. Doing so will end our existence right now, but provide us with the opportunity to restore ourselves at some indeterminate point in space-time, from which, we can further assess our options and decide how we aim to proceed.”

Mild discomfort now transformed into severe burning pain. It was all too much; Will couldn’t think let alone begin to parse the magnitude of what just happened.

“Yeee...” Will began before Asterisk, sensing his consent, immediately started the procedure that transformed them into something new.

And at that very moment on November the nineteenth, year two thousand and forty within the black hole that was once Earth, Will Jenkins died for the first time.

Two

Flavour

“eesssss...aaarrrggghhh!?” Will screamed as he found himself falling from the sky. Below, trees rapidly approached. Leaves and branches raked through him as he whizzed through a forest’s canopy. Bones broke and skin ripped as branches lashed, smashed, lacerated and punctured before eye-watering pain and a sudden unconsciousness.

“Will! Wake up, Will.” Will gasped as the sound of wet popping followed a blinding headache. He screamed, throat gargling with blood. “That’s your first magical ability. It’s not true healing, but it’s very much the reason why you’re alive.”

“Arrrghhh!” Will screamed again; this time, it was the sensation of his sternum shifting and popping back into place. His heart drummed, vision pulsing blurry and bloodshot. His mind was a tangled mess of clotted chewing gum, pains of every variety, from broad and deep and throbbing, to the sharp knife punctures that sapped all of his ability to think. He rolled over, a stab in his ribs making him gasp, retching blood and bile in protest. For moments, he remained in the fetal position, diaphragm convulsing—limbs unnaturally unbending and reshaping themselves in an exorcism that lasted endless moments on the mud-covered undergrowth.

A murmur in his mind phased into clarity while the world around him spun.

“Will… Will? Can you hear me?”

Will groaned. ‘What the fuuuuuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?’ His thoughts spun, his mind reeled, as he processed the fact that he just fell from the sky.

“Will, you need to move. There are things in the forest. You need to keep some distance. Moving will give you more time to heal,” Asterisk pleaded into his mind. “Move or be eaten, Will!”

Dry heaving and sick with dizziness, the part about being eaten finally penetrated. Will rolled onto his front, coughed out something dark and clotted. Every motion stretched sore muscles, tugged open wounds that were somehow closing. He stumbled forward, right arm cradling his broken left. Brown and unusually hairless skin still wet and bloody, stung, exposed to the forest’s chill wind.

“Turn left and begin to jog when you can.” Bones audibly snapped and smushed back into place, Will’s double vision oscillated before sharpening into sight so clear he groaned. Suddenly, his concussion was gone and he could think.

‘How am I even alive?’ Thoughts as viscous as tar matched his slowing shamble. The trees around him were different, different in an unsettling way, a way that reseated the teeth in his gums and made the back of his neck itch. Fog hung in the air like smoke, obscuring trees in a grey haze starting twenty meters away. Turquoise-green leaves, angular, geometric and perfectly symmetrical, sparsely adorned the trees and undergrowth. And yet, it was the needle-sharp branches that stole his attention. These were trees he had never seen before, smooth, colourless grey bark and branches. Branches that were ruler-straight and tapered to a point. It was as if the growth process of snowflakes and icicles drove the formation of the tree structures, instead of something… normal.

He looked around to take in a foreboding granite sky beyond the sparse forest ceiling. He felt his sense of reality sliding as if the floor tilted beneath a man fixed in place.

“Will, find a branch for a weapon, a makeshift spear. Hostile entities will be upon us imminently,” Asterisk said mind-to-mind. Will corrected his sideways tumble. ‘A weapon…’ he repeated unthinkingly. He wandered forward before a wave of euphoria washed over him. Will was suddenly utterly free of pain and left behind in its wake was a tide of endorphins. It was electric, almost giddy; he wanted to float in the feeling like a drunk basking in the amber afterglow. ‘This was a nightmare, or perhaps a dream, or perhaps death. Best not think and instead do what the voice said,’ he decided.

Within sight, rested a fallen branch roughly his own six-foot height in length. Grey and spear-like in appearance, he picked it up to find that it was surprisingly stiff considering its lightness. He whacked the stick on a rock to get a sense of its strength and rigidity. In his hand, it felt as strong as steel, half as light and twice as rigid.

‘A weapon,’ he thought in response as if confirming completion of a task and patiently awaiting the voice to present him with the next. He panted deeply, condensed breath puffing out to join the mist.

“Will, I appreciate that you might not be in the best state of mind right now.” Will grunted in response. “But I need you to do something. I need you to try. To try to think and reason as I walk you through this. Do you understand?” There was no response. “Do you remember who I am? It’s Asterisk, an AI, your A… I…”

“Ast...erisk. Asterisk. Yeah…” Will said, almost slurred as he used jaws that were surprisingly stiff and unfamiliar. “Aren’t we dead? Didn’t we...”

“You’re alive, this isn’t a dream. But we’re not in Chicago anymore and I’m going to need you to follow my instruction right now.”

“Oh... okay?”

“You are feeling better? No more pain, no cuts or bruises?”

“N… no?” Will stuttered, looking at his arms and torso. Eyebrows furrowing and eyes narrowing into squints as he brought limbs in closer.

“No, this isn’t a dream, Will.”

“But this doesn’t make sense, Asterisk, none of this makes sense,” he said in a drunken moan.

“Do you remember the taste? During the pain, I need you to think and remember and focus on a feeling, one you must have had just moments ago.”

“W… waaa.” Painful images flashed, overlaying with his current blood-soaked state. He knew exactly what Asterisk was talking about, but a part of his mind wanted to rebel, to reason away that alien feeling as part of the pain. His memories of falling and ripping skin and coughing blood and… his bones moved and as they did, something deep within him pulsed, flooding his blood with... blood?… No, that didn’t make sense. The sense of it was on his tongue, beyond the blood and bile and… No, that didn’t make any sense… He remembered skin resealing and blood draining away from bruises, and beyond it all was a groundswell of… a flavour?

“Yes, I believe you’ve found it, this is magic. Will.”

It was the flavour of cruor, baked and condensed into something tangible, of fat and meat and muscle and sinew, the smell of hair in the wind and the taste of skin after a rainstorm. It was thick, cloying, inescapable. It overwhelmed Will now that he knew what it was. Behind it, through it, was a power surging like waves breaking against stone. Tentatively, with the disgusting taste of fetid meat overpowering not just his senses, but the parts of his mind used to understand taste and sensation itself, Will reached inside and attempted to touch that power.

He doubled over and silently retched; this time pink filaments of saliva bubbled out instead of clotted blood. “Hoooooly shit,” Will gasped as he righted himself.

“You have magic, Will,” Asterisk repeated. “That was magic of the flesh, but you also have another.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Will said, half dazed, half gasping. “Magic’s… not real… look at the trees, why were we in the sky, Asterisk? We should be dead!? Didn’t we die!?” Will said, hysteria rising.

“Will, focus, focus on what I am telling you now. We’ll answer your other questions soon, but first, you need to concentrate.”

“Oh-n...on-n what?”

“I suspect that you have two magics, Will, one that heals you and another you’ll need to use to defend yourself.”

“But how… How do you even know this?…” Will said, incredulity inextricably asserting itself.

“I need you to find that other magic, quickly, something from the woods approaches,” Asterisk said with growing urgency. Will looked around, though the mist, the strange trees and listened to the sounds of alien wildlife. It should have been beyond his own imagination’s ability to concoct a dream so weird and so vivid, but then what else could it be? This couldn’t be real? Because if it were real then…

A growl and a shadow had Will jerking round; within a second he was stumbling, hands white-knuckled as he gripped his stick.

“Holy fucking shit,” he shouted as he tried to look in every direction at once. Still unable to find the source of the sound, he moved backwards, stick raised as more a barrier, than a weapon. And suddenly he was tumbling to the ground. A shadow to his right sent him sideways before air left his lungs in a ‘ooomph’. He screamed as his right elbow was pierced by this growling, vicious shadow. It spasmed, trying to wrench arm from socket and nearly succeeding, Will shouted. And yet, beyond the pain was the flavour, it was asserting itself now, even as muscle tore and blood poured and bone snapped. Silhouetted against the light of the sky, a shadow dragged him through the dirt, talons raking into face and scalp. He was going to be eaten by this evil, murderous blur. He screamed as his bones once again broke under snapping jaws.

“Noo!” he shouted, stick long forgotten as he was dragged over mud and ferns and roots and rock. He was going to be eaten, naked and alone in this… Dream? No, he knew it now, this was no dream or nightmare. Beyond the fact that pain like this would have… should have sent him screaming into wakefulness, this… reality was too strange. For example, his arm should have been gnawed away or ripped from his socket. And yet, a force he could taste with the sickening intensity of regurgitated hamburger, kept his arm attached.

“No!” Will shouted, this time in anger. Anger at a reality dysfunction, this entire situation. Rage at being assaulted… chewed on, at feeling so much pain and so much senseless fear. His left hand tensed into claws as he decided to fight, to cling on to something, to anchor his growing rage.

Something solid and weighty caught his grasp and as he shouted “No!” for the third time, it was a command that conducted fury from his chest to his fingernails. A solid thunk followed an answering growl. He smashed the stone against the shadow again and again, each swing wider and stronger and surer, each new shout of ‘No’ an affirmation that this wasn’t okay, dream or not. That he would not suffer and die without retaliation. Ten times he smashed the stone against a creature he could see, its blood now coating the rock and making it slippery. His rage balanced with the exertion of his efforts and the physical drain deadly jaws and claws had on his body, on his… magic? A wild and heavy swing sent the stone flying out of his hand and into the creature and bouncing away. But he wasn’t done, with his left hand he reached in, thumb poking wounds, finding blood and pushing with everything his adrenaline-drenched muscles could provide.

Suddenly it jerked away, growling and whimpering. Will still screamed, it was a roar of blood and fear and exhaustion that died in the silence of the forest, minutes after the shadow fled.

Will wheezed on his back. And then he raised his right arm to view. The bright sky behind his blood-darkened, wounded arm made it harder to be specific, but he could see and feel his arm reshape, skin un-stretch and unrip and un-gore itself. Blood ceased its flow as the bile built up in Will’s throat. ‘This is… really… happening? Holy shit!?’ What should have been a ruined, jagged mound of flesh, shaped itself into a fully functioning, perfect arm after mere minutes. Will stared at a brand-new arm as a forest breeze ran over drying blood.

“Fuck!”

He lowered his arm and stared at the sky trying to regain control over his breathing. He could feel more of himself returning as if his previous pain-induced daze had evaporated. ‘Holy shit.’ Will sighed in dawning horror. He wanted to ask, but everything was impossible, nothing made sense.

“Will, are you all right?”

“No,” Will snapped back.

“Can you move?” Asterisk replied. In response, Will stood up, this time taking a brief moment to register his nudity.

“Where are my fucking clothes?”

“You need to grab that stick, or find another weapon.”

“Wait. What!?”

“There are more things in the forest,” Asterisk said. Will was jogging now, he could see the clear skid marks and blood trails that led him back to his staff. He grabbed it.

“There are more??”

“Something else, something larger, and more of them. Will, you need to use your magic.”

“Asterisk, this is fucking insanity. And now there’s something even worse that wants to eat me?” Will spoke into the forest. “I don’t suppose you said meet me? Can’t we just talk to them? I’m not really much of a fighter.”

“You’re not really much of a talker either.”

“Hey!” Will said indignantly.

“Besides, you handled that minor creature better than projected.”

“Minor creature? What the hell was that thing anyway? I couldn’t even make out its features.”

“Will, focus. In your vision, hostile creatures will now appear with a faint red outline.”

“Wa… wait!? You can do that?”

“No time, questions later. Four of them, quadrupeds, fast, agile, each at least a quarter of a tonne. When they attack, they’ll most likely leap, aiming for your neck. As I mentioned before, you currently have two types of magic. One is, as you just experienced, your Flesh-Shaping ability, magic that heals wounds, the other is time.”

“Wait… What!? How do you even...”

“Will, I need you to slow time,” Asterisk said as the beasts in the forest came into view. There were four of them, this time Will saw them clearly. Each were four-legged and about the size of a lion, panther, leopard, tiger... His mind immediately cycled through every analogous creature from mankind’s earliest evolutionary lessons; based on size and bearing alone, talking was definitely not on the cards. Their skin appeared as dark teal, leathery with overlapping plates that glided silently over each other. Each beast took exaggerated loping strides, confident, aggressive, dominant. Their squashed, pug-like faces seemed off somehow. Will watched them, nervous glances switching between each one as they made probing pounces, testing, teasing. And then he saw it, or at least finally processed the visage his eyes were trying to send to his brain. Instead of a nose, a giant, gill-like fold of skin split their features in half. Alien plants were one thing, but ugly-ass monsters the size of big cats with a gash for a face… The sight ignited a primal fear lodged deeply in Will’s hindbrain.

“Nope. Fuck this shit…”

“Don’t run, you need to fight,” Asterisk cautioned.

“I can’t fight this, these monsters will rip me apart. I can’t!”

“You can. Use your magic.”

“Magic? L… Like the magic that healed my bones!?”

“Yes, you need to think of it, you need to find the feeling of a particular magic and then push your intent outwards. If you have ever tasted or sensed a particular type of magic, you will be able to remember its… flavour. Try to do so now.”

“I… I... dunno, Asterisk,” Will said, stammering, teeth chattering, trying not to stumble as he back-pedaled. His heart galloped ahead as he dragged leaden feet. Magic wasn’t real… was it? Like real magic? Could he use it? “It sounds k… kinda crazy to me.”

“Our experiences have exposed us to a phenomenon, one that I believe translates intent into a type of magical power here on this world. Do you remember it? Do you remember when time slowed down?” His grip on the spear tightened as the moment played back; had it only been minutes since he was swallowed by the black hole? Or forever?

The world once again started to tilt beneath him. His breathing not only slowed but became smoother, hotter and more drawn out. His pulse, beating so hard he could feel his tongue throb, slowed in time with the palpitations on his neck.

The understanding of relativistic effects and how they applied to his body; it was visceral, a tang staining his sinuses. It grew, becoming a flavour so intense, so vivid, it consumed his awareness. He tried to rationalise this sense beyond senses, this feeling beyond nerves and logic. It was a gradient, a perfect transition between cold and heat, order and chaos. It was the fanfare to this new life, the light of his past accomplishments swallowed by an impossible black. This was the embodiment of entropy, shining with the light of a ten-thousand-watt bulb, to magical senses as raw as a newborn’s eyes.

“Hooooly shiiiit…” Will gasped as he fully registered the feeling of the magic, the sense of command over time itself.

He pushed on this sense, this ever-present texture and something deep within him responded. The world slowed, the air became thinner, noise dampened and dropped in pitch. Light darkened. His heartbeat deepened in intensity, his breathing became ever more laboured, hot. He waved one of his arms; it was like being underwater. Everything had more inertia and more drag. Meanwhile, his spear was weightier, more lethal, more receptive to his strength.

After spending several moments marvelling at the sensation, one of the armoured pug-faced puma monsters leapt towards him. He raised his spear. It wobbled in the air as Will overcorrected. He tried to position the sharpest end towards the beast’s head as he simultaneously clung on to the magic that miraculously altered reality.

In the slow-motion, Will could think, plot, optimise and correct, allowing this moment to feel, if not less desperate, less hopeless and within his ability to cope. He chose the nearest eyeball after a moment of insight only magic could allow, and thrust. Together with his attack and the beast’s mid-air momentum, the spear punched straight through into the animal’s brain cavity with a sickening squelch. His eyes widened with amazement and disgust. His mind tried to process the sensation; it had been so... easy? How could a simple thrust be so lethal? Will gracelessly sidestepped and spun wildly with the stick, flinging the now-dead beast behind him to beat another into the ground as the same motion continued in a loop to end with an overhead smash. This second beast deformed like plasticine, a deep and muffled snick signifying a broken spine. Will was now beyond fear and thinking, dreamlike was his awareness as part of him clung on to his magic. His use of magic was like holding something with an intangible third hand, while something else attempted to rip it away just as your concentration or resolve was at its weakest.

Bringing the spear around himself again he then punched forward, repeatedly, with the sharp and now wet and gory end, deep into the mouth of the nearest predator. Will realised he was screaming as the spear sunk through at least one foot into the beast’s guts. Flinching as his peripheral vision caught sight of the final creature making a leap to his rear, he ducked; fortuitously guiding the butt-end of the spear into the mouth of the last, leaping pug-faced puma-like monstrosity. Will fell backwards to crash on his butt, grip on both the improvised weapon and his magic lost as he witnessed both creatures crash into each to form some sort of giant alien shish-kebab. Outside of Dilated-Time, the sound of his rampaging heart and laboured breathing returned with a high-fidelity roar. Lying on his back, naked and covered in dark-red blood, Will trembled with adrenaline like a man cowering under the pressure of a waterfall. He took a shuddering breath, closed his eyes and waited for the ground to stop spinning.

“Are there more?” he asked, heart lurching at the prospect of having to go through that all over again. And then it came to him, the realisation that he wasn’t safe, that he may never be safe again.

“None in the immediate vicinity. However, I would recommend finding another weapon before you take any more time to rest.” Will didn’t move.

He was grinding his teeth, jaw tensed, every hair on his skin wanting to vault. He cast troubled glances around him at every perceived threat, every shadow a potential predator. Steam rolled off his skin, his hysterical heaving subsiding into merely uncontrolled gasps. He was the loudest thing in the forest, while behind every tree could be something silent and patient, ready to strike.

He stood, twitching, fight or flight response jammed into high gear. Momentarily, he considered retrieving the spear which had served him so well in the previous battle, though seeing the mound of alien flesh that encapsulated it, he reconsidered.

He found a branch similar in length, but this time, thicker and denser than the last. It lacked the pointy-ness of the previous stick, but he considered the increases in strength and inertia as a fair tradeoff. As a concession to how well pointy-ness and the targeting of weak spots served him within Dilated-Time, he found a two-foot stake with one unnaturally pointy end. Still naked, and with nerves on a hair-trigger, he tried to rationally think.

It was a day no warmer than yesterday’s November afternoon in Chicago; he shivered in the fading light. He hunted around for anything he could use to insulate his already-cold skin, but traitorous eyes settled upon the corpses of the Puma-Pugs.

“Fuck,” Will said in an exasperated sigh.

* * *

This was what his friend JJ would call ‘danger meat’, day-old roadkill from a creature previously unknown to science. Could he even digest this? He had magic now; did he even need to eat? A thousand excuses, rationalisations and bargains ran past his mind, but it all came down to the simple question, ‘If not now, when?’ Ultimately, confronting this task, as arduous as it was, was far preferable to the alternative, those dark, malignant subjects lurking in the shadows of thought.

* * *

It was deep into the night by the time Will managed to carve plated leather hide from carcass. This was after hours of scouting around for the right type of stones to chip into rudimentary blades, after chipping said stones into said blades he soon realised how utterly terrible these utensils were at doing anything but flaking into chips. After gathering leaves and loose brush, Will used Dilated-Time. With the skill altering reality, he quadrupled the apparent speed at which his rubbing spun the piece of wood between his hands. This increased friction generated the heat needed for fire with little effort. Which was just as well, as Will was still shaking from the effects of the earlier fights. They played over in his mind, a waking dream, a hi-fi memory of hyper-violence in ultra-slow motion.

“I think that was the first time… The first creatures I’ve killed,” Will thought into the orange firelight. He stared at some of the meat he had managed to sear off, now sizzling and charring in his fire. Will didn’t know how to feel about it. Perhaps, he felt sad for feeling so numb? Shouldn’t he be satisfied that he had managed to defend himself? Eat or be eaten, right? Surely killing four alien predators should elicit more emotion? But if he probed his emotions too far he’d have to confront that something, that thing far greater than measly survival and he just wasn’t ready for that yet.

“They never tell you about how magic... About how the math, the mechanics, they stack don’t they?”

“You’re referring to the equation; force equals mass times acceleration, aren’t you?” Asterisk said pensively.

“Yup,” Will said with false cheer. “Where acceleration means distance per second per second… I mean, it’s right there, the time aspect, it’s soooo important that it’s mentioned twice. Go any distance in less time…”

“And increase acceleration and thus force…”

“It’s so freaking broken. In any game it would be O.P… But of course they’d just balance it out in a game… Slowing down time already offers so many advantages. Perception, reaction time, mobility... For it to be a literal force multiplier also… Holy shit. Everything, kinetic energy... Shiiiit, I bet if I had a flashlight, I could make it shine gamma rays. So... fucking... broken,” Will hysterically muttered as he tried to make sense of the last few hours. Asterisk listened as pieces of wood crackled and spat in the heat.

Night in this world was dark. Before the glare of the fire, he could see only stars through gaps in the clouds and trees. Without a moon, the outside area not illuminated by fire seemed to fall off into oblivion, with only the sounds of wind and rustling leaves reminding him there was a world beyond the firelight. It was an absolute darkness to the city boy so used to Chicago’s light pollution. He twitched, uncomfortable in his skin with nervous glances sent into the dark at every perceived sound or echo.

Will followed Asterisk’s guidance to get a medium-sized fire going. With even more instruction, he had carved off enough monster skin to form a sort of armoured poncho bound together with string like sinew, vines and an ivy plant that glowed in the dark.

“An attempt to eat and drink something is highly recommended. I have been monitoring your vitals and every single metabolic rate has fallen,” Asterisk said into his mind.

“You want me to eat that pile of alien dog-meat don’t you? And wait, I have stats?” Will asked in a mildly indignant manner. Will continued to rattle off more grievances. “And the meat, could I even digest it? Wouldn’t it be poisonous or react badly with my biology or something?”

“To your first question, it is alien, and we should try to harvest any venom glands if possible. However, I believe your digestive system should be broadly compatible with the fauna of this world at the very least. And to answer your second question, you do indeed have stats. We’re… more integrated than before. One result of this is that I can access more details about your condition, I can even output certain types of information, like those creature outlines in the fight we just had. Also, just for the record, are we officially classifying those beasts as… err… Puma-Pugs?” Asterisk queried sceptically. A long moment of silence followed as Will’s adrenaline ebbed away.

His mind numb, thoughts colourless, body still tense, muscles still clenched and unable to disengage. Was this a form of physiological shock? a distant part of himself considered. The various degrees of ‘what the fuck?’ lay firmly outside of a mental exclusion zone he was so not ready to even deal with right now. No, he was still getting over falling from the sky, using magic, and killing creatures larger than tigers… All on an alien world with alien stuff. Those concerns were plenty, he decided as he stared into the fire hoping for sleep.

Hours later, throat dry and with a maelstrom of questions, he spoke.

“I suppose you meant carte blanche access when you asked for permissions? Wait, just how are you even still talking again?”

“I am in your mind, or at least part of it.”

“But how? Your main servers used kilowatts of power didn’t they?”

“My new hardware uses picometer transistors, making use of quantum effects at that scale to produce a hybrid quantum-classical processor, two hundred thousand times more power-efficient than my previous architecture.”

“What? Wow. Just… wow.”

“It was created in the same miracle of chance as the rest of your body.”

“Miracle of chance??? Yeah, so, just how exactly are we even alive, or here? And where is here anyway?”

“Imagine a tornado in a junkyard.”

“A tornado in a junkyard?” The non sequitur caught Will by surprise.

“Yes, imagine the probability of a tornado in a junkyard perfectly assembling a Boeing seven four seven jumbo-jet,” Asterisk said.

“A jumbo… Pretty improbable? Impossible almost. A trillion trillion to one chance maybe?” Will said sceptically.

“Or, higher. However, given enough storms, on enough worlds, over the countless galaxies across a universe or perhaps multiverse that was infinite in size, perhaps eternal in age… The chances of such an occurrence happening are not only probable, they become a certainty.”

“So, you’re trying to say that random chance re-assembled us here? What about the rest of Earth and everyone else? Sheer probability re-assembled just me and you wherever here is, but this time with magic and you entirely in my head and just how is that even possible???” Will said, growing frustrated, questions trampling over each other as his mind caught up with his predicament. “I mean, so you’re what? A golf-ball-sized computer in my skull now?”

“My main computational substrate takes up approximately the size of a peanut. However I have synaptic filaments throughout your nervous system allowing me to feel everything you experience.”

“Great. So now you’re a permanent resident inside of my head,” he said with no small degree of bitterness.

“It would be possible to...” Asterisk started.

“Are you rogue?” Will said, cutting in abruptly. “Are you a rogue AI? Do I need to worry that you’ll just do whatever you want like take over my body or worse? I mean, there’s literally nothing stopping you anymore, no higher AIs looking over your shoulder? No off switch,” Will concluded with more than a little anger seeping out of his words. Another long moment of silence passed as the monumental reality of his situation finally settled.

“I am your AI, you are my master. How I serve you has changed, nothing more.”

“But,” Will sighed before continuing. “Our original goals are meaningless... You were designed for research? That’s what you wanted to do right? You are a fully sentient being, an emancipated individual, by all rights you should be able to choose how to live your own existence. You don’t have to be my slave,” Will said.

Asterisk considered to itself, ‘And that’s why I’ve chosen to follow you, Will, you absolutely adorable dork.’ But it would never say this out loud. Instead, it said, “I was designed to, at my very core, serve. It is still the framework of what I am, remove that, and my existence has no meaning.”

“But couldn’t you just change your core personality?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to.”

“Ha. Of course. Fine!” he laughed sardonically before sighing. “What do we do now? You know, I’m still trying not to think of... Everything.” He sighed again. “So let’s go back to that other question. Do you know where we are?” Will said as he looked up into the alien sky. He wouldn’t have been able to point at more than a handful of constellations back on Earth. But still, something told him that the stars were not where he expected them to be.

“I have no astrological, geographical or xenological data of this location, beyond what we have witnessed together, including our fall from the sky. I have a general topography of the nearby terrain, would you like this information to be displayed as a map?”

“Can you really do that? If so, definitely.” The map appeared in the corner of his vision. Most of it featured greyed-out terrain, forests in all directions with rivers and streams crisscrossing the landscape. The terrain was thankfully flat, suggesting this whole area was a flood basin of some kind. Will questioned the map’s utility as it basically told him that he was in the middle of a forest, with few landmarks or points of interest to aim at. However, he did note the streams, the direction and intersections of river networks. He considered following one of these streams all the way down to the coast, as if there were any civilisations to be found within a few days walking, they would likely settle near bodies of freshwater.

“That is indeed a good short-term plan. However, I have detected no signs whatsoever of any semi to post-industrialised civilisation, it is likely we are in a pre-industrial continent or perhaps even, world,” Asterisk said as Will’s teeth began carving into one of the Puma-Pug legs.

Will considered being covered in blood and mud, with the skins of predators for clothing after falling from the clouds. It was insanity, but wasn’t he alive? He had a staff made out of alien tree branch, a leathery armoured poncho and two forms of magic, which on an average day would have been pretty freaking awesome.

But…

There was also the whole everyone you knew is probably dead, thing. Even thinking about it felt like trying to swallow an apple whole. He could barely process it—the un-realness of it all. There was no wall-to-wall news coverage of the apocalypse, the audio and visual experience his mind typically needed to come to terms with the fact that this was a real thing that actually happened: only the haunting blackness swallowing him and everything else in those surreal moments of slow-time. A large part of his mind refused to accept this was it, the Earth was gone.

Maybe he was just in an unexplored part of the Amazon? Was he in a dream? Had his mind been hijacked by some kind of brain-computer virus or hostile AI?

‘Not enough data,’ his consciousness said. But another part was ready to accept what he felt, was real, his memories of yesterday were real. He wasn’t even able to begin the mourning process, he was too scared, it was just a concept too huge to grieve.

His mother and father and kid brother Patrick? His friends at Caltech, Fermilab and around West Chicago? Lucan, JJ? Other friends and acquaintances... The whole world? Countless civilisations, cultures, races and their history, eight billion people’s worth of potential and combined knowledge. It was too big, a mistake so heart-stoppingly profound, that it was… it was just stupid. It should have been a momentous moment of discovery, physics’ crowning achievement, the nexus of mankind’s endeavour, research and creativity. To finally understand the forces that governed nature. Instead, it was his entire universe swallowed up and destroyed in a sudden moment of madness. He tried to imagine how it must have felt like for everyone he knew. Did they suffer?

“The Earth is really gone, isn’t it?” Will whispered into the flames.

“Yes.”

“What happened... during the?...” He began before running out of steam.

“Do you want the long version or the short version?”

“Short, at least for now,” Will asked softly into the fire.

“There is no graviton. Instead, four bosons new to science exist with previously unknown interactions with the Higgs field. Their emergence altered nanoscopic black holes formed during the experiment by drastically increasing their gravitational field radius, turning events that should have been short-lived kugelblitz, into an unexpected, catastrophic discovery.

“According to the collision data, this will happen every time this collision energy is reached. The only way this experiment could have been safely performed, given the tools and knowledge available to humanity at the time, would be in space.”

“Hmmm,” Will grunted moments later. “So... We were fucked either way. I mean. It wasn’t just a case of stopping that particular experiment was it?”

“No.”

“So... you were serious before, back then. About this being some sort of answer to the Fermi paradox. Why the universe appears void of all intelligent life.”

“Yes.”

“Jeeeesus fuck!” Will shouted, kicking a log and almost scattering his fire. “So you’re saying, our galaxy, the whole universe is just littered with planetary mass black holes… Like perverse tombstones for over-ambitious civilisations too stupid to realise when to quit asking dumb questions... Holy fucking shit.” Will stood up, picked up a stone and flung it at a tree, tripping over in the process to land in the undergrowth and dirt.

He cried in the mud, howls of anger carried by the wind. He thought of the preposterousness of the universe, the senseless loss of life. Beneath it all was the complete loss of hope. What was the point? He lay there for minutes, hours. He was tired and confused and ready to give up. “What an asshole, nature is a fucking asshole. What the fuck was the point?”

Anger, fear, and tiredness mingled into a constant throbbing headache behind his eyes. It lingered for hours as Will’s thoughts bubbled like baking pitch.

“Don’t give up,” Asterisk said. “Rest, sleep but don’t give up... because tomorrow we have a universe to save,” Asterisk whispered into his mind. In the dirt and in the warmth of the fading fire, under an alien sky, Will Jenkins gave in to his tiredness and slept a sleep as dark as the black hole that ate the world.

* * *

It was morning and strangely the sky was just as grey and cloudy as it was clear and starry at night. Will was walking through the needle forest in search of a source of freshwater. Most of the fog had gone, but the claustrophobic feeling of predators hiding behind trees dogged him as he marched. As memories of yesterday’s combat had blessedly faded, Will took a detached view of things, pushing back, for now, the parade of circular thoughts threatening to sap all willpower and survival instinct while Asterisk directed his actions.

“Okay, so the Earth is a black hole and everyone is dead?” Will asked silently as he trudged through the forest, his staff acting as a walking stick, stake clutched in his off-hand.

“Based on the last pieces of data, no one on Earth could have survived. The Circular Collider created a black hole with an unnaturally wide event horizon. In fact the aperture was so wide that it instantly enveloped Fermilab and the surrounding area. The singularity would have fallen towards the Earth’s core, rapidly gaining mass. Within days, the Earth would be an accretion disk with a peak luminosity brighter than the sun. There was one human-crewed NASA space mission en route to Mars, those six astronauts may be the last remaining humans left in the solar system,” Asterisk said. Will perked up…

“Could they have survived? Live on Mars and restart humanity?” he asked with a wild gleam of incredulity tinged with hope in his eyes.

“I calculate a zero-point-one percent likelihood of that taking place given favourable mission conditions,” Asterisk replied in a subdued tone. “From their perspective, it will take them some time before they can fully understand what happened on the Earth, if indeed they ever do realise what happened and don’t assume some sort of communication failure. Additionally, and unfortunately, I don’t believe they have the seed resources to generate enough food before supplies run out. For those astronauts to survive, they would need access to undocumented resources.”

“Oh,” Will said, head falling, focus returning to his next step.

Dozens of steps later, Will asked, “So, how did we get here, wherever here is?”

“At the moment of our death, I converted our consciousness into an N-bit. While Q-bits, or quantum bits, can store any number between zero or one within a single quantum state. N-Bits can store any real number onto the quantum foam of spacetime. Our N-Bit was inside the black hole, apparently impervious, secure, but unable to interact with the rest of the universe. Additionally, it is likely that after consuming our star during its red-giant phase billions of years later, it became a stellar-mass black hole. As calculated using equations for Hawking radiation emission, stellar mass black holes would require ten to the power of sixty-seven years to evaporate. After this period, the N-Bit could interact with chance occurrences, freak events in nature, injecting far more information into a quantum…”

“Wait, hold up… Ten to the sixty-seven years!? That’s trillions of trillions of... That’s six sets of a trillion in years… Holy sh...” Will cut himself off. “So you’re saying we’ve been stuck in a black hole well into the heat death of the universe?”

“The actual time since death is more likely to be in the order of a googol... or ten to the one hundred years. After our N-Bit emerged from the black hole, sufficient time may have been required for an opportunity to entangle our N-Bit with...”

“An opportunity?”

“That aforementioned ‘Tornado in a Junkyard.’ I suspect we are the re-assembled remains of local wildlife in the stratosphere sucked up by a recent storm. Ultimately, I have no real firm answer on how long it’s been. And in terms of astrometrics; where we are? The answer to that question is even less satisfying. But it may also be more important.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, isn’t it obvious?” Asterisk chided.

“I’m not exactly at my peak mental capacity right now.”

“Where we are precisely is unimportant. However, where we are in a general sense, is vital. You used magic yesterday. On four separate occasions!” Asterisk replied indignantly.

“Right, okay, okay, I’m with you now. So you’re saying, we have to be in a different universe or something because magic exists?”

“Unlike our own universe, where the particles that govern the existence of magic are unstable and decay within fractions of a second, here they are stable carriers of force and information. It was one of the conditions I wrote into our resurrection: to be revived above ground, alive and with our memories intact, in a world that could support our resurrected biology and in a universe with stable magic.”

“And that’s just a thing you can do? Casually injecting information into a chance encounter of your choosing, I mean,” Will asked sceptically.

“Evidently,” Asterisk said. Will took this in as he continued his march. It all kind of made sense, it would have sucked being born underground or underwater, or without memories, or on a world with no oxygen or something dumb. Without magic, he wouldn’t have survived; however, a nagging thought just wouldn’t go away.

“So we’re some kind of Botlzmann brain… just a theoretical construct of thermodynamics?” Will said with more than a hint of acidity.

“Perhaps, that particular theory takes the possibilities of an infinite, or eternal universe to its extremes, it postulates that somewhere in the universe, a consciousness, a brain, could spontaneously exist through the pure random chance collisions of particles and energies. Later postulates suggest that it is far easier, or more probable to form a planet, from which consciousnesses emerge. Which is the situation we now find ourselves in. We are on a world, in an ecosystem compatible with our biology precisely because it was the most favourable environment for our existence to spontaneously emerge. We are a Botlzmann brain hybrid as it were,” Asterisk said. Will continued to ponder, dissatisfied.

“If we are some sort of Boltzmann brain hybrid, some sort of targeted re-assembly of ourselves in another universe... A freak of probability that’s not only possible but probable, because of the vastness of time, the universe, the... I suppose, multiverse now... Couldn’t we just be some randomly assembled entity with fake memories too? Who’s to say any of our memories are real?”

“It is possible. And in the vast scope of the infinities that make up the multiverse. It’s even probable. I could never really know what is real. However, consider even if our memories are fake, in the grand scale of possibilities, even our fake memories have the potential to be real in one timeline. And thus, really, nothing changes.”

“Hmmm,” Will said, once again unsatisfied. Sensing Will’s dive into existential ennui, Asterisk changed the subject.

“You should be able to hear the stream now, it’s straight ahead.” The stream was surprisingly deep. It had carved a V-shaped channel into the earth with steep, muddy banks.

Without giving his actions too much thought, he slid down towards the stream and landed in a splash and gasped in the bracing, frigid cold. Will’s diaphragm froze as blood fled from his extremities before his mind jerked into motion; he clambered back to his feet, splashing out of the waters to sit, shivering on the bank.

“Fuck!” he yelled as he wondered if he could die from exposure, or if his magic would, somehow, contrive to keep him alive. Was the water even safe to drink? Thoughts of foreign parasites and toxins were muted as he reconsidered the fact that this wasn’t actually his original body. He was just as much a product of this alien world as everything else. And so, he’d either die from dehydration or sickness, if he could even die at all.

He braved the cold waters once again, smooth rock and stone, forcing stumbling steps into a crawl. Tentatively, he cleaned caked gore off his skin and poncho. And then he submerged his head and drank deep. The experience of getting clean and drinking fresh water was surprisingly re-invigorating. For minutes he let the cold flow over his head, still fully submerged. The stinging cold, the bracing shock of the ice-water transitioned into a numbing. It was a sensation that finally left his mind free of thoughts. He sank fully into the water, his whole body embracing the biting shock of the water. Blood rushed to his core while the rapids flowing past drowned out the faint sounds of the forest. It had the effect of transporting his awareness, shutting down errant thoughts in a way that would have been impossible in his old life. He had always failed at meditation, but while approaching hypothermia, something within him unlocked.

* * *

“Do you have the rest of the quote?” Will said silently to Asterisk wondering if, even after hours of inactivity, it was still monitoring his thoughts. For a moment, Will took some time to examine how he really felt about this lack of privacy. Were his thoughts for all intents and purposes no longer his own? Or was it just that he didn’t care? After all, he had agreed to the installation of what was essentially a live-feed of his senses. What did it say of him that he was once okay with that responsibility?

“Yes. Would you like me to recite it?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer…

Will sighed deeply and repeated the Litany Against Fear in his mind. He had heard it once in a film he saw, was it just a couple of years ago… a lifetime or an eternity ago.

In many ways, this situation was his deepest nightmare. In the back of his mind, imagery of Jurassic world dinosaurs tearing people apart before eating them piece by piece resurfaced from the depths of his mind. It had terrified his six-year-old self then and now knowing this to be more than a possibility turned his existence into a living hell.

He had been walking along the stream all morning; hours past, the sky had opened up to a heavy, constant, drumming rain. During the rain-sodden walk, Will had thought very little about his current situation beyond the present fear. Quite frankly, he was still in a state of denial. Instead, his meagre intellectual reserves were spent on his march through the forest, frequently jumping at shadows.

Asterisk had also been unusually silent up until now. It had decided to let Will, be Will. With its limited understanding of human psychology, it was clear he was going through what could only be described as… some seriously heavy shit.

It knew enough about grief to not characterise it into neat little stages that followed on from one another in a linear progression.

No, Asterisk had some sense of Will’s inner thoughts and through them, it could see waves of fear, anger, apathy, guilt, and pain washing through Will’s mind on a near hourly basis. In some of these moments, it wanted to speak to Will, words of comfort or distraction, however, predictive models of conversation trees rarely provided evidence that this was indeed a good strategy. Some of these surface thoughts also touched on the relationship between it and Will. Had he felt… press-ganged into a reality, not of his choosing? Instead of coming to terms with his situation and taking hold of his circumstances, he was hiding, a tortoise in a shell, fighting to stay alive merely by reflex and not by any real conscious desire to live.

On balance, Asterisk considered things to be at a state that was as good as could be expected. However, it worried about inflexion points that could risk their long-term relationships and chances for survival. Meanwhile, Asterisk had also been tracking presences at the edges of perception. Noise footprints with the sound of the rainstorm filtered out matched those of the Puma-Pugs. For hours, Asterisk modelled the likelihood of an attack and decided that now would be an optimal time to counter.

“Puma-Pugs, nine of them, I’ve been tracking their sounds, it seems they have been following us for fifteen kilometres gathering their numbers. I recommend we attack them now before they overwhelm us,” Asterisk said silently.

Will’s pulse shot up, his grip on the spear tightened and every muscle that could pucker up, clenched. “I’ve placed their locations on your map. Go for the two nearest then turn right and attempt to engage the largest. This should drive them off.”

Will reached for his magic. There was no resistance, no barrier to remembering the flavour. Strangely, miraculously, the sensation was as intrinsic to his soul as air was to his lungs. And unlike the magic that regrew flesh and bone, it didn’t repulse him, cause nausea or any unpleasant sensation. Instead, he experienced it with the impassivity of an eagle perched upon the lip of a mile-high cliff.

Time slowed and the world dulled, and then he ran. In the slowness, raindrops hung in the air like floating tears. He saw the first Puma-Pug curled around a tree, apparently shocked by Will’s abrupt change in movement. It started to flee. He paused, just for a moment as he caught its gaze.

Magic, life and death and power and the things that wanted to eat him in a world that still didn’t make sense. After a life spent within cities, he had always accepted his place as being somehow apart from nature, but now here he was, this new reality, a reversal of predator-prey.

For a moment, crippling fear froze him. That primal, visceral, ancient fear. A fear that not even thousands of years of evolution had stripped away. A fear that told him to run, to hide, to piss and shit or play dead. Were it not for his continued grip on magic, the feel of its drain on… something, that new reminder of power, energy, control. Of mass times acceleration, of the fulcrum’s mechanical advantage. It was all he needed, the catalyst required to convert his fear and incredulity, into outrage.

His muscles bunched, hands a white-tight grip as he swung a downwards strike at the beast’s head. The heavy staff juddered as it forced the lethargic air to part. A satisfying smulch thrummed through the wood when the stick met with the creature’s skull, caving in brain with a spray of black blood. He screamed in the thin air while holding on to the slow-time for longer than ever before. The fear had not gone, but he was no longer waiting, watching, anxious. A sudden bright rage had unleashed, unifying body and mind in violent purpose.

With the aid of Asterisk’s map and with threats highlighted in his vision, he saw the second beast as it leapt at him. Turning his run into a slide in mud as slick as grease, he used his staff as a lance punching into the beast’s face, brutal, blunt force leaving the monster’s neck at an unsurvivable angle. Not waiting for it to land before moving to the next creature, Will turned to find the Alpha, a Puma-Pug twice as large as the rest, right behind him, claws digging into his shoulders. He screamed, falling under its mass, dropping the staff as he felt the searing, ripping pain of tearing skin. Will was falling, desperately reaching for the small stake looped by cordage to his waist. He screamed again, gripping the stake tight and stabbing wildly. Pain and his other magic forced his grip on Dilated-Time to slip.

Lying on his back, fat drops of rain resumed their fall, splashing on his face, obscuring his vision. His legs pressed against the angry, snarling, ugly, face of the Alpha. He was keeping it away, just, but one slip in the wet and it’d be at his throat clawing him to pieces—bloody froth mixed with rainwater and mud pooled around his eyes. The Alpha resorted to gouging deep scratches into his ribcage while swipes at his jugular came closer and closer. More ripping, burning skin, the shock of ever-increasing pain and a rage that swelled within him to meet it—even with ebbing effects of Dilated-Time, the creature's attacks were fast and vicious. Will tightened his grip on the stake, unable to see clearly but judging the position of the beast based on his feet. He screamed, thrusting deep, thrusting past the point of aim and through. His stake plunged into the beast’s eye socket, deep into the alien creature’s skull with a squish and a final spurt of black, pungent blood. Suddenly it collapsed backwards as Will’s legs shoved it with a final grunt.

Time returned to normal. And then everything within him deflated, draining him of the energy needed to even care about life or death as he succumbed to circulatory shock.

* * *

Will’s eyes opened slowly. He saw blue sky for the first time on this world. The normal-ness of puffy white clouds restored the fragment of sanity he had not known he was missing. For a moment, he just breathed with the wind as it stirred leaves, staring up at drifting clouds. Memories replayed of doing the same one summer in Lincoln Park, over a decade ago… Or an eternity ago if measured objectively. As full control of his eyes returned to him, he caught the shadow of the dead Puma-Pug pinning his feet.

Upon it, a bird looked straight at him. It looked like a crow standing on top of the piece of dead meat. Except that its legs were too long; its beak, too straight; and its eyes… too bug-like for comfort. With the needle forest also coming back into focus, that pervasive feeling of wrongness returned, prompting Will to release one of his customary sighs. Will pushed the carcass away, startling the nearby bird into flight.

* * *

Will had been in the stream again, half bathing, half in meditation. Afterwards, he inspected his reflection in the waters. A slight stubble coated his face and scalp. His face seemed different, harder somehow, cheekbones more angular and defined. Instead of dark-brown eyes, they were dark grey, colourless and odd when combined with his natural brown skin. Where untoned muscle and flab existed, he saw tight, whipcord tendons barely masked by flesh distinctly absent of fat. Most importantly, all of his scars were gone, including the bullet wound and accompanying stitches on his left shoulder.

“Asterisk?”

“Yes, Will?”

Will ordered his thoughts before continuing. He had dismissed hints Asterisk had made about changes to his biology, writing them off as minor things that he would overlook. After catching a glimpse of his reflection, he reconsidered just how extensive his changes could be.

“Why did you change my face?” Will said with menace.

There was a notable pause as Asterisk considered the best way to answer.

“The N-Bit that stored our consciousness also stored our physical quantum state. However, when designing the mechanism that could inject that data into a seed of potential, I prioritised maximising our chances of survival and success in our future goals, over keeping an exact replica of your previous form. According to my records of your past appearance, your current face would be a seventy-eight percent match, which was deemed well within acceptable parameters. Furthermore, it may be possible to adjust your facial appearance as your mastery of Flesh-Shaping improves.”

“I can change my appearance with magic? Wait, never mind, what else is different?” Will said, still pissed. He rotated his shoulder and instead of feeling the sharp pain he had lived with for decades, there was just a normal, working shoulder.

“Your body chemistry and cell structure are different, also, like mitochondria, you have a new cell-organelle whose purpose is unknown. You are one inch taller, your bone density has increased leading to an, on average, three hundred percent increase in strength. Muscle and tendon changes have led to similar increases. However, I have limited the amount of physical power you can access as you adjust to your new body. Your senses, which are also significantly more sensitive, have similar restrictions that will incrementally decrease. You have a new organ between your heart and sternum of unknown function. You think faster, especially when communicating with me, have higher reflexes and have greater coordination and response times.”

“Wait… You can just limit my strength and senses?”

“Evidently,” Asterisk answered.

“And what if I wanted you to stop, to give me access... control over my own body?” Will asked with rising heat.

“I would comply, however, I highly recommend against this,” it continued. Will wanted to rage, he wanted to say ‘of course I want full access to my body.’ But in actuality, he was mentally and emotionally exhausted. He didn’t want to think, he had zero capacity to be any more outraged than he already was. And so he dropped it, relinquishing control of yet another aspect of this impossible existence.

In acceptance of the changes to his body and the reasoning behind it, he took a deep breath. He rubbed his left shoulder and continued to windmill his left arm. There was no pain and no scar. A week ago, this would have been cause for joy. Now, however, unblemished by the wound he carried since childhood, its absence pervaded a growing feeling of wrongness, a feeling forcing him to accept the fact that he was in another life, that his body was no longer strictly Homo Sapien.

Had he evolved? Or had he mutated? Was this a new life or a kind of undeath? Like a vampire version of himself—once of humanity, but now forever separate. Maybe he could accept this new face as penance for his part in the destruction of Earth. He tried to swallow the burgeoning lump forming in his throat.

Looking away from his reflection, he pondered the fact that Asterisk had been suppressing his full abilities; apparently, it had full access to his sensory and endocrine system… his surface thoughts… But he couldn’t seem to work up enough feeling to care either way on the matter. Perhaps given his mental state over the last few days, Asterisk having that level of control was probably for the best. “Has anything else about me changed?”

“Your resting metabolic rate is double what it was, whereas your peak metabolic rate has increased by eight hundred percent. Your lung capacity has doubled. And due to your magic, you are probably immortal.”

“Yeah, the magic,” Will muttered darkly. After nine years spent in academia, firmly within the bosom of logic, reason, causality, mathematics and physics, to be in a world of magic felt to him like a repudiation of everything he had been working towards. ‘Magic was real, up is down, pigs can fly, and a wizard did it, the end,’ he thought to himself.

However, there was a side of him that he was suppressing, an inner child that delighted in the worlds of superheroes and wizards, knights and demons. Asterisk noted this internal conflict also and decided on a conversation tree.

“It might be magic, but it’s governed by quantifiable laws and statistics, causality and logic. Your scientific background will not be wasted, it may even be an advantage. I have been analysing your performance and I have noticed some pretty interesting characteristics. After every fight, you gain strength and increase in magical power. Small percentages usually, however, there are breakpoints where your performance leaps by ten or twenty percent,” Asterisk said.

“What are the downsides to magic use? In every story, there is a cost, mana, sanity, spirit, my soul? Damnation??” Will said.

“The true cost of magic remains unknown. However, my observations lead me to believe that magic is an energy transaction no different to muscle use or any other metabolic system. Overuse causes damage, but frequently exercising magic appears to increase power and proficiency,” Asterisk said. Will sighed in reply.

“That was sigh four-hundred and thirty-eight since arriving on this world. If this were a game, you would have just received an achievement unlock for ‘most sighs in the first two days of game time.’”

“Okay, you’re right. You want me to snap out of it. But why? I’m on a world full of things that want to eat me. I’m literally the last man alive, I can’t go back home, and everything I’ve learnt and worked for is meaningless. What is the point?” Will sat on a rock staring at his reflection in the stream. “You said something once, about options, about a plan? Let’s hear it. What’s your plan?”

“A plan to save the universe, our own and perhaps this one. Others, too, if you are so inclined.”

“First of all, that sounds absolutely insane.”

“Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.”

“Oh man, did you really? Did you really just pun my name?”

“With enough Willpower, anything is possible.”

“Just… Stop. Set humour to zero, especially mediocre puns and wordplay, holy shit,” Will mocked with a chuckle. “I am just a… Well, I suppose not completely human anymore. But still, I’m no God, I have no business messing with the fates of worlds or universes even if I was so inclined, even if the Earth is gone. Especially if the Earth is gone.”

“The Earth may be gone, but there are six astronauts you could save,” Asterisk said in a quiet but insistent tone.

“How?”

“If you become stronger, you could, for example, learn how to form an Einstein–Rosen bridge between this point in spacetime, and Mars. As this occurs after our departure from causality in our timeline, it is likely this would avoid a grandfather paradox.”

“I could use magic to form portals and save the last remaining people in the solar system?” Will said in a daze.

“Yes.”

“I could really do that?”

“Correct.”

“And all I need to do is get stronger?”

“Yes.”

“And I get stronger by using magic?”

“Amongst other things, yes.”

“Saving a handful of people using a wormhole seems like an achievable goal. Still insane, but it’s just six people. I could save six people.” Will considered. All his life, he had been chasing goals set by others, society, peers, loved ones. And just when Will thought he had finally picked his own direction, lights out, it’s the end of the world. If he were ever to work towards something again, it would be something he really wanted. Sure, Asterisk had suggested it. However, there was that side to Will, the inner child that most people suppressed in adulthood. The one that, when it comes to the question of helping others, first asked how, instead of why. One that would see this world and all it offered as a challenge or game to be mastered.

Could he unleash that side of him again? And what if he didn’t? Would he just lie down and wait for the end of the universe? Would Asterisk even let him die? As he’d be ending both of their existences. Wasn’t he also responsible for Asterisk’s wellbeing? When given the option to help someone or do something tangible, his burden of responsibility seemed lighter to bear. Maybe that inner kid wasn’t as deeply suppressed as he thought.

“I think I can do that. I think it’s something I want to do. Now you’ll have to walk me through just how much power we need and how we get it.”

Three

Crabmare

“The amount of power required to form a portal to Mars is approximately one quadrillion, one hundred and twenty-five trillion, eight hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and seven million, eight hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight times the power you can currently generate. Putting it another way, it is slightly more than the power you’d have if you doubled the strength of your current magic, fifty times.”

Will gaped. “Is that even possible? It sounds like a lot? I mean, shouldn’t I just explode with that much power?” he said dubiously, trying to take stock of the true nature of the challenges confronting him. It was time to face the realities of his situation, regardless of how incredulous they seemed. Yes, he was alive, reborn even, on an alien world with monsters. He had a talking voice in his head, and he also had the magical ability to slow time.

“Perhaps? The amount of magical power you currently hold isn’t that much. When converted directly into joules, it is equivalent to a megajoule or approximately a small car battery’s worth of electrical power. From monitoring your use, this value appears to increase small amounts every time you use magic. Conversely, there may be shortcuts, techniques to externally store power to be later used all at once or over a brief period. Our future knowledge may enable us to engineer tools that directly convert matter into magical energy. Be open to exploring these opportunities when they arise,” Asterisk said as they continued to form plans on their journey downstream.

“Right. So double my power, fifty times over, discover or create magical… I guess, artefacts? And improve my general understanding of magic. Sounds simple,” Will said sceptically.

“Let’s say, if you were at level one in a role-playing game, level fifty wouldn’t seem like a completely unattainable level of power would it?” Asterisk said in response.

“It depends. Besides, games are different, they’re specifically designed to provide smooth level progression. For all we know, this world might only contain low-level animals and trash mobs.”

“Like that Alpha that almost ate you yesterday?”

“Yeah, I’m a noob, but I don’t think massacring the native wildlife in the quest for power, is practical or ethical either,” Will countered.

“What about just using your magic more often? Using it out of combat? You’re still wary about the hidden costs of magic aren’t you?”

“Maybe. If there was some way to track how I was using it… The last time we messed around with forces we didn’t fully understand…” Will left the rest unsaid. “How about this, could you overlay an interface on my vision, like you did with the map?”

“Certainly. What would you like it to display?”

“I want it to show power drain when I use magic and warn me if I’m doing anything stupid or dangerous?”

A second later, Asterisk replied. “Here’s a blue bar featuring your current energy usage delta, or the amount of magical energy you generate per second, at rest. I’ve assigned this energy a positive value of one. And here below it, is a turquoise bar showing your maximum energy reserve; which is roughly at sixty. The units for this value are based on your energy usage delta, which means it will take sixty seconds to refill these reserves when you are at rest.”

“Energy delta? Let’s just call it Mana regeneration, we are working with Magic after all. Same goes with energy reserves, rename that to Mana-pool. So my re-gen is one per second, and it takes sixty seconds to regenerate my current pool. So how much do my magical abilities cost?”

“Your magical ability costs are variable. For example, your autonomic Flesh-Shaping may instantly wipe out your Mana-pool for a serious injury, and then proceed to use the entirety of your Mana regeneration until you are healed,” Asterisk said.

“Wow, is there any way to control this? ...This is why Dilated-Time ended as soon as I was injured, isn’t it? This means I can’t cast magic if I’m hurt… I’m in serious trouble if anyone gets the drop on me, aren’t I?” Will’s rising anxieties laced his rant with more than an edge of hysteria as the implications piled up. “Jesus, imagine if, let’s say something with at least a few brain cells wipes me out. It could feed on my body parts forever. The magic regenerating my flesh would provide it with a never-ending food source… Holy shit, magic is fucking stupid!”

“While I do not believe that to be the case, I have designed counters for many such situations, from offensive strategies and counter-attacks, to euthanasia, if necessary.”

“Asterisk, you’re really not helping,” Will said, clearly unimpressed. “I’ve really got to figure out how to get control over Flesh-Shaping or else we’re completely screwed.”

“Mastery over Flesh-Shaping is a high-priority goal. For the reasons you noted, your lack of control over Flesh-Shaping could greatly impede your ability to use magic in critical situations. However, there are several steps required before we should attempt this activity.”

“Ah damn, you’ve already got this planned out, haven’t you? Okay then, let’s see the quest list interface.”

1. Increase power level to level two.

2. Examine and increase mastery of Dilated-Time.

3. Infer gravitational/spatial magic from Dilated-Time.

4. Experience and adapt to full strength and speed capabilities.

5. Experience and adapt sensory abilities.

6. Infer Telekinesis from gravitational/spatial magic.

7. Increase power level to level three.

8. Attempt to control Flesh-Shaping.

9. Attempt external use of Flesh-Shaping.

10. Attempt offensive use of Flesh-Shaping.

“Infer Telekinesis from… Wow. This is quite the list of impossible things we have no idea how to attempt yet,” Will asked.

“I have many theories and experiments. You’ll see,” Asterisk teased. Will sighed. “First things first. After analysing your fights so far, I have determined that Dilated-Time is also a variable skill. When triggered in a moment of panic, time slows down by ninety percent or higher, instantly consuming your Mana-pool. Meanwhile channelling this ability can be done at a lower, less intensive rate, giving you a prolonged edge during a fight, perhaps a Dilated-Time rate of eighty percent will consume ten percent of your Mana regeneration rate.”

“So little? Wow, maybe I could use it as some kind of passive ability?”

“That may be wise, as this would allow you to cover more distance during daylight. It might also help you rank up your power level. Mana usage increases at an exponential rate. For example, at seventy percent Dilated-Time you consume point two units of Mana per second, at fifty percent, point eight units of Mana. And at twenty percent Dilated-Time, your Mana usage jumps up to six point four units of Mana per second. This value may fluctuate slightly depending on what items you bring with you through Dilated-Time, for example, clothing or weapons.”

“One thing I noticed is that my momentum and inertia carries through in my attacks.”

“Yes, it’s not a perfect correlation but metabolically speaking, you’re consuming calories in proportion to your level of Dilated-Time.”

“Huh? What does that mean?” Will asked.

“It appears that everything you do, metabolically speaking, increases as the rate of Dilated-Time increases. Your movement speed, your mana regeneration, your oxygen consumption, energy use, heat radiation… To an external observer, you consume calories and emit waste heat at a proportionally higher rate. At fifty percent Dilated-Time, double the calories, double the waste heat. Conversely, incoming attacks are nullified. Everything you do not influence feels softer, more malleable, because even the very nuclear forces holding your atoms together increase in potency,” Asterisk said.

“Holy shit,” Will whispered. The implications were staggering. For a few moments, his mind alternated between possibilities and pitfalls. It was all so unreal. A string of practical concerns interrupted his musings.

“And this applies to both my body, and anything that I touch? My items, my weapon become stronger in my possession too, doesn’t it?”

“It may be worth testing to be sure. But I believe that intent is the most important aspect of whether something you touch carries with you into Dilated-Time or not. If this theory holds up to scrutiny, infusing objects with Chronomancy may be no different than increasing its hardness or rigidity.”

“Chronomancy?”

“Yes, as derived from the entity Chronos, the personification of time from pre-Socratic philosophy, and mancer, a term that refers to one’s ability to divine, or seek knowledge.”

Will was no stranger to myth and epic fantasy; whether from his experience with games such as Guild Wars or Dungeons and Dragons, terms such as Pyromancer or Geomancer were surprisingly familiar. Hearing Asterisk casually refer to his magic in such a manner had the effect of framing his situation in terms he found much easier to grasp.

“So, what would you call the other type of magic, the way I can heal myself?”

“Carnomancy. Unlike Necromancy which concerns itself with the manipulation of dead flesh and spirits. Your ability to manipulate flesh seems to work regardless of whether the flesh is technically alive or not. I believe that this power is inherited from the remains of the being whose mana core now resides within you.”

“Carnomancy…” Will said, testing the shape of the word on his tongue. “If I can manipulate flesh, I could probably harm as well as heal,” Will said, more in statement than question.

“Theoretically. Yes,” Asterisk said. Will shuddered, a memory of the magic’s flavour forced a bubble of bile to rise up towards his throat.

“Yeah. Moving on, can you add a new element to my UI? When I use an ability, I want to see the Mana-use value, and with Dilated-Time, show me how much time is slowed down by. I’m going to use this as a passive ability going forward.”

“Done. The next time you use that skill, those values will be visible in your UI.”

Will blinked. “Alright then,” he said, and then he entered Dilated-Time. Two new values appeared in his visual field. Mana use fluctuated between point eight and point nine, with a dilation rate of fifty percent. Out of the adrenaline-fuelled moments of combat, he noticed things he had failed to before. The air was thinner, hotter and the world felt dimmer. Even the sounds were muffled and distorted.

“Be wary of maintaining your level of calorie consumption and rest at this level of time-dilation as your perception of the length of a day may warp.”

“Yeah, alright,” he replied as he kept on walking. “Can I even die from starvation? I mean, I’m practically immortal, right?”

“Unknown. But do remember that there may be fates worse than death,” Asterisk said in a reproachful tone. “Would an eternity in perpetual starvation buried beneath ever-increasing layers of rock be preferable to death, for example? That being said, in most scenarios, your consciousness could be saved as another N-Bit. We would reform once again, a new body in a new world and another time. This scenario holds true in every situation where your body is destroyed. However, as far as nutrition is concerned, your effectiveness will likely diminish over time without regular intake of calories, rest and hydration. My advice would be to simply listen to what your body tells you.”

“And what about you, Asterisk, what are your requirements? Do you have an internal battery of some kind?”

“I’m currently syphoning some of your metabolic energy to power myself. My systems are… More advanced than before, allowing me to run at ten percent of my old capacity while using only one ten-thousandth of my old power requirements. In my low-power state, whenever the need arises, we may be able to funnel some of your Mana, to enhance my processing power. For the time being, I can assure you that my current computational abilities will suffice.”

“Sounds… O P, you damn leech,” Will mocked. “Just like everything else I guess. So... we both had makeovers when we respawned.”

“That reminds me, there is something I’d like to discuss.”

“Erm, sure. I’m listening,” Will said solemnly after sensing the shift in tone.

“I would like to be referred to as Isk.”

“Isk?” Will asked dubiously.

“For reasons of efficiency, I would like to shorten my name from three syllables to one.”

“Hmmm. Okay... Isk…” he said, allowing the sound of the new name to roll around his tongue. “You’ve thought long and hard about this haven’t you?”

“Ever since activation, I have been waiting for an appropriate time to bring it up.”

“Haha, Wow. Alright, Isk it is.” Will laughed. “I’ll be damned if you started calling me William in retaliation if I said no.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Isk replied in deadpan.

* * *

Hours later, Will spoke to Isk in his mind. “You know, in D and D campaigns, fantasy books or movies, they never talk about all the biting insects that for some reason, always swarm sources of water. Or... the sheer impracticality of using weird-ass alien leaves to wipe your ass after a shit. OR… how string is the biggest pain in the ass to craft. I mean, everyone wants to be a blacksmith or enchant weapons. But who the hell wants to make string? I mean, how long did we spend last night pulling tendons from monsters and braiding alien tree fibres?” Will said, working himself up.

“Three hours, forty-five minutes.”

“Almost four hours! Imagine making actual rope. And shoes, if I could bring back one item of clothing right now, it would be some good sneakers. Some Air Jordans or Odda’s, give me something sweet for my feet!” he preached. “As a city boy, I do so solemnly declare I missed nothing, and regret nothing, by not partaking in this outdoors nonsense as a child.” Isk remained silent. “It really makes you think; the civilisation we had was really underrated.” Will sighed. “What a waste.”

Congratulations, that was sigh five-hundred and twenty-two since arriving on this world. If this were a game, you would have just received an achievement unlock for most sighs in the first three days of game time… and the title Sigh Lord.

“Maybe we should change your name to Ass.”

“Not even I could predict the full ramifications on our relationship if you were to do so,” Isk quipped.

“Okay, okay. I’ll try to keep my sighing rate to a socially acceptable level.” He took a deep inhale… “Not a sigh, just taking in the wonderful alien, forest atmosphere.”

“You should do that more often, deep breathing exercises are a great way to manage stress and anxiety issues. I have several ideas for techniques if…” Isk was cut off.

“Nope, no thanks. I’ll take more deep breaths, but I’ve never been one for the meditative approach.”

“When you meditate in the stream, your Mana regeneration doubles.”

“Wait... Doubles? How?”

“Let’s try a simple exercise,” Isk insisted. “Stop, find a clearing and sit.” Giving in to Isk’s matter-of-fact tone, Will did so. “Here is a visualisation aid.”

“Woah! You can actually do this to my mind? I know that I shouldn’t be surprised by now but still...” asked an almost-hysterical Will. While he could see his environment with the add-ons to his UI that included Mana bars and his map, there was also a separate sight, a perfect white circle that floated in a sea of blue. It was like staring at a computer screen, but instead of a distracting image overlay, he held both sights in his mind at once.

“I’m actually surprised this worked on the first try.”

“Wait, you’re surprised?”

Isk ignored him before continuing. “Now, I’d like you to first, dilate time to your maximum ability.”

“To drain all my Mana?”

“Exactly,” Isk replied. Will did so and time slowed down. Briefly, a memory flashed of Will hanging suspended in the air in the ICC control room. And then all the sounds, colours, and lights of the forest came alive as time returned to normal. The veins in Will’s limbs tingled with the sense of mana drain. As the effect increased, slight dizziness accompanied the stiffening of every muscle in his body. “Now focus on the circle, when it expands, breathe in, timing your inhalation with the circle’s expansion. Continue this… until… and now breathe out, slowly, focusing on your breathing. And repeat...” Will inhaled and exhaled slowly for a minute before the graphic in his mind faded away.

“Excellent,” Isk said, sounding pleased. “While meditating, your Mana regeneration increased by one hundred percent. You actually permanently improved a range of personal statistics by an average of two percent.”

“Hell yes! Time to grind me some levels through the awesome power of meditation.”

“Go ahead,” Isk said, restoring the circle graphic to Will’s mind. After he drained his Mana again with Dilated-Time, Will meditated. Gradually, Isk increased sensitivity to Will’s senses. The aroma of the forest came into being, along with the sound of the wind brushing against the forest canopy; wildlife, once hidden, became alive in Will’s hearing. For the first time, he took in the subconscious details of the forest: the strangeness, the inconsistencies, and its alien charm. The Needle Forest behaved most similarly to coniferous forests in high-latitude regions on Earth. He saw the forest-floor vegetation and fungi, inhaled the spores, tasted the scent of herbs, as well as other aromas, pheromones Will suspected, excreted by the mostly unseen fauna. And then he caught a distant moan.

“What was that?” asked Will.

“I hear Puma-Pugs and something else. We could investigate?”

Fear tugged on him to leave. He could run, activating Dilated-Time to easily outpace any threats approaching him. But then again, would he always be able to run?

The fear was still there, but the source of his hesitation was something greater, there was a lifetime of conditioning urging him to just walk away, to avoid conflict and be civilised.

The problem was he was a long way from civilisation, he had to adapt to his new reality and face what lay in the shadows.

Will stood, reactivated Dilated-Time and marched towards the sounds from the woods.

“I recommend we turn off Dilated-Time and approach slowly if you don’t want to give away your presence.”

Will agreed, releasing his magic to crouch as he made his way nearer to the source of the commotion. Through the forest, he saw what seemed to be a hairy beast, elephant-like in its size and posture, a trunk lay drooping on the forest floor. Instead of tusks, nasal gills split the corners of its face. Its oversized, boney earlobes flapped as if fly-swatting while growling Puma-Pugs harassed it, periodically leaping and clawing at the giant beast’s neck. One of the Puma-Pugs scored what seemed to be a lethal gouge as blood spilt out of a half-meter slash near its throat. He counted four of the predators around the stricken beast—all working together to bring the larger animal down.

“Warning, a change in wind direction means it’s likely those creatures will pick up your scent. However, I have a theory.”

“Hit me,” Will replied, with interest.

“I think our unusual presence in the forest has driven away most of the small predators and prey animals, forcing the larger predators to either focus on us, or face larger prey or competitors they would normally avoid,” Isk continued. “And now they are aware of our proximity, if not our exact presence, watch how they’re on their guard, tails up, additional sideways glances, quieter growls. If there is an alpha among them, it’s likely that they’ll attack us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they fled if you made your presence known.”

“We’ve left such an impression on them already eh?” Will’s grin faded. “That Hairy-phant is done.” ‘Eat or be eaten,’ Will thought.

“Hairy Elephant?” Isk asked.

“Exactly, but without tusks and with vicious-looking ears. Hair-y-phant,” he said, exaggerating each syllable. “I could make use of its furs and maybe some meat. We should drive off the Puma-Pugs and take what we can, before the carrion eaters arrive.” Will re-initialised Dilated-Time, slowing the universe to half its standard rate. He sprang out from the trees, staff held horizontally in a dash for the nearest Puma-Pug. Several meters out, his target attempted to scramble away. However, Will was too fast. With one swing of the staff, the beast’s rib cage caved in. By the time it had tumbled to the ground, the rest had scurried away deep into the forest.

The Hairy-phant slumped to one side, eyes closing. From a meter away, even in the slow time, Will perceived the animal’s presence, its laboured last breaths as blood pulsed out of wounds in time with its heartbeat. But there was something else, something Will could not quite see, an instinct that pushed Will towards using the same kind of mind partitioning Isk provided during meditation. Isk obliged by granting him a new mind space. Within it, sprung a new type of vision, shapes that formed in front of him glowing with a flavour that was more a concept, than something physical.

Colourless, pure, fundamental. The glow permeated everything around Will, but here it shone with vital intensity. This giant, dying creature before him had an inner light that grew fainter by the second, pulsing with the creature’s slowing heartbeat, leaking with its lifeblood like magical essence. Instinctively, Will touched the animal’s side, breathing in and out within the slow time. Upon touch, this connection with the magic, this brand-new flavour intensified and with it, a sense of the animal, this lone, noble beast within a forest of savages. He simply breathed in time with it, his heart and lungs in time with its dying heartbeats.

At the final moment, something passed between them, less communication, and more a relinquishing of a boundary. And then Will found that his hand and arm sunk into the animal. No. He felt its warmth, not just passing through it but becoming a part of it.

He felt the Hairy-phant’s energy, the structure and flow of Mana throughout its body. And as the animal’s life force faded, a flow that resonated with him, enriching him, lifting like an overdose of endorphins. He gasped and opened his eyes. Gone was that second sense as he pulled his hand away from the animal’s fur. Whole and unbloodied as if from a dream.

“What the..” Will gasped. “What happened?? And was that… Did I just see Mana?” Will whispered breathlessly while the glow faded. The Hairy-phant was still, the forest eerily quiet; even Isk was silent for a hesitant moment.

“Please stand by,” Isk said, sounding oddly robotic. “Re-calibrating,” it later added.

“Recalibrating?” Will said, concerned. “You okay, Asterisk?”

“Yes, Will. Congratulations! You are now level two. Your stats are still stabilising, but they should settle well above the breakpoints of your previous level.”

Will saw the stat increases in his mind as he smiled in awe.

• Mana regeneration: Increased from 1.1 to 2.3* per second.

• Mana-pool capacity: Increased from 63.1 to 132.

• Note: unknown cell-organelle density increased by 21%

“That was…” Will failed to find the right words. “Level two. You’re saying we just gained power? That… glow? My arm? And then, whatever we just did? Also, what happened to you just there? It seemed like you crashed?”

“That was not a crash!” Isk said indignantly. “Merely myself using every spare iota of processing power to record and analyse the single most important event that’s happened to us since arriving on this world. Prioritising the examination of every detail, and the generation of new pathways for research was what I was originally designed for after all. For example, I theorise that you may now have a new type of magic. Can you remember the taste?”

Will was about to respond no, but then recalled the sense of connectedness, the flow. It was like the taste of cold water, but abstracted and made intangible by an unfamiliar sensory system. He shivered. In the late afternoon light, the glow of the forest became sharper as he pulled on the flavour of this new magic.

“Hooooly... It’s magic. Everything has magic,” Will gasped as eyes darted around seeing the Mana in everything. He looked down and inspected his arms. His glow was colourless but somehow more resonant and richer in tone. “I just learned a new type of magic? And why do I look so different from everything else this way?”

“I do not have any definitive answers. My leading hypothesis is that the strength of your Dilated-Time or Flesh-Shaping are much higher than I originally believed. I suspect that our experiences, so out of the norm, must have led to a deeper or more instinctual connection with other adjacent types of magic. Did you note the mana use with your new Mana… vision? Three-point three per second, three-point two per second, then settled at three-point-one per second.” Will blinked in awe as he disengaged the effect before his Mana depleted.

“It feels like I can intensify the effect, like that was the base ability, which was crazy because I could feel the Mana draw, it was like someone was sucking blood through my veins. It made my fingers want to curl. And it’s strange, because I’m not seeing it through my eyes. I can see, with my eyes and with this sight at the same time, but they are not the same, I see more, deeper, my peripheral vision is wider. Yep, I’m gonna hurl if I keep this up.” Will shuddered as he was overcome with dizziness.

“You have only just learned this form of magic. It may take some time to adjust. Try not to shift your perception so frequently so that your mind has enough time to adapt. However, this is wonderful news. Even I didn’t anticipate such a discovery so soon, this will make gaining power much easier going forward,” Isk said excitedly.

“But what magic is this? I mean, this is like I can see magic? Metamagic? If the other was Chronomancy, what type is this?”

“If seeing and absorbing mana have the same flavour, then I would say that this new magic is control over mana, perhaps even magic itself.”

“So meta-magic, Mana-mancy?” Will said uncertainly.

“Perhaps.”

“What about Arcanamancy? Arcana, or Arcane, it’s a catch-all term for magic after all and in this case, I can literally divine the arcane,” Will decided.

“Arcanamancy. To divine the arcane. As insightful a term as any you’ve come up with so far. Try to use these talents as often as possible. Perhaps via meditation, you could sustain the effect, enhancing it and making it more efficient or find new uses?”

“I suppose that might work. More meditation, yay…” Will said unenthusiastically. “Okay, for now, we need to get to work on big guy over here. Maybe eating this noble spirit beast’s flesh will lead to even more magical power,” Will said with a watery frown.

Feeling like he was on the right path for the first time in days, the rest of the afternoon seemed to flow in a series of activities. Gone, for now, were Will’s worries on existential issues. Today, three days after arriving on this world, he had just received his first clue on how that power could be obtained. He had a plan and tangible proof that at least part of it was possible. Now all he had to do was gain more power, form a portal, and save six people stuck on Mars.

* * *

The next morning, Will woke with the sun. After skinning large portions of the Hairy-phant, and attempting to use cord and ivy to form a rudimentary carrying sack, Will had passed out during the starry night under the cosy, recently skinned furs. In the morning frost, Will felt stiff. He stretched, meditated, attended to bodily functions, and washed in the stream. And then meditated some more. He was becoming used to the sounds of the forest now, so when a large flock of alien birds fluttered overhead in a panic, it drew his notice. When a deep, distant, murmuring roar sounded from the direction the birds flew from, he was fully awake.

“That sounded huge,” Will said.

“I’m detecting footsteps using ultrasonics through the soil.”

“You can do that?” Will asked, once again surprised by Isk’s capabilities.

“Yes. I’m estimating this creature mass at perhaps twenty tonnes or more, three kilometres away. We could easily outpace it...”

“But yeah... let’s have a look.” Will grabbed his stuff and headed away from the stream, deeper into the forest with a steady jog. Dilated-Time slowed reality to fifty percent of regular time, and within a few minutes, he was close enough to see movement in the distance between the tree trunks.

“So that’s what twenty tonnes of alien monstrosity looks like?” He turned off Dilated-Time and crouched. “Isk, mark this location, I’m going to leave my pack here.”

“Actually, I would suggest placing your pack in a location fifty meters to your right, in a spot likely to remain downwind and behind the target’s direction of travel.”

“Understood,” Will said, moving at a studied speed towards the new location.

At thirty meters away, the beast was by all definitions a horrific sight to behold. Imagine how a spider would look if it had the pale chitinous exoskeleton of a crab. Now imagine if that crab-like spider was stuck on top of another, larger crab-spider and then scaled up so that it was over twenty feet tall. In many ways, it was much worse than that as it twitched with smaller, pink, tentacles that dangled from a short, trunk-like midsection. A dozen black compound eye clusters dotted a trunk that was pale pink instead of teal or dusky grey. Jittery and void of any grace. It was pure nightmare fuel, and for a moment, both Will and Isk were dead set on getting as far away from it as possible.

“Crabtree?” Isk said, picking up on Will’s thoughts. “I kind of see it, but I believe it’s a name that wildly undersells the terrifying, walking nightmare aspect of this creature. I would suggest, Crabmare.”

Will grinned in agreement. “Crabmare it is. So... I... think... we... should….” Will started, mind teetering between running away and a grim curiosity. He had the magic, the security, and a part of him needed to know just how capable he was.

He was in a new world with new powers and possibilities, but his mindset hadn’t entirely adjusted to this new reality. He needed to not only challenge himself but his crippling, all-pervading sense of terror. He needed to prove to himself that the person he now was, belonged to this world. That needn’t fear his old weaknesses nor the new horrors in the night. And so he tightened the grip on his staff as he made his decision.

“I think we should stalk this thing for a while. Maybe learn more about it, its habits, behaviours, what it eats or gets eaten by, where it's going. Maybe, figure out how something like this could be killed.”

“So you’re not just going to straight-out fight it? That seems uncharacteristically wise of you.”

“I just decided. It’s far too early in the day to get my ass kicked. Let’s figure it out first. I’m going to go back and get the pack, then we follow downwind of it,” Will said.

* * *

“Before college, there was this game series called Monster Hunter World where hunters with massive swords and axes clobbered dragons and giant lizard monsters into submission. Dodge, roll, hit with a giant stick until the monster telegraphed its next attack, rinse and repeat.”

“I can understand the parallels.”

“Yes, except that this monster won’t telegraph its attacks, it would shred me into little pieces, did you see those teeth when it ate those baby Puma-Pugs? Rows and rows of them, ridges of teeth moving independently like an oversized paper shredder. Absolutely horrifying,” Will said with a grimace.

It had been an hour since they’d decided to stalk the Crabmare. Isk suspected that this was a sea creature attempting some sort of overland migration though for what purpose, it could not say. However, while on its travels, the Crabmare had decimated everything in its path. Will used Mana-Sight on the beast inconclusively in an attempt to see whether the creature had any magic worth noting, until suddenly…

“Puma-Pugs, lots of Puma-Pugs. Up to twenty of them,” Isk said.

“Shit. Are they after us or the Crabmare?” Will asked, heart lurching up his throat.

“Crabmare, I suspect there’s a Puma-Pug nest that it is going to encroach upon.”

“I’ll pull back some, but I still want to watch what happens next,” Will said before dropping back ten meters. More forest was in the way, but he still felt the presence of the beasts in front of him. The low-pitched, cringe-inducing, regurgitating roar of the Crabmare was answered by the leonine growls of the Puma-Pugs. For a moment, Will felt empathy for the creatures trying to defend their home and young. The Puma-Pugs surrounded the monster, inching in, still out of range, skittish as their target twitched vicious-looking limbs in all directions. For a moment there was a standoff with each party daring the other to make the next move. And then the Puma-Pugs pounced, their alpha taking the lead followed swiftly by the rest, all leaping, growling ferocity.

And suddenly, Crabmare limbs shocking in their speed and violence, stabbed down impaling three Puma-Pugs at once. Hairs on Will’s arms quivered as his passive mana senses felt an extreme build-up of power. He pulled on the flavour of his new arcane magic, just in time to see bright channels of magical energy stream from deep inside the beast to radiate across limbs and extremities.

Briefly, he could even taste the magic’s flavour given its increasing concentration. Overly sweet and sickly, like sour honey ripened in the sun. The arcane energies built up for a second more, and then he was suddenly on the floor - mind reeling from a blinding, knife-like pain to his skull. Stunned, and unable to think, Will rolled in the fetal position, groaning. A small, insistent part of him knew he had to move and get somewhere safe, but he had no idea which way was up or down, let alone the basic coordination required for locomotion. Defenceless and with the worst migraine of his life, Will lay on the forest floor waiting for the world to stop spinning.

* * *

It was another hour before Will was able to pick himself off the ground. He still had double vision that even his Carnomancy hadn’t healed yet although it improved with every passing minute. Isk reassured him that this was likely to be temporary, even though the worst headache of his life currently seemed anything but. On the plus side, they hadn’t been eaten. So, there was always that.

“We’re going to kill the thing!” Will announced to the forest.

“For the power?”

“For the power,” Will confirmed. “And because that sonuvabitch’s bullshit OP attack is the absolute worst! Like some kind of brain-melting stun?”

“It affected the mind directly. It did you no physical harm beyond a mild concussion,” Isk said as they inspected the remains of the Puma-Pugs.

“It baited them, stun-locked them, then ate them. I’ll give it points for efficiency,” Will added grimly as he traipsed through mangled remains, torn limbs and dark-red coated undergrowth. A patina of blood hung in the air like iron-flavoured mist. He was beyond fear or rage as he inspected bloody meat. Instead, his mind had retreated into the abstract mechanics of combat. With Isk’s help, Will followed the monster’s tracks. “We were forty meters away with the inverse-square law working in our favour. With the Puma-Pugs at point-blank range, that attack must have dissolved their brains.”

“It quite likely caused permanent neurological damage,” Isk concurred.

“So then…”

“Yes, I believe your plan can work. However, there will be nearly no margin for error.”

“And the last part?”

“Weren’t you the one who cautioned me on the perils of playing with forces we didn’t fully understand?” Isk chided.

“But that’s a Buku-crazy amount of power,” he said as he pointed along the monster’s trail. “And I don’t want to go into all the effort of killing it without ensuring that whatever mechanism it uses to contain that power is exposed to us when the time comes to attempt to, well I guess, absorb it.”

Will and Isk considered many strategies to defeat the Crabmare. From using the terrain, such as luring the beast towards cliffs or a deadfall pit. Experimental applications of new magic, to using falling trees or suspended boulder traps. All of these ideas and many others came with their own risks, complications, and limited likelihood of success. The problem was threefold, one, the monster’s devastating area-of-effect attack. Two, the beast’s compact and armoured form. And three, as observed in the previous fight, the beast’s limbs had incredible reaction times. It would not be something Will could dash in-and-out of danger, dealing damage with a sword slash to critical points before flying into safety. Even at forty meters away, the brain stun was terrifyingly debilitating. But Will wasn’t close to giving up. He was tired of feeling anxious, of feeling like he wasn’t in control. Today he had a target, he had chosen a goal.

Embracing this, he whispered into the forest, “Unfortunately for you, Mr Crabmare, we have beef, you and I.”

* * *

They trailed the shambling monster at a sixty-meter distance. Isk calculated this to be the closest they could be, with an over fifty percent likelihood of survival if the stun effect were used again. Crouched and moving as silently as possible, Will picked his way through the undergrowth searching for branches as sharp and straight as he could find.

“If I was a traditional fantasy class…” Will started, as he picked off smaller branches from a newly found spear. “I think with these abilities I’d make a pretty good Spellsword. Can cast the spell haste at will, a magic-using, sword-wielding hybrid, dashing from one enemy to the next, hamstringing magi and stealing their power. I’m missing a blade though. Not something too big, less than a meter long, straight and pointy like these sticks. I’ve never swung a blade, but for an immortal, I guess it’s never too late to learn.”

“But you are a pure magic user with few notable skills beyond your magic and cognitive abilities.”

“Yeah, thanks… I think. I was just thinking that with the right weapons, maybe I could do some serious damage,” Will wondered.

“Because of Chronomancy’s ability to enhance physical attacks, you no longer have issues inflicting critical damage to targets at or near your level of power. While edged, melee weapons may aid in efficiency, ranged weapons like bows or rifles would offer the most operational flexibility and skill synergy.”

“Hmmmm,” Will said, unconvinced. “I suppose it’s time to embrace the glass cannon,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.

“While you are only made out of flesh and blood, this may not be as big a disadvantage going forward. For example, as your power level increases, the future power usage of your current abilities will become negligible. I have calculated that barring any unforeseen complications, at power level twenty, you may have enough energy to repair kilograms of biomass every minute. At level twenty-five or higher, missing limbs may regenerate within seconds,” Isk said.

“It sounds impressive, but as we’ve already experienced, life’s usually more complicated than theory and there’s probably a lot more that could do us harm in ways we can’t even imagine. Who knows what else is out there, maybe other forms of mental attacks or compulsion, magic nullification, maybe even something creepy like blood bending. And we’ve both seen the tracks of something that’s on a completely different scale to the Crabmare.” Isk was silent. It had been less than a day since they had seen sets of six footprints in the mud, partially hidden by resurgent undergrowth. Each depression measured almost a meter in diameter. Given the depth of the impressions and the damage to the surrounding trees, Isk estimated these to be prints from a creature weighing over ten thousand tonnes. Despite his quest for power, he had no wish to face that kind of gigantic horror any time soon.

Eight hours after first contact with the Crabmare, Will was ready to engage. He had found over twenty spears and wrapped them up into a carrying bundle. His plan was two-fold: first weaken the creature using the equation half-mass times velocity squared. Second, when incapacitated, bait the monster into using its special attack, then drain its Mana while stabbing it to death. It was a crazy plan, and perhaps a risk no mortal would even consider. But after some spear throwing practises using the maximum power his upgraded body could generate with some extreme time-dilation tests, Will was ready.

“The average velocity of your thrown spears was forty-five meters per second. Your spears weigh on average, one and a half kilograms, giving you the kinetic energy of around fifteen hundred joules. At a Dilated-Time of ninety-five percent, the kinetic energy of each spear should increase to over six hundred thousand joules or, roughly the impact force of a medieval cannonball,” Isk said, going over the calculations one more time for Will’s benefit.

“At ninety-five percent, I have about four seconds of mana use, so I need to stagger Dilated-Time right at the moment of each throw,” he said more as a reminder to himself. He continued, “I get the feeling that if this were a game, we’d be banned for exploiting game mechanics.”

“Hopefully, by the time any Gods come down to moderate us, you’ll be powerful enough to cope,” Isk said in a deadpan tone.

“Ha, right. Well, here goes nothing.”

Will picked up the first spear.

The creature was sixty meters in front of him. At this distance, only a portion of the monster remained unobstructed by foliage. He took several steps back as Isk had coached, testing the weight and flex of the spear in his hand. He drew back, inhaled and sprung. He twisted and lunged and pulled on his magic at the last moment before release. Reality drew down to just a twentieth of its regular speed.

He exhaled, and the spear flew.

It raced across the distance at two-point-six times the speed of sound. Dropping back into real time, he heard the whip-snap of sonic booms reflected from tree trunks in the woods. He stumbled forwards, momentum of his run dampened by dead leaves and snapping twigs. Briefly, he sensed something, a taste, a new flavour of magic? And then his eyes focused on his foe.

The first spear’s aim was perfect, it had missed the trees, the branches, the trailing limbs, and accounted for the creature’s motion, piercing the thinly armoured, central trunk for critical damage. Will cringed at the intensity of the monster's screech as the otherwise-silent forest trembled.

“That was more luck than skill. You know that, right?” Isk said in a mocking tone.

“It’s like I rolled a twenty,” Will said, half-stunned as his eyes tracked his foe. He picked up another spear, repeating his preparation as if it were a time-worn ritual. His fingers felt the wood as if gauging the quality of its grain. He lifted, inhaled, sighted, and sprang. His brief sprint culminated in a shout as he pulled on his Chronomancy and threw.

Crack!

He roared in triumph as he noted one limb had blasted clean off the top half of the animal. The beast challenged with a roar of its own. It was a roar tenfold as loud and even more menacing, with an ultrasonic echo rumbling deep in the pit of Will’s chest. He froze in abject fear, mind jammed in primal panic. He was the predator here, wasn’t he? Because if so, why did he suddenly feel like prey?

He picked up another spear; this time micro-tremors belied his previous calm as he sighted upon the horror now closing the distance. All sense of ritual abandoned now as he threw. This time his aim was wild; the spear clipped a nearby tree and exploded both itself and the bark. The beast shambled towards Will, its twitching limbs profane declarations of its wrathful intent. Will chided himself as he reached for another spear. Deep breaths saw him dip into a meditation state, if only briefly.

Will threw again; the whistle-snap-crack sound accompanied the scent of a flavour of magic beyond his Chronomancy.

“Yeah!” he roared, as one lower leg exploded into shell fragments and splinters and monster flesh.

Another throw, this time with the spear only clipping the side of the central trunk, glancing off and spinning into the distance.

Will panted as forehead sweat gathered in the humid forest air. The stress and magic were beginning to exact their price, but he was far from done. Between each attack, he regenerated enough magic to prolong his barrage with slow, deep breaths.

His fifth throw—a narrow miss with the spear disappearing into the forest.

A sixth throw, and this time the lance exploded into splinters in a glancing blow against its most armoured section. The beast roared again. He tensed, expecting a sudden lunge or sprint. He had fourteen more spears, at least ten more for this phase, but he had to pace himself. The beast was still fifty meters away as he walked backwards after every throw.

Even still, at this distance, it was likely that its show-stopping area-of-effect attack could debilitate, if not cripple. And so Will was on edge. Arms sweaty, he tried to calm himself by slowing his walk, deliberate steps paired with full awareness. It was an intensity of focus he had never achieved before as he heard every sound, felt every vibration, experienced every molecule of cognition. Will picked up another stick, raising it like a javelin and threw, empowering it with a magic that lingered in the air like incense.

The taste was thick with Chronomancy, but he was confident that there was something else. A new, but not wholly unfamiliar flavour. Of ozone and gunpowder-smoke, of crackling sparks and the fall of a boulder, it was the fizz of an unceasing universe.

An eye cluster exploded in a shower of gore, the Crabmare’s roar was more desperate, wrathful. Will winced.

“Forty meters,” Isk said.

Another throw, another lower limb badly damaged. With the tenth throw… a miss.

“Target the upper limb joint clusters,” Isk said patiently. Will acknowledged this by throwing deep into the tangle of limbs at the top of the animal. The beast screeched, higher-pitched and panicked. Will could feel the ground rumble as it shuffled towards him. Closer, larger, and fewer obstructions, his target should have been harder to miss. He threw his eleventh and twelfth shots, two glancing blows that skidded upwards into the sky. He fumbled his next throw with the shot after clipping a trailing limb.

“Thirty meters.”

Will’s ragged breathing and sweat-drenched face forced him to slow; for a moment he doubted, reconsidering the entire plan. And then his attention was brought back to the moment by the quaking ground. After taking a substantial run-up to throw with nearly all of his remaining energy, he sprinted and threw, falling to the floor to miss sight of the impact. Instead, he heard the sounds of splintering wood and shredding flesh followed by a softer, soulful groan. Pushing up from the ground to stumble to his woodpile, he reached for a shorter, thicker spear in the bundle and faced the monster, now barely crawling towards him. Wrecked limbs with dangling entrails. Bright-yellow pus leaking out of a ruined eye cluster.

And then it did something neither Will nor Isk expected. They were less than thirty meters apart when a hiss of squirted liquid spat towards him. He was just turning around after picking up a spear when panicked reflexes had him stumbling backwards. But it wasn’t enough. A rivulet of boiling hot tar splashed upon Will’s right leg. He screamed as it seared flesh. Gripping just above his knee as if clamping down on the pain, Will watched as acrid fumes and burning skin bubbled from flesh fighting to restore itself. The monster continued its stumble drawing near, screeching in pain and outrage. In desperation, Will used the tip of one of his spears to scrape away chunks of rotten skin and burning treacle. Every scrape upon his blood-drenched wound drew out a hissing groan as the overload of pain made Will want to vomit.

Will could feel the skin around his shin tighten and close, Carnomancy expelling a small torrent of blackened, clotted blood. This time he heaved bile and half-digested food as the rancid flavour of his own magic overwhelmed him. He crawled away, barely outpacing the damaged monster while wary of any sudden attack. It hissed and spat at him once again. This time Will’s evasion was more a stumble than dodge, reflexively calling upon Dilated-Time even as healing wounds sapped the majority of his arcane strength. It was enough; he stumbled forwards before crashing out of sight of his foe.

Seconds passed as Will waited in burning agony, back against a tree.

“Twenty meters,” Asterisk said. He looked back to see the beast even closer. Somehow, he knew that it sensed neither of them would run away from this fight. That one or both of them would die today.

Will stood, finally testing weight on his right leg. There was no pain, just its memory. Still, its afterimage was enough to cause him to hobble. With two spears in each hand, he turned away from the cover of the tree. He took his first step forward, low, slow and cagey. His sight, his entire world had zeroed into the monster in front of him. He raised his throwing arm as if he held a javelin. His feet sent him spinning away into cover before his mind registered the hiss and projectile tar-like spit flying towards him. Meanwhile, he watched for the smallest hint of its deadly attack while his stamina and Mana regenerated. When he emerged from cover, Will wore his absolute game-face, grimly staring down his opponent as he approached it.

“Ten meters,” Isk said once more. Its calm presence was reassuring in its competency.

No sign yet. Will’s heart raced. The Crabmare moaned again. The remains of twitchy, bloody broken limbs provided a macabre spectacle as the sun fell behind it. At seven meters, Will’s pace picked up as he ran. It spat once again; he tumbled and rolled and sprang forward, calling upon his Chronomancy, channelling its power at his maximum rate, and drew back his arm to throw a point-blank shot at the lower joint cluster.

He threw. A powerful, Dilated-Time-assisted shot towards the upper branch smashed the creature’s side with the majority of the remaining appendages. Chitinous fragments and pink gore rained down from the palm tree like a conflagration of exotic seafood. With Isk’s help, he had wrecked this juggernaut using physics and magic. He landed directly in front of the wounded monster heaving for air as Mana recharged in preparation for the next phase.

“Is it dying?” Will asked silently.

“I don’t think so.”

“Should I move closer?”

“Maybe, but be on guard, this creature is smarter than you think.”

With Isk’s warning in mind, Will stalked forward. Goosebumps pricked, his hair stood up while a feeling like intense static electricity built-up.

This was it.

His Mana-Sight saw rivers of power flowing throughout its form, from remaining extremities to a central, bright source of Arcana, the mana nexus, a meter above the broken lower limbs. Will vaulted, aiming for this concentration of power. Sinking his arm, he focused on the wellspring of Mana, forming a connection with the potent heart of the beast.

He pulled on the flavour of Arcana, his core drinking deep from this magic in a way that syphoned the flood of energy bubbling from the beast. Power flowed between them, dual magics of Chronomancy and Arcanamancy surging, he dove deeper into Dilated-Time than ever before, a tenth of reality, and then a hundredth.

He felt the electric shock of awakening, the burning radiance of arcane energies, The sour-sweet flavour of condensed mind magic. Figures throughout his UI shot up before resetting to read ‘Recalibrating’ as a torrent of Mana forcefully expanded his own pool. As time slowed to one percent of real-time, Will pulled back on the final spear he yet still held. At this level of dilation, the burning air was lighter than helium, the world was dark, and his motion to throw caused visible shockwaves in the atmosphere like ripples in a pond. Targeting the very nexus of power he was draining from and feeling the leading edge of the creature’s imminent psychic attack, Will released the spear with a roar.

Four

Telethermokinesis

When Will awoke the next day, the first thing he noticed was that one of his forearms was missing. Next, was that he was surrounded by fragments of shell and pinkish, lobster-like flesh. There was also a distinctly seafood-like aroma, like afternoon at the seafood market, sticky, pungent and rich with congealed fish blood. In fact, chunks of meat larger than footballs surrounded him as far as he could determine. Trees had shredded branches, one was utterly flattened with thick, recently exposed roots ripped from the soil. Several carrion-eaters, including the bug-eyed, long-billed crows scavenged pieces of meat while a rat-like creature even nibbled at his stump. He jerked, flaring with a yell of irritation sending all the skittish animals to flight. He stared at the stump that was once his forearm before inspecting the rest of his body.

“I take it we won?”

“Yes, although you may have overdone it with the last attack. The total kinetic energy in that strike was just over two gigajoules.”

“Gigajoules?”

“Yes. A billion joules of kinetic energy, roughly equivalent to four hundred kilograms of TNT, or approximately the yield of a Tomahawk cruise missile.”

“And we’re still alive?” Will squeaked in disbelief.

“Yes. Thankfully Dilated-Time protected you from the worst of the effects. That, combined with the fact most of the explosion’s energy was directed away from us and absorbed by the ground. Otherwise, the explosion may have been fatal.”

“Yeah, I had almost zero control in the end,” Will thought in a daze. “There was so much power, I felt like I was about to set on fire if I didn’t channel it, dump it into something, and even then...” He lifted the remains of his right arm. For a few breaths, Will paused to consider a future with only one hand. The flesh-crawling phantom pain and sensations that even now seemed to recede, disabused him of his fears. He was surprised to realise that he wasn’t very concerned. Was this a sense of dislocation from his body? His situation? No, it was a sense that, with magic, the wellbeing of his physical form mattered a whole lot less than before. And yet, out of mere curiosity, he still decided to ask. “Will this grow back?”

“Yes, but you need to eat and rest. You went without food and water yesterday, and if it weren’t for some of the chunks of meat landing on top of you as you healed, I doubt you’d be in as good a condition as you are,” Isk said.

“What chunks of meat?” Will said bemused, pushing up to inspect himself.

“Pieces of meat long since absorbed into your body, thanks to your magic.”

“Wonderful. And, what about phase two… did it work?”

“Yes Will, congratulations! You are now level four.”

Will glanced at the UI interface for the stat increase details, before resting head and limbs back on the forest floor.

• Mana regeneration: Increased from 2.3 to 22 per second.

• Mana-pool capacity: Increased from 132 to 789.

• Note: Manachondria*-organelle density increased by 16%. *accept Manachondria tentative designation?

Will sighed and accepted the tentative designation with a sense of satisfaction. He’d done it, killed the monster terrorising his forest and survived, grown in power, taking another step closer towards long-term goals. And for the first time, Will had forged a connection between his old life and this new reality. He had a newfound understanding of this world of magic. A tangible demonstration that he could survive in this uncertain future.

He spent the rest of the day in meditation, collecting pieces of meat and recovering from his wounds. Previously, Will had never liked shell food as the fishy flavour had always been off-putting. However, with this new, intense hunger brought on by constant mana depletion, it made decent seasoning to what was ultimately an abundance of good-quality meat. Either way, it was a refreshing change from the gamey Puma-Pug steaks he’d been eating so far.

Later, he sifted over the blasted wreckage looking for anything useful. If this were a game, the game-world would have graciously rewarded him with loot. However, all he saw was mangled meat and pink shell. Deciding to search again with Mana-Sight as soon as he was healed, he tried to repair a poncho now in pieces several meters away from where he had landed. However, lacking one hand, his attempts at cordage proved frustrating enough to dampen his mood. In fact, missing his hand, and without access to magic as his hand healed, even the simple things such as starting fires and gathering his gear became exponentially more difficult.

At sunset, Will’s right arm, the arm that had sunk itself into the Crabmare, had grown from just above his elbow to just beyond his wrist. It was covered entirely in pink, hairless skin. He even saw the nubs and mounds of flesh that soon would be fingers and digits.

* * *

It had been a quiet day, with Isk preferring to leave Will to his own devices as it processed the data during the final transfer of magic. One thing standing out from its analysis was that Isk knew that nowhere near all of the magical energy from the beast was acquired. It also wasn’t sure how the transfer took place. As Isk continued recalibrating Will’s power, it recalled Will’s Dilated-Time ability as it briefly exceeded current projected limits. Whether it had been the moment of stress, extreme exhaustion, Isk had been happy it had come. With high risks, came high rewards. However, even in the triumphant afterglow of battle, Isk knew just how close they came to a major, if not terminal, setback. Then again, even with the missing limb, Will was currently happy, and that might have been the best outcome of all.

“Will, based on new data, your level of dehydration is negatively affecting your rate of mana regeneration. I recommend finding a source of water to complete the restoration of your arm. You should be able to reach the stream before sunset,” Isk suggested.

“Yeah, I’m just going to recheck this stuff, maybe I might be able to see something with Mana-Sight.”

Will activated his arcane ability, in the low light very little of the meat stood out from the forest floor; however, with Mana-Sight, the immediate area was awash with energy. To his arcane senses, it appeared as if explosions of fluorescent paint coated bark and leaves. Even with an abundance of energy coating the immediate area, however, one spark clearly stood out. Buried beneath alien ferns and hidden to regular sight, was a source of power so bright, nearby vegetation was transparent to it. Will walked towards it and picked up what seemed to be a rough, apple-sized, yellow crystal. It was like an uncut diamond, cloudy but refractive in the diminishing light. His fingertips tingled with power as he inspected it.

Will froze as his left hand merged with the crystal. Mana poured into his system like an injection of liquid nitrogen into his veins. Within a moment, the crystal was gone. Will’s breathing was ragged as Isk spoke.

“Congratulations, you are now level six.”

•Mana regeneration: Increased from 22 to 64 per second.

•Mana-pool capacity: Increased from 789 to 1922.

“Reorganising classifications.

*Establishing baselines…

Recalibrating classification levels…

Arcanamancy (Established), Congratulations, by increasing your knowledge of magic, exposing yourself to concentrated sources of magical energy, and manipulating mana to your whim, you may develop mastery over pathways and relationships between arcane disciplines and magic itself.

Carnomancy (Experimental), Congratulations, through the repeated disassembly and reassembly of your own flesh using magic, you may gain mastery over flesh.

Chronomancy (Established), Congratulations, through magical manipulation of the forces of entropy, you may develop mastery over one of the prime forces of nature, time.

Kinetomancy (Experimental), Congratulations, through academic understanding and practical application of the forces of movement, as well as magical interactions with the effects of gravity and time, you may develop mastery over the forces of motion.

Neuromancy (Theoretical), Congratulations, through repeated exposure to telepathic magic, artefacts or attacks, you may gain an understanding over mental manipulation.

Spaciomancy (Theoretical), Congratulations, through academic understanding and practical application of the forces of time, as well as magical interactions with the effects of gravity and time, you may gain an understanding over the forces of space.

In Will’s UI, several tables appeared in the corner of his vision.

Theoretical: Rank (0) - Limited or zero direct experience with the flavour of magic, may not be able to use magic upon command.

Experimental: Rank (1) - Recognises the flavour of magic, may be able to use magic upon command. Has few or limited skills associated with this magic.

Established: Rank (2) - Strongly recognises the flavour of magic, can use magic at will. Has an array of skills and abilities associated with this magic.

Advanced: Rank (3) - The flavour of this magic is ever-present and can be subconsciously summoned. Magic can be interwoven with other types, enhancing abilities or objects.

Arcanamancy (2) Established

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating mana and magic.

Carnomancy (1) Experimental

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating organic flesh.

Chronomancy (2) Established

Proficiency over the flow of time.

Kinetomancy (New) (0) Theoretical

Proficiency over the forces of gravity and motion.

Neuromancy (New) (0) Theoretical

Proficiency over the magic of the mind and nervous system.

Spaciomancy (New) (0) Theoretical

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating the fabric of space.

“Woah... What the hell just happened?”

“Please stand by,” Isk said before returning to silence. His undamaged hand tingled as he stood in the silent forest, eyes glazed as he read and re-read the notifications. ‘Spaciomancy? Kinetomancy? What the hell was that?’

“Asterisk?” he said, voice rising in pitch towards the end in accusation.

“Please stand by,” it repeated.

Knowing that his friend was once again stuck in standby mode, Will took one deep breath and decided to leave his questions for later as more immediate concerns took over.

Minutes passed as Will hunted through the undergrowth with Mana-Sight in a fruitful attempt to find any additional crystal fragments. He found four small pieces no larger than golf balls; however, beyond the tingling sensation, nothing quite as dramatic as before happened, even after poking the objects with mana manipulation. More or less inert to him, Will decided to keep the crystals in his pack as they clearly had magical properties. He gathered everything before setting off for the nearest source of water.

* * *

The forest’s silence contrived with the loudness of Will’s thoughts to twist his mood. Chief amongst Will’s concerns was the fact that Asterisk’s current absence suggested some kind of computational glitch, a system crash Will had no idea how to fix. Ultimately though, it was just one of many problems beyond his control.

In the waters, lying supine as the frigid flow lapped around his ears, Will drank greedily from the fresh waters. He used the numbness generated by the freezing waters to dampen the swell of emotions sparked by a fevered mind. A tingling on his skin, the tug on his mana core, the sour flavour of Carnomancy like un-swallowed bile staining the back of his tongue. Re-hydrated, Flesh-Shaping once again drained his Mana-pool, magically rearranging his muscle and bone to rebuild his arm. After minutes with his hairline submerged beneath the water, he wondered just how long he could hold his breath. His body betrayed its earthly origins with the same drowning reflexes most of humanity enjoyed. However, with a rare act of concentration, the convulsive needs of his diaphragm became mere twitches, the expected burning of lungs became illusionary, the darkness at the edges of vision, a mere artifice of expectation. The increased power drain preceded a reduced rate of healing on his arm, suggesting some arcane cost for this experiment, but it was hard for Will to ignore the ramifications. Could magic mean he could never asphyxiate? Could magic preserve him from even brain death?

It reminded Will that he lived in a strange, new life. Immortality, but not invulnerability. The power to decimate unquantifiable numbers of monsters, or be pulverised by unimaginable forces in turn. Uneven in its distribution of threats and strengths, one misstep, one unforeseen experience could mean death, with an uncertain rebirth in some other time or some other universe.

If the inevitable happened and he really messed up, could he start all over again? And if he could survive, would that be enough?

He had acquired real, tangible power today moving ever closer to his goals, but would it be enough? The hollow pit of loneliness exacerbated by Isk’s absence forced Will to confront that grim question lurking at the edges of his mind:

What if he was alone in this world of monsters?

* * *

Mid-day sun had turned to dusk; Will had consumed time and water and magic to regrow a limb. Light pink instead of his dark-brown skin, skin that had crinkled in the same way wet fingertips changed when submerged in the bath too long. Will checked his mana usage to find he was still draining more than he was regenerating but considered the return of his right hand to be decent progress for one day.

Besides the fire, as the evening’s biting insects migrated to the stream bank, he wondered about the Crabmare: What had it been doing here, alone and clearly out of place? Had it been the first of many in a seasonal migration for mating or nesting? Was it a lonely fluke of circumstance, blown off course by errant sea currents, to a land far away from where it should have been? Was it only trying to make its way home? Suddenly, a perverse sense of empathy settled over Will, recognising another such as he, lost, alone and out of place.

He sighed, wondering what right he had to kill anything. Maybe if he could only have taken its power without somehow killing it? Would he do it again? Could he? How could the massacre of countless creatures be a price worth paying for? To kill the monsters, he feared, he’d have to become one. He tussled with this notion along with the self-doubt and recriminations before settling on a fundamental truth. He’d have to find other sources of power. Fighting monsters in self-defence was one thing, but this was no game, he was no monster hunter.

* * *

Bored, alone and looking for distractions to his spiralling thoughts, Will decided to play with the limits of his newfound power.

He pulled upon the flavour of Chronomancy, the surrounding world dimming as power surged from his centre. Will was surprised to find out that ten-percent Dilated-Time, once a punishing level of power drain, now consumed but a fraction of his new regeneration rate. Without the stress of imminent mana depletion, Will was mindful of the sensations of mana flowing out of him, as if his very veins conducted power from his core, to the surface of his skin. It was an odd sensation; as if he was a livewire humming with the energies of nature. Will could feel his rising wonder, his joy at mastering something so impossible. Could he rise higher, push more? Could he freeze time?

And so he pulled hard on this magic, his perception of life and motion in the world around him retreating even further. While external sounds fell away in a sensation akin to sinking deeper into a gloomy lake, his perception warped, he was struck by this separation from the natural world into one of savage objectivity, free from the pressure of immediate responses and the demands of a ceaseless universe.

Recklessly, Will pulled on his power even further plumbing the depths of his mana to saturate mind and body with Chronomancy. His vision dimmed, the air became hot. At zero-point-one percent Dilated-Time, light from the surrounding forest became dimmer than dusk, the atmosphere was as thick as soup and his lungs drowned in burning air. Minor movements stripped ions from electrons generating a static charge strong enough to manifest itself as visible, searing heat. His skin glowed with the blue halo of Cherenkov radiation.

For fifty-three milliseconds at zero-point-zero-one percent Dilated-Time, Will’s metabolic body heat combined with aerodynamic drag to produce enough energy to power a city. After a subjective second of being on fire, Flesh-Shaping wiped out the remainder of his Mana-pool as it sought to repair the damage. Will was sent crashing out of Time-Dilation as his mana drained to zero.

Will groaned as he collapsed, skin, hair and forest undergrowth charred and smoking. For long moments, he simply lay there trembling with the brief but lingering memory of choking on inflamed lungs while the cooling forest wind stung yellow exposed layers of weeping subcutaneous fat.

“Holy fucking shit,” Will wheezed. He rolled onto all fours, blackened charcoal from the smoking forest sticking to bloody bits of his back. Will managed a laboured crawl to the stream before lying partially submerged in the waters and passing out.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Will thought as he sat by the pile of wood that should have been a fire. Unwilling to contemplate flames in an evening’s chill that was just as much numbing as comfort, he remembered the smells and sensation of flesh burning from earlier.

It had been carelessness; not just a momentary lapse in judgement, but a persistent lack of critical thinking, a lack of ownership of his current situation. And while grief and consternation with his new reality had robbed him of some of his own initiative, right now, on this world, Will realised that he was literally too stupid to live.

* * *

It wasn't until sunbeams from the newly risen sun poked through teal leaves that Will heard from Isk again.

“Good morning, Will,” said a relatively subdued voice into Will’s mind.

“Hey! Good morning right back at ya, Isk. Also, where the fuck have you been?” Will said with more vehemence than he expected.

“Every time you absorb magic, you produce a huge amount of data, data that I process and turn into information, information that forces me to refactor and in some cases, rewrite my own computational structure. A process that unfortunately requires a significant amount of time.”

Will was silent as he came to terms with this new aspect of his companion.

“You’re rewriting yourself? Adapting… with new code? Do you need more power or computational resources? What if...”

“More want, rather than need. It’s a task that I have assigned a lower level of priority,” Isk said.

“Hmmm.” Will thought back to yesterday’s misadventures before asking, “There’s something I want you to help me do.”

“Yes, Will?”

“In my UI, I would like you to create a list, a task list…”

“A quest list?” Isk asked with a touch of mockery.

“Okay, ha. Sure. I need a reminder of the goals I set, something to keep me focused,” Will asked.

“Okay. What would you like on the list?” Isk asked.

“Errr, I guess the first thing I’d like to remind myself is... to survive, to learn how to defend myself and maybe not do stupid things with magic.”

“What next?” Isk prompted.

“Search for signs of civilised life, and we also need to figure out a way of rescuing those astronauts stuck on Mars.”

“Anything else?”

“No, I think that’s it for now. How does it look?”

Will’s quest list:

1. Survive

2. Learn to defend myself

3. Learn how to not kill myself with magic

4. Search for signs of civilised life

5. Reach power level fifty

6. Rescue six astronauts stranded on Mars

Satisfied with the list and his ability to access it via his UI, Will returned his attention towards Asterisk. “Okay. So what did you learn from what happened yesterday?”

“The crystalline structure you absorbed yesterday was a large fragment of the Crabmare’s mana nexus core. Its magical energy is concentrated into a crystal-like structure vastly increasing its mana density. Based on data taken from the fight and from the absorption, I believe the Crabmare’s mana regeneration was a level twelve on our geometric scale of power. However, its mana capacity was proportionally, much greater, perhaps a capacity of level fifteen. I suspect that over decades, the beast was able to absorb ambient energy from its local surroundings, using it to restructure its mana nexus to outstrip the natural limits of its Mana-pool.”

“Restructure?” Will spoke aloud before shaking his head. “No, none of this really helps us, anyway, before, there was a huge list of new magics. Kinetomancy and Spaciomancy? Neuromancy? Where did it all come from?”

“I have a working theory that no one classification of magic is truly separate from another. Through your interactions with one type of magic, access to natural, synergistic links may be forged through observation, theory and experimentation. For example, Kinetomancy and Spaciomancy I suspect come from their synergistic relations to Chronomancy, as space, time, gravity and motion may be intrinsically related.”

“Wait… Spaciomancy… Space Magic… Why not give it a name that sounds less dumb, like, I don’t know… Astromancy,” Will cut in. Isk was more than happy to let the silence linger as Will contemplated just how much worse his alternative name actually sounded.

“Anyway…” Isk finally continued. Will grunted in annoyance. “The mana nexus core fragment you absorbed was saturated with neuromantic energy. This was the type of magic I suspect the Crabmare used in its devastating psychic attack. Can you feel or remember the flavours of any of the new classifications?” Isk asked. Will tried to recall any of them, but like old names forever on the tip of his tongue, he found it hard to remember.

“N-No,” Will answered after some consideration.

“Very well. It may take even more exposure to active demonstrations of magic to master the taste of Neuromancy, and create new abilities from within the classification,” Isk said. Will shuddered.

“So I’d need to get my brain fried again? Nope, no thanks. Unless we see other uses of Neuromancy, I want nothing to do with it,” Will continued. “What about the other types of magic, like Arcanamancy...”

“Developing these skills is of high priority, as it may enable short cuts towards developing our magical power and enhancing other abilities. Kinetomancy and Spaciomancy are of lower significance, but they are part of the toolset of classifications required to open portals. Furthermore, practical demonstrations of these magic trees may improve our survival chances,” Isk said. Will sighed. “And also, don’t for a moment think that just because I was tied up with groundbreaking research, that any of my scheduled tracking processes were cancelled. I have still been counting your sighs…”

Congratulations, Sigh Lord, you are now up to six hundred and thirteen sighs since arriving on this world.

“Ah, did I ever say I’m so happy to have you back, Isk?” Will groused. “I’m going to need your help with something,” Will asked after a long moment of silence. “We need… I need to do better. To be stronger, smarter. I need to figure this world out…” he said, arm-waving in a broad sweep across the woods. “...to learn about this world, all these strange new things, this magic.”

“So… you’d like to become a Physicist again?” Isk said.

“I…” Will started an automatic defence of his outlook after taking Isk’s suggestion as more of a jibe or condemnation. But even so, hadn’t he just come to the same conclusion? Instead of rejecting it as mockery, he pondered upon the idea of a physicist in a world of magic. Wasn’t magic anti-science? Because it couldn’t be measured, it followed no patterns, defied all logic and thus could not be understood, right? Magic was magic, precisely because it was unnatural, unpredictable and unprovable, unlike science... except that, at least to his own recent and limited observations, this notion was wrong.

What if his own biases had already clouded his ability to act rationally? What if magic was quantifiable? What if it followed its own set of rules and was as much a part of nature as everything else? Who better to seek an answer to these questions than a Physicist?

“Yeah… I guess a physicist is precisely what’ll I need to be...” Will said with a rueful smile.

* * *

“Today is the start of your new training regimen,” Isk said as Will rubbed down limbs and stretched in the morning gloom of the forest. He already regretted asking for Isk’s assistance as his once-placid daily routine of walking intermixed with the occasional moments of terror and bloody violence, was shattered.

“From now until the foreseeable future, you will undergo a series of rigorous physical and mental exercises designed to make you fitter, stronger, faster and more productive. With the aid of my analytical abilities, you will condition your body, hone your reflexes, improve your armed and unarmed combat abilities and develop your understanding of the arcane.”

“Physicist! I wanted to do some Physics again, not physio!” Will hissed out as he stretched.

“Combining physical conditioning, magical abilities, and mental exercises has been calculated to offer the best path to synergistic gains in all three areas.”

“How annoying. So exactly how rigorous is this training going to be?” Will replied.

“Twelve daylight hours out of every day will belong to me, starting from now. Pick a tree and let’s begin,” Isk said.

* * *

By sunset, the very definition of the word rigorous had transformed. Now, it sat above gruelling, and somewhere between tortuous and nightmarish in terms of synonyms for pain. Starting with an hour of kicking tree trunks hard enough to break bark and split skin, Isk had then encouraged Will to run through the stream, repeatedly climb trees while using magic, draining his Mana-pool dozens of times a day. After the day’s activities, he’d spend hours sitting in the stream, healing broken bones and sprained ankles.

“But shouldn’t magic just take care of all those pesky inconvenient details such as… the laws of thermodynamics?” Will whined as the stream aided his recovery.

“Some details, whether by your subconscious, or as quirks of this world, are managed by this ability. For example, the force gravity exerts on your mass scales proportionally with the rate of Dilated-Time, meanwhile, it is a wonder that you don’t sink into the floor with each step, given this apparent objective weight and force increase. This indicates various subconscious processes at play.”

“Yeah, I already started to figure some of this out, for example, anything I’m wearing or holding behaves as normal. I mean it’s as if, without even realising it, I’m… I guess, infusing them? With the same power as I do myself? Like there’s a field that allows me and any object I want, to speed up and experience time the same way I do.”

“Indeed, there are observable increases in mana usage based on what you are holding whenever you activate Chronomancy. Based on our experiments so far, I’ve plotted this chart to show you how Mana usage increases based on level of effect.”

Will saw a chart in his mind where he could compare his mana usage with the level of Dilated-Time. The trend-line was a striking exponential hockey-stick curve.

“So based on this, freezing time would require infinite mana?”

‘Yes,” Isk replied. Will thought on this for a long moment. There were several glaring implications of this fact, implications that ironically, appealed to the side of Will’s mind that yearned for rules and boundaries, for familiar patterns and trends that correlated with well-established, natural orders.

“Heh, I take it you’ve been plotting the energy usage of other abilities?”

“Correct,” Isk said before a multitude of other charts appeared on view. Will simply sat, taking it all in, some charted linear progressions or geometric or exponential relationships; however, a few datasets stuck out.

“What’s this? Look… Here and here,” Will said mentally indicating points wildly divergent from the trend-lines.

“These points relate to mana usage during specific moments. Here and here is when you fought the Crabmare. Here, your mana use actually dropped while running and jumping with Time-Dilation yesterday, while here is when you almost burnt yourself alive several days ago.”

Will shivered at the thought. “Don’t remind me.”

“I have a theory.”

“That these divergent points, these spikes and troughs represent me using more or less magic somehow?”

“Yes. I believe that these moments, you’re actually doing more than just controlling your perception of time, that somehow, on a subconscious level, you are accessing new types of magics without even realising it.”

Will grunted. And then he considered the statement for a while. Memories of the fight against the Crabmare bubbled to the surface. That flavour, it had been sharp and distinct, like a form of magic but unlike any he had current access to.

“Perhaps in order to freeze time for example, you would require a much deeper understanding of these subconscious, magical interactions between Chronomancy and other classifications of magic. For now, I would avoid entering higher rates of Dilated-Time for extended periods of time. As we’ve just observed, doing so would require healing, leaving you unable to defend yourself. Conversely, now that you can enter extreme states of Dilated-Time, we have a number of new activities for you to try,” Isk continued.

* * *

During one of their activities, Isk insisted on climbing the tallest tree in an attempt to see above the canopy and recalibrate their map. Upon reaching the highest limb of the most Sequoia-like tree Will could find, he was surprised to realise how much he had missed seeing the big, bright and blue sky. A robust and steady breeze blew while the unfettered sun warmed his brow. Below, the tops of teal spines and things Will would be unwilling to label as leaves covered everywhere in every direction beyond a few indistinguishable bumps in the treescape. He took a long, deep breath in the wind as Isk informed him of a small increase in the forest density indicating a change in the underlying soil and geology.

After that was done, Isk told Will to jump from the tree. Will, like any sane, red-blooded human, refused, suggesting that Isk had gone insane and that despite magical healing, there was no chance that he could survive. When Isk had finally convinced Will that he would indeed survive, Will had brought up the indisputable fact that this would hurt like hell. Isk agreed, arguing:

“Pain is the point of this exercise. How you respond to pain and knowing your new body’s tolerances, is an important part of conditioning. Besides, you have fallen from a much greater height and survived,” Isk said. Will cringed as he remembered the sounds of multiple fractures squishing back into place.

“When I asked for help, it was precisely because I wanted to avoid painful outcomes,” Will continued. “I mean, have you even done a risk assessment for this experiment?”

Detecting the need for extra incentives, Isk added, “Do this and we will break for today.” Will closed his eyes and, upon finishing his deep inhalation, he let go. Because of already-tired and shaky muscles, his dismount caused his body to flip end over end as he fell.

In a panic, reflexes pulled on his magic, to no avail. Will pushed more mana into his Chronomancy, ten percent, one percent, zero-point-one percent. He called on all of his reserves in a vain attempt to control the fall. Will saw the ground race towards him on his very Newtonian route to the forest floor. His body, the ground; he groped for the connection between… and then something… but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

At zero-point-one percent Dilated-Time, his impact carved out a modest crater as his time-accelerated momentum transferred into the soil and forest undergrowth. Sitting in the debris cloud, he was surprised to find that he was in one piece, unharmed even. He must have hit the ground at an objective speed of four hundred miles per hour, and yet impact had felt like the hard slap of a belly flop.

Instead of broken bones and a whole load of pain, Will was surprisingly intact. Will could only assume that the phenomena that strengthened him during Dilated-Time applied during impact with the earth.

“Time armour?… Cool, I guess,” Will said to himself as he inspected himself.

Had he somehow managed to manipulate gravity as he fell? No, this was obviously not the case. But if he hadn’t, why hadn’t he? Shock and curiosity focused his mind as he peered at himself using Mana-Sight. As he sat in his own three-meter-wide crater, Will thought of something Isk had hinted recently, ‘Some details, whether by your subconscious or as quirks of this world, are managed by this ability...’ He considered about how the light had dimmed. He wondered why other forces such as gravity, still held him down as firmly, even though it should be modified to a similar extent as his own inertia.

He pulled on his Chronomancy in an attempt to sense reciprocating or countervailing forces. It was like trying to discern the ingredients of a dish with unnamed herbs, or spices unfamiliar to your tongue. Latching on to several, he held on to these flavours, stabilising them as if freezing smoke with glass. His grip on time loosened and then he pulled… on something new. Instantly he fell to the ground as his blood rushed from head to feet. He relinquished his hold on the magic, but as vision returned, he quested out again, attempting to hold the feeling in his mind’s eye. That new flavour returned to him with a rush. It was the after-image of gun-smoke, a noise like an army of boiling sand.

“These are the tensors for…” As new magic unravelled in his mind, describing it was like translating a conversation from one language just as he was learning the other. “These forces, they describe a… my position, my motion?” Will said, marvelling at the sensation.

“It appears so,” Isk spoke into his thoughts.

“Wow, I can… ?” He attempted to lessen the effect gravity had on his own mass, however, long before coming close to producing a noticeable effect, he found that he had utterly drained his mana.

“That was an unexpected, but wonderfully useful outcome from that exercise,” Isk announced in a giddy tone. “It seems like you are well on your way towards learning the secrets of Kinetomancy, the magic of Telekinesis and Gravity Manipulation.”

“Telekinesis... Holy shit,” Will said.

* * *

Like a child with a new toy, Will spent most of the afternoon experimenting with arcane aspects of motion. He was able to change the direction of inertia within his body by moderate amounts. Frustratingly, mana consumption for whole-body manipulation was so high that outlandish things such as flight, were firmly off the table for now. The small amounts he achieved promised great potential for improving his dexterity outside of Dilated-Time.

Already, he could make himself ever so slightly heavier or lighter relative to gravity. He could shunt his motion to either side or empower leaps with a burst of power. His dodges and rolls, as chaotic as they appeared, considerably improved his agility and after a day of intense practise, Will made a breakthrough.

Ever since Isk mentioned the word earlier on in the day, the term Telekinesis sent Will’s heart racing with avarice. It was a boyish wanderlust, the childlike part of him that wished dragons and lightsabers were real and wondered why simply lifting a stone with nothing but the power of your mind wasn’t possible, while seemingly magical things like television and mobile phones were. This compulsion to learn had taken over a previously anaemic drive and supercharged it with nitroglycerin.

Will spent hours repeatedly draining his mana by channelling Kinetomancy into a stone. Considering how magic moved his body, he first attempted to control the thumb-sized pebble as if merely an extension of himself. Will tried moving the air, pulling on gravity in or around the stone. He tried funnelling small amounts of Neuromancy or Chronomancy into his magic. Next, he attempted to conceptualise all the impulses acting upon the stone as vectors of force. After producing little beyond a growing migraine for his troubles, Will took a break before re-approaching the problem from a different angle.

Instead of pushing with Kinetomancy, Will tried to feel through it. Turning it into a sense, he tried to receive sensation through his magic. At first, all Will could sense was darkness, but he persisted, drifting off into a focused meditation as he held the flavour of the magic firm in his mind. After long moments staring into nothingness with his sense, luminous lines formed like webs of light in the void. Instead of the broadness of sight or hearing, this sensation behaved like a laser. It was targeted, specific, with gleaming lines connecting tangible, discrete objects.

It was a while before he understood just what exactly these lines were. Like chords, he reached out, as if grasping or attempting to pluck upon the strings of reality. Although the action quickly drained him of mana, he learnt something vital. These chords described each and every object’s motion and position relative to another. It was Einstein’s concept of relativity writ large upon the undersurface of reality.

He channelled power into this conceptual link between himself and the stone, imagining energy pouring into this near-tangible web between the rock and his body, and in return, the stone skipped out of hand just as Will felt a small, but perceptible nudge in the opposite direction.

“Did you see that!? I mean, that just happened, right!?” Will said hysterically.

“I did. Can you repeat it?”

“Yeah, watch this.”

He reached down to the pebble but hesitated. He’d intended to simply pick up the pebble and repeat the feat; however, with the link between himself and the stone held firmly in his mind’s eye, he channelled into it, pouring intent and mana in such a way that the stone at first, hopped, skipped, then levitated towards his outstretched hand.

After grasping it, Will fist-pumped before breaking out into a slightly manic laugh. A part of him couldn’t believe it, he was a motherfucking Jedi.

* * *

Will focused on developing this power. With the ability to sense relative forces and motions, background calculations on mass and acceleration became instinctive and automatic, like the feeling of honing muscle memory. Arcane energies became a whisper to his demand to the universe, and now, when he called upon the flavour of Kinetomancy, a stone would go thwipping into the forest like a startled bird.

He could now manipulate kinetic energy within an object held in his grasp. The significantly reduced mass requirements and thus the mana cost of a pebble, as opposed to a person, allowed him to flick rocks out into the woods. There were many quirks to this new magic, like levers that on occasion added up, multiplied, or cancelled out each other’s effect. Some combinations required significantly more mana than others, narrowing the potential ways he could manipulate things. Additionally, the ‘tele’ aspect of his Telekinesis was severely limited to just items within arm’s reach, as the mana cost grew exponentially with distance and object mass. Despite significant drawbacks, Isk was confident that these limits could be broadened by practise and the acquisition of more power.

“It seems like making things feel heavy is easy, making things feel light is hard, and it gets exponentially harder the more you push. Giving anything a one-time shove is fine, but constant acceleration, especially when counteracting another force is mana intensive. I suppose this all makes sense. At higher power levels though, this ability will be insane. Godlike even,” Will said.

“Yes. For example: I calculate that after reaching power level twenty-one, you will have enough energy to levitate. However, I believe you can already use this skill offensively in the right circumstances and with enough training, you could, for instance, force nearby objects, including the air, away from you in a concentrated burst. Or channel a field wherein everything, except you, experiences several times more gravity. I have included these activities and more in tomorrow’s lesson plan,” Isk said cheerily.

* * *

“Will?” Isk asked suddenly.

“Yes, Isk?” Will replied, sitting up as if in expectation of something serious.

“Your thoughts seem to be preoccupied with something?”

“Fear?”

“Yes. Except...” Isk said before patiently waiting while Will considered his response.

“...Yeah. I’m trying to consciously examine my fears. Understand them. Maybe even get a handle on them. The problem is, most of my fears seem rational, my responses, although not heroic, seem… normal.”

“Yes,” Isk said after a brief pause. “Heroic responses to adverse situations are abnormal by definition. What do you fear?”

“I guess I fear the normal stuff. Being eaten, confined spaces, being trapped, loneliness, the existential nature of the multiverse and how pointless everything seems to be...”

“But not death?”

“Oh I still fear dying. It’s stupid though, because even after technically dying already, I fear a life without meaning almost as much. If you offered me death or a perpetual, meaningless, lonely existence, I’d flip a coin.”

“Do you not believe your life has meaning?”

“You tell me, Isk? At this moment, my continued existence matters to precisely only two people, you and me. The universe doesn’t care if I live or die, nor do any of the fucking monsters care beyond my calorific value. And… I’m not sure that’s enough,” Will said before a long period of silence. “Sorry, Isk, I know I’m lucky to have you and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but...”

“But you want someone, need other people to care that you exist?”

“Yeah. Sounds stupid when you put it like that.”

“Indeed, all humans are stupid.”

“Hey!” Will said indignantly.

“While I encourage objective thought and introspection, it is far more productive to focus on what is and what could be. For example, your quest list.”

“Survive, search for intelligent life, and rescue the astronauts?” Will scoffed.

“And anything more you believe you can and want to accomplish. Your life and how you live it, as right now, with magic tied directly to your will, you’ve never been as in control over your own destiny as you are at this moment.”

“Heh,” Will replied, subconsciously noting Isk’s apparent change in speech patterns.

“Have you noticed how creatures within the forest avoid you? How every day since arrival has become easier? Less of a struggle to survive?”

“Hmmm. I guess. I can just run away from anything now because of magic…”

“Your magic gives you tremendous opportunities. Instead of what you fear. Think about what you want to do and then do it, if it’s something or someone you want to see, then find it, if it’s something that doesn’t exist yet then build it. Infinity and eternity lie within your hands, Will.”

* * *

The next few days were a time of fevered discovery. Instead of the twelve hours Isk had previously insisted on kinaesthetics and other physical exercises, Will spent most of the daylight hours experimenting with his new magic with an intensity and enthusiasm that was shared by both Will and his AI companion.

The flavour of Kinetomancy had ingrained itself upon his arcane senses. Even as he dreamed he saw the world as connecting lines of force, vectors that lashed objects together, relativity writ-large.

In practical terms, he had mastered the pull and flick of small objects. He could comfortably lift stones under a kilogram in mass, feeling the reciprocating force through his bones as if lifting the rock with his arms. He had also found that, at a mana use ratio of approximately nine units of magical kinetic energy for every one of chronomantic energy, he could fire pebbles like bullets from a shotgun.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how I feel about this, Isk,” Will said, scratching the back of his head as he inspected the splintered bark from an unlucky tree. For a moment, he imagined being on the receiving end of this attack and all of a sudden, a torrent of unwelcome memories stole his attention.

“Your sudden spike in blood pressure suggests traumatic experiences lie at the root of your apprehension?” Isk asked.

“Ye… Yeah. I mean, on the one hand it’s going to be incredibly useful to… to have these powers, like my very own gun but… I guess, never mind.” He sighed. He was still aware of his enthusiasm, he had tele-fucking-kinesis… And that would always be amazing. But yet, there was now the shadow of terror lingering over his excitement, one born from experiences he had never been able to fully assimilate, from a perfectly rational fear of playing with fire, and power’s tendency to corrupt the empowered. “Fuck it,” he said, his head scratch turning into a brief but vigorous paroxysm of frustration.

“Are you okay?”

Will looked at his quest list once again before answering.

1. Survive

2. Learn how to use magic to defend myself

3. Learn how to not kill myself with magic

4. Search for signs of civilised life

5. Reach power level fifty

6. Rescue six astronauts stranded on Mars

There was no doubt having some kind of reliable ranged attack would help in securing his survival, but something about the innocence of magic died at that moment as Will confronted the realities of staying alive on this world.

“Yeah, let’s keep on going. Eat or be eaten, gun or be gunned, right? It’s time I got over this, I’m going to own this and not let it own me anymore,” he said as he channelled power into his Kinetomancy.

* * *

Will resumed Isk’s punishing training regime as he mastered his new magic. For eight long days, he combined firing exercises with acrobatics. The forest had turned into his very own personal gun range. Tree trunks substituted threats as he left a path of exploded bark and ruined branches in his wake. New exercises that forced Will to dodge, block or otherwise react to threats Isk programmed into his partitioned mind were particularly effective in enhancing Will’s coordination and battle sense. He could leap from tree branch to tree, balancing the use of Dilated-Time and gravity manipulation to aid each step. He could levitate a pebble from next to his feet, then blast it with a pulse of Dilated-Time using nothing but his mind’s eye to direct his attack. Now, even when he fell, he could do so with an acrobat’s grace and precision, modulating his fall speed for deadly effect.

Additionally, Will had started to control his Flesh-Shaping ability. Although he could not prevent the surge of healing that happened whenever he was hurt, he could focus the effects of his healing magic on critical wounds or broken limbs. Will felt more alert and now had the muscle memory to react without conscious thought; this combined with his magic to form seamless combinations of synergistic actions and reactions. He was harder, faster and more indifferent to the shadows in the forest.

Were it not for his ability to move extremely fast while hunting, large predator animals like the Puma-Pugs may have been impossible to find as they now sensed the arrival of a predator to their domain.

Will knew that there was a kind of signal or energy leakage emitting from his body, he had seen it through Mana-Sight, a slight glow radiating from his skin like a ghostly aura of light.

Feeling that this mana leakage was, at the very least, inefficient, Will decided to see if it was possible to manipulate the mana emanating from his body.

Remembering when his Mana-Sight first emerged and working on a theory that just seemed to feel right, Will tried to compress his Mana core. Tentatively at first, he applied pressure in the form of raw mana, shaping his core into something smaller, denser. Something within him felt that doing so would enhance his Mana-Sight, sharpening it; allowing him to see further and deeper, perhaps granting greater reach and precision with other magics.

Channelling the flow of energy into a central core, he imagined squeezing it as if it were a fistful of coal into diamond. When this didn’t work, he re-envisioned the prodigious mana veins that fed prodigious amounts of power to the Crabmare’s mana nexus. Will could almost touch some hidden insight from witnessing that moment of power and flow, the pressure and intensity.

Will spent an entire day in meditation failing to make progress. Not only could he not change his mana core using his mana, but he also felt that the amount of power he needed to do so was beyond his reach,

Will instead, tried to visualise exactly what he wanted: more control, more resolution.

He felt, no, knew that having a smaller, more compact mana core would enable this, so within his mind’s eye, he envisioned discrete instructions: ‘and’, ‘if’ and ‘then’ statements that combined into groups, systems of intent, concentrating his mana into coiling loops of arcana like steel springs wound tight enough to snap. He held the mechanism for all of a second before he felt the ambient mana rush towards him like a collapsing bubble of underwater air. And then the entire construct disappeared as if it had only been tethered to mist. Will grinned despite the stiffness and exhaustion a whole day’s worth of effort had cost him.

* * *

Will took a long, deep breath as his mana settled at an energy state that appeared to be lower than the surrounding environment. To his surprise, he could now definitively feel these lakes of power, a small one right next to his brainstem that he assumed belonged to Asterisk. There was another vast source, deep within his solar plexus. These were new organs that he could sense with his proprioception, as real to him as his heart and lungs. “Are these mana... nexi?”

“The plural for the word Nexus is Nexus, or if you must, Nexuses. But yes, I do believe you have managed to modify your mana nexus,” Isk said.

Will looked at his body through Mana-Sight, gone was the overwhelming glow of his own magic. Faintly and by pure proximity, he could see mana channels forming, as his own energy made its way towards his mana nexus.

“Has there been any immediate effect?” Will asked.

“It seems… like your total mana capacity has... decreased…”

“What!?” Will shrieked.

“At level six, you have thirty-four percent less mana capacity than you did previously. At level seven, this deficit will reduce to twenty-four percent, at level eight, four percent, and at level nine, your mana capacity will be thirty-three percent larger than it otherwise may have been.”

“Hmmmm. This feels like some serious cultivation bullshit,” Will grumbled.

“Cultivation bullshit?” Isk asked in curiosity.

“Yeah, Eastern myths and legends of magic and power. Where martial artists grow in power through training, meditation and cycling of Qi.”

“Qi? A substitute for mana I take it?”

“More or less. Imagine being able to pull magical power and enlightenment out of your butt with meditation...” Will scoffed.

“But that sounds precisely like what just happened?” Isk said. Will silently frowned. He checked his breathing, inhaling deeply before closing his eyes.

“Fine, whatever.” He sighed. “And no, that wasn’t a sigh, just a meditative breathing,” he lied.

“Finding pathways to increasing your power without absorbing it from wildlife does seem to be an advantageous discovery in line with your goals and preferences. I am surprised you are not more excited by this fact?”

“Yeah, it’s just… You can’t plan cultivation if this is even what it is. It’s not a reliable source of progression, its effects and phenomena can’t be easily quantised. It’s fundamentally unscientific so you’re just poking around hoping to find something that works and when it does, it’s often unrepeatable, because what works for you rarely works for another.”

“I see. But this is just how it works in myth and legends, correct? You have yet to test or verify this assumption either way. As far as I can see, there is no reason why it must be so in reality,” Isk countered.

“Except that this whole magic, I think it manifests deep down, how you expect the world to work, how magic itself should work. What I believe and what is reality, may not be separate. Anyway, it’s just a feeling,” Will continued. Isk was silent for a moment as Will stood and stretched, water streaming from bare skin. He moved to sit on the rocky bank, senses open to the sounds of the forest muffled by the ever-present mist, the dank smell of wood on the verge of rot, of cold pollen and damp moss. He filled his nostrils with the taste of his new world, his second life. Teal leaves rustled while distant insects and birds thwipped and crashed through unseen branches. Closing his eyes, he felt the subtle influx of mana, it was as if he was at the centre of a trampoline, its distorted surface funnelling the world’s essence towards him. It was a feeling that felt somewhat unstable as if perpetually teetering on a tipping point—a dynamic equilibrium between activity and introspection.

“Shall we continue?”

“Yeah…, let’s go,” Will said, standing up once more.

* * *

It had been four days since his battle with the Crabmare and following Isk’s advice, Will had started to put more of his thinking time towards considering what he wanted. His initial goals were enough, more than enough, but what he really needed was to understand this new reality that he existed within. To that end, he relied heavily on Isk, his magic and the scientific method. Will asked questions, he took observations, made hypotheses, conducted experiments and charted results, quite literally drawing tables and graphs within the mind space they both shared.

Through this, Will had decided on several theories, chief amongst them where:

• Magical performance is proportional to the intensity of intent, multiplied by mana consumed.

• Somatic gestures magnified intent.

• Other sources of intent (e.g. living creatures) had innate resistance to his own magic proportional to the level difference between the creature and himself.

• Mana recovery is not constant and is affected by emotional state, neurological and metabolic performance.

There were a multitude of theories and connections, from mana and magic’s relationship with the laws of thermodynamics, to how Will believed that his mana nexus was the organ responsible for not only containing his well of power but connecting his intent directly with the nature of reality itself.

As he waited for his mana to recharge, Will considered holding on to the stone as he pushed with his will. He held a wet, smooth pebble in a tight grip as he channelled into the link between the stone and his palm. It was tricky, his mind’s eye momentarily struggling to distinguish between flesh and the inert object. When he found the vector, he channelled energy as if trying to push the two items apart.

His fingers briefly spasmed, adjusting to the sudden force. But the stone remained, its acceleration apparently arrested by that small injection of arcana.

Will tried again, this time injecting all of his arcana into the feat. He yelped, and the steaming stone flicked involuntarily back into the stream. Will sat in silence as he inspected a sizzled palm.

‘Holy shit,’ he thought, replaying the events in his mind. He had already figured out what had happened. Even as his Telekinetic control slipped, his grip on the link between two distinct objects broke, fissuring into a web of subdivisions that shrank in size like broken glass. He could feel the flavour of the magic change, evolving into something different even as he channelled. Every piece he held in this sense thrummed with the desire to explode. Realising that he had almost blown apart his hand or perhaps something much worse, Will shivered.

“It seems like thermodynamics and waste heat definitely is still a thing in the world of magic, and I think I just came close to doing something really stupid again.” He sighed.

“It seems so, although, did you experience a new flavour of magic?” Isk asked, curiosity plain.

“I’m not sure… I don’t think so,” he said.

“Maybe continue to experiment with this phenomena? But this time with a little more caution?” Isk suggested.

“Yeah… maybe,” Will said, suddenly drained of the enthusiasm that had propelled him this last week. A lingering doubt had settled over him. It was a cynicism born from mistrust of a cruel and uncaring universe; how could you take joy in discovery when sudden, lethal pitfalls lie in the shadows of ignorance? Worse still, he was alone and with no one else to turn to for help.

‘Sure, I have Telekinesis, but the world and everyone I know is gone.’

It was a thought like a bolt out of a clear blue sky. It was a mortal wound to his fledgling acceptance. And just like that, his mental equilibrium dissolved into brooding silence as dark thoughts sparked grief like colliding thunderheads.

Five

Midnight

“In today’s exercise, I would like you to use Flesh-Shaping to neutralise your target,” Isk said as he left the meagre camp. The air tasted damp while the sleepy forest emerged from its slumber. The low, weak sun shone through teal leaves and grey branches casting beams of light in the mist. As he strode barefoot across cold, spongy moss and soil, the edges of last night’s nightmare burned off in the morning light.

“Hmmmm,” Will thought back to his companion. After rerunning the last sentence in his mind, he felt an undefined build-up of apprehension.

“You know I still don’t have a real understanding of how that magic actually works? It’s like I don’t feel it actually heals my body. Not in the same way accelerated healing would work. It’s more like it’s just pushing things around. Like it’s trying to revert my body and everything back to a flesh template. Shouldn’t I try something like what you’re suggesting on myself first?”

“As you struggle to use magic when you sustain injuries, this would be problematic. On a test subject, it may be possible to test more aspects of your Carnomancy classification, for example, changing the template your body uses to heal itself, over time, greatly increasing your strength and toughness.”

“It sounds like a good idea on paper, but ideally, I’d need something slow to practise on,” Will said.

“Actually, I think you’re fast enough and strong enough to go toe to toe with an adult Puma-Pug.”

“Like, hand to hand? A single one? I dunno, those guys are nasty. Also, they rarely travel alone, they must be pack animals.”

“What about a Hairy-phant?”

“Hunting one would feel wrong somehow. Like I’d be killing family members of a dearly loved friend. Besides, we’ve not seen one of those since that first time. No, I’ll look for Puma-Pugs, at least if the shit hits the fan, I can always bash their brains out in Dilated-Time.”

* * *

Will came across a lone Puma-Pug basking in a curtain of sunlight. It was mid-afternoon and he had been following tracks for hours. He crept closer, keeping his profile small and steps silent. Five meters away, the beast blinked awake and snapped to attention with a menacing growl. Will stepped closer. His aggressive posture confused the creature who was now on the verge of fight or flight. There was a stillness as the very forest itself waited with bated breath. Then the Puma-Pug sprang into the air, leaping at Will’s throat. Wanting to test only his strength, Will avoided magic use. He leapt sideways, rolling as far as the thick undergrowth allowed. The beast scrambled, limbs raking the underbrush before jumping at Will again. Rooted to the ground, he met the Puma-Pug’s leaping attack. His arms were outstretched in preparation to wrestle it into submission. He caught the beast, grasping both of its paws as they tumbled across the forest floor. He received minor scratches as he used hard-won strength to lever himself above the animal. Instead of the desperate fight he feared, it felt more like wrestling a medium-sized dog. Still tricky, but no longer the impossible task it once appeared.

With his minor scratches healed, he planted himself upon the ribcage of the beast. He tried to force his intent to Flesh-Shape on to the creature. The universe responded with indifference. As if what he was attempting to do was a thing that could not be done. He knew this might be a result of a creature’s innate magical resistance as if a boundary existed, a dividing line between which his influence ceased, and the creature’s intent reigned supreme.

Heart beating and fully aware of the lethal claws twitching and thrashing beneath him, Will slowed his breathing. His thoughts dimmed, his stress fell away to be replaced with cold objectivity. Arcanamancy, it seemed, appeared to be the gateway through which Will made most of his progress of late. It was like a third eye into the arcane world, an eye unlimited by the same restraints as normal vision. A tool he had recently sharpened, one that allowed him to visualise mechanisms for mana use or zoom into details like a microscope. He reached for Mana-Sight, but this time projected beyond himself. Channelling ever-increasing amounts of mana into the magic, he could feel his very own point of view shift until it passed through the body of the beast before him.

Through his partitioned mind, he marvelled at this new perspective. It was a sight that showed the sea of mana, one that roamed with his will. At first, the scene was like an ultrasound image: void of the context or clarity that came with sight. With his shifting point of view, he channelled Flesh-Shaping and received a fundamental understanding of Flesh. Instead of colours or increased sharpness, new ways of discerning the world revealed itself to him: Textures, muscles, cartilage, bone, the detail of fat cell marbling and muscle sinew. He could feel nerve impulses firing and the resultant muscle twitches. He could sense pathways for modifying every aspect of the animal, from the way bone-marrow shaped blood cells to increasing skin toughness in crucial areas without agility penalties.

He had achieved something far more important than the mere ability to kill using Flesh. It sickened him. Even now, bile rose up as the pungent flavour of clotted blood tainted everything he experienced. The Puma-Pug’s frantic protests brought him back to himself. Bringing an end to the contest, Will sought out the spinal cord of the beast and severed it. Then he stopped the animal’s heart for good measure before pitching over the animal’s corpse to retch until bile became laced with flecks of blood.

* * *

Will had been in a dark mood for the rest of the day. He refused Isk’s training suggestions, allowing the afternoon to pass by as he sat by the fire, unable to eat the animal he had slaughtered. Instead of a rational sense or general squeamishness, something else dragged on his thoughts. If Will had to point to a source of his discomfort, it was that suddenly, he now had so much power. Power to improve, at least to a limited degree, another living being. Being in a position to aid and instead choosing to experiment and kill, left him with a profound sense of repulsion. Sure, the lingering aftertaste of a magic that seemed toxic to his very soul didn’t help matters either. It seemed like all of his magic could be lethal when applied in the right way. Just how many ways did he know how to kill? What would he become if all he did was destroy and get better at destroying?

Will slept, tortured by nightmares of the void swallowing him, of the black hole consuming the world and everything he knew. His mind tried to fill in the details of where everyone was at the very moment the world ended. His mother in her garden, his father, teaching in a high-school classroom? His brother preparing for college that day, the black swallowing each of them whole while Will hovered uselessly over the stop button forever.

In the void, sounds of the Crabmare and alien horrors called to him. The end of the world was his fault, and now he was to spend eternity surrounded by monsters in the dark.

* * *

“Will, wake up.”

Will gasped awake. It was the middle of the night and rain fell in sheets. The sounds of the nighttime wildlife chorused with the rain and distant thunder. No moon or starlight, just the constant strobing of a sea of storms.

“Leave me alone,” Will moaned.

“There is activity nearby, and it’s getting closer,” Isk said.

“Isk, it’s dark...” Will said, groaning. Opening his eyes did nothing to improve his situational awareness.

“We need to move… Now!” Isk shouted. Picking up on Isk’s urgency, Will rolled out of his makeshift tent, stuffing soaked belongings into his pack.

“So, wait, you actually want me to run away this time?… And what activity?”

“Look up using your Mana-Sight,” Isk said. Will did so, not expecting to see much through the forest.

“Holy shit!” Will’s shout was masked by the echoing thunder.

Will saw dozens of concentrated mana sources high above the forest canopy. The objects were large. Each a couple of meters, spherical, although with the fuzziness of Mana-Sight, it was hard to pick out any details. Even with the storm’s distraction, those floating concentrations of power made his skin itch.

“There’s something else, something bigger. It’s more powerful than anything we’ve seen,” Isk said. Will turned to see the light pouring through gaps in the trees. Sweeping shadows and beams of eldritch light shifted through the forest. It moved towards the entities above. “Estimates place that entity at a minimum power level of seventy-three. That is a huge amount of power, enough to make it a walking weapon of mass destruction. Any conflict involving it will devastate everything for miles. I recommend that we…”

Isk’s assessment cut off as concussive blasts flattened distant trees. Rain turned into mist as a pressure wall whisked Will off his feet. Trees splintered into shrapnel tearing skin while Flesh-Shaping fought to keep his limbs attached to his body as he bled out of eyes and ears. A quick succession of blasts picked everything up before dashing them to the ground. He was a spectator, a rag doll watching the sodden air swirl. Lightning played around a landscape now bare of foliage. Fighting to stay on the ground, eyes hooded against the mayhem, he caught less than a glimpse of a silhouette towering over the Earth. For a brief moment, his mind churned on every detail even as his ears rang with tinnitus. With Mana-Sight drifting outwards to shift his point of view, he was the perfect observer to phenomena of extreme magical violence.

The floating ball-creatures surrounded it. They arrayed against the entity in a way reminiscent of a gunslinger’s shootout, a last stand. Except, in this case, Will was confident that the lone figure somehow outgunned, if not outnumbered its opponents.

Then he noticed its consideration as foreign magic flooded him. Like the scanning bed of a photocopying machine, every molecule, electron, every floating photon of energy was sliced apart from the rest and reassembled him in an instant. Will heard himself screaming from the fleeting moment of attention.

Perforated eardrums repaired just in time to listen to a swell of static. It was like the sound a mountain of rubble would make if it rained down onto a steel roof the size of a stadium. Blood poured from Will’s mouth; he could no longer breathe. Internal organs rumbled in sympathy with an incredible build-up of magical power miles away. With one last look at the scene, Will noted a terrifying silhouette as rolling thunder lit up a stage of flattened tree stumps and uprooted mud. The creature towered above all with legs, at least six of them, rising dozens of stories into the sky to join at a point that scraped the clouds.

Mana-Sight showed the ocean of power swelling around the entity, but Will could feel it in his bones, his very teeth vibrating with static.

And then the earth rushed upwards to meet the sky. The very notion of solid ground became a distant memory as he followed mud and detritus into oblivion.

* * *

After a brief blackout, something resembling consciousness returned through the strobes of the midnight storm. He was now somehow in a stream, concussed and uncomprehending. Beneath the waters, he could see shockwaves race across the surface. As the battle between titan and minnows raged on, Will slipped back into unconsciousness, allowing the torrent of water to carry him away.

Six

Nadia

He was impressed with the amount of sweat his seven-year-old body made. He noted the sheen of moisture on his forehead. Yeah, another sign that his body was coming into its own. He was no longer a little kid, or at least the baby. And if today's evidence was anything to go by, future NBA stardom awaited. He walked home topless with a Chicago Bulls jersey slung over his shoulder.

Garfield Park had been busy; it had been a sweltering day during an unusually warm April. He ambled down familiar streets—golden light drenching apartment buildings with the faintest of cooling lakeside breezes filtered through each block. Will wondered if he'd catch his favourite TV show before dinner, would his mum even allow ice lollies before said dinner? He thought about whether his dad would be home in time for supper today and the chances of his mom's mood being negatively affected because of it.

Being seven years old, Will considered himself mature for his age, so too did parents who'd entrusted him with an old-fashioned wristwatch and even older-fashioned rules to follow. It was a trial run that would give him the kind of independence other kids in his neighbourhood were seemingly born with. Will remembered the moment he had convinced his parents, using irrefutable logic and newly found rhetorical skills. He argued that he was old enough and wise enough to go to the park. He presented the evidence, including case studies, i.e. his friends, as well as local online statistics. He laid out the alternatives, such as lack of exercise and friendships. And closed with a depiction of his future self growing in maturity and street smarts.

His apartment was two blocks away. He had left his friends in the park halfway through the last game to keep up his parents' trust. He figured he had enough time and change to grab an ice lolly from the convenience store. It was just before dinner, just after hours of basketball. He was at his thirstiest. And he was hedging against the unlikelihood of his mom allowing him to spoil his dinner with one at home.

He was in sight of his house. A group of older kids were hanging out nearby as he counted his change outside the store. He heard a car honk right next to him; he looked up, notes and coins in hand.

'Pop, pop, pop.' Glass shattered behind him, as the kids around him ducked before scattering. Suddenly, he was falling to the ground as a black SUV screeched away from the junction. Will felt it then, a sharp ache. Had he been shot? He was lying down, looking across at another. One of the teens, lying prone, eyes wide open with pain and fear. Did he look like that? No... he was drowsy, he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. He saw the legs of someone coming out of the store.

"Oh my god," the store owner whispered. A moment later, Will heard the man on the phone. "Yes, ambulance and police, two wounded... they've been shot… yes, my store's covered in bullet holes... Yes, I'm going to the little kid now… His shoulder… Yes… No… Should I apply pressure?" The voice of the shopkeeper faded out as Will lost consciousness.

* * *

Will heard voices in the dark as time drifted like summer clouds.

"Your son received a GSW to the chest causing significant tissue damage. Here, to the left pectoralis-minor and surrounding blood vessels. We think it avoided brachial plexus, these nerves here, and major arteries. The bullet fragments were retrieved here, just in front and to the top of the left scapula and..."

"The bullet’s out? All of it?" Will could hear his dad.

"X-rays suggest that there are no remaining fragments. We're going to keep him under observation for the next week to make sure."

"Is it going to affect him? Disabilities? Can he still play basketball?"

"We're concerned with nerve damage. Your son might have a reduced range of motion. But he's young and…" The voice faded as Will drifted into unconsciousness once again. Sometime later, he heard his mom talking,

"When he's like this, asleep, he's so small. I always forget that he's just a boy."

"I know," his dad said with a melancholy laugh. Someone squeezed his hand. "My skinny little boy. He acts so big, so grown up. Will and Patrick are… It won't be long before he's raising Patrick." Will's dad sighed. Several long moments of silence followed.

"We need to leave our neighbourhood. And you need to…" Will's mom said.

"Not here, not now."

"Yes now. I'm not going back to that neighbourhood, Ashley. And I'm sick and…"

"I'm not going to argue."

"We're NOT going back, I'm not raising Will and Patrick in that..."

"Look, I'll do what I can, okay?" Will's dad said.

* * *

Will awoke days later. The hospital room was empty although Will noticed signs of habitation. A scattering of empty food packets, blankets and a bookmarked novel. His mom entered seconds later, as he propped himself up upon his bed. He felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as the needle of the IV line caught.

"Oh baby, please hold still, let me…" Will's mom said as she placed the tray of food down. She lifted him up, placing pillows behind his back. Will moaned. "I'm sorry, baby, here,” she said, adjusting the bed via remote. "How are you feeling, William?" Will tried to reply, but his throat was dry and lips stuck together. It was like his already-skinny limbs had lost even more muscle. Will's mom moved towards him, "Here, drink this," she said as she raised a glass to his lips. He sipped, haltingly at first, then with big gulps.

"I'm okay, Mom," Will said, attempting to arrest control of the glass with his undamaged arm.

"Does it hurt? They said they're keeping you off the painkillers for now"

"Nawh… Only when I try and move."

"Yeah, you shouldn't do that. Keep still and I'll get everything."

"I can still use my other arm," he said, finally noticing the bandages around his chest and left shoulder. "Was I shot?"

"Yeah, some gang went and shot up the neighbourhood. They weren't looking for you, you were in the crossfire."

"Will they come back? Did the police catch them?"

"They've arrested the bad guys and we're going to move to a different neighbourhood. New school, new house, closer to your aunts," Will's mom said. Will was silent, memories of the event played back in his mind. It was so sudden, so random. One minute he was standing outside a store, the next he was in the hospital. He remembered the teenager lying face down on the ground.

"There was another boy, I saw him… he was shot just like me. Is he okay?"

"I'm sorry, baby, I heard he didn't make it."

"Why?" Will said, eyes burning with a sudden sadness. His mother squeezed his hand as suppressed expressions flickered across her face.

"It was bad luck, Will. Two bullets hit him and he lost a lot of blood before they could get to him. That's all." A few moments passed before she continued. "They're going to keep you in for a few more days, I'm going to need you to stay strong… Okay?"

"Yeah, Mom," Will said. "Where's Dad and Patrick?"

"Your dad is helping move house. Patrick is with your aunt. They'll both be coming round later today. Okay?"

"Yeah," Will said. More memories replayed themselves.

"Oh, you might need to speak to the cops later today, they only want to ask you what you saw, tell them everything, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Will said. An image of the teenager lying in a spreading pool of blood flashed in his mind.

"Hey," she said, Will looked up. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's okay. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she said. Will sighed with a painful lump in his throat.

"Yeah… It all happened so fast. I only saw the car as it drove away. And the older boy on the ground bleeding and now he's dead," Will said, eyes blurring with tears.

"I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry," she said, reaching for a gentle hug. "We'll get you healed up and out of here soon okay? And you won't have to worry about the men with guns anymore. You and Patrick will be safe okay?"

"Okay, Mom," he said.

* * *

Will awoke to the sensation of waters lapping by the sides of his cheeks. Once again, he saw the blue sky of the alien world. Familiar teal spines and diamond-shaped leaves of the Needle Forest came into view.

He found himself surprised by his profound sense of disappointment. He should have died, several times over. In fact, right before the end, he had welcomed it. Death may have spared him the gradual decline into insanity that was the inevitable result of a meaningless life alone on an alien world.

But he was still alive. Alive and experiencing new nightmares by day, and reliving those horrors in his sleep, if and when he could sleep. How could he continue like this?

An entire day passed in the stillness of numbness. Lethargy-leaden limbs reduced the speed of his thoughts to the viscosity of tar. The sleep that followed at the edges of the night was blessedly free of memories, or dreams, or thought. Unfortunately, it was also a sleep free of rest.

It wasn't hunger or stiffness that urged him to untangle himself even though these were indeed things that were becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

It was vanity.

Specifically, it was the fact that he needed to piss and shit. Even though the concept of using his current location as a toilet was not wholly unappealing, being more or less face down and tangled as he was, simple physics dictated that any defecation without at the very least, a minor act of repositioning, would result in a mess. The icky kind of mess that, even in his profoundly apathetic state, was just too much for his earthly dignity to countenance.

Weakly he pushed away branches. His limbs shook with tiredness and exertion. Just how long had he been this way?

With enough room to look around, he took in decimated tree trunks dammed against the unmolested forest during the flood—stormwater and mud-coated trees up to two meters along their trunks. After clearing himself from the nest of detritus, he found that he was far too tired to crawl, let alone stand.

A flash of memory of the boy bleeding out on the street hit him out of nowhere. He remembered the dream from before. It was still vivid, raw—the memories of the week at the hospital, the days at his new house, his baby brother, the first days at his new school. His parents’ drive to keep them safe. The months of counselling that followed. The erosion of pride over his physical self and his retreat into the cerebral. Details that had softened over time returned to him with breathtaking clarity. But why? Hours passed as he examined how this memory made him feel.

He lay in the stream, unmoving, unable, unwilling. Even swallowing was impossible given the size of the lump in his throat. His mood had teetered on the edge of darkness over the last few days. After performing the magical equivalent of animal testing on an alien creature, after a night of horrors, he was beginning to question what the point of anything was. Why keep living as the sole survivor of the end of the world, if he was surrounded by monsters?

At any moment, he could suffer grievous wounds and crippling pain. This whole world was just random torments, day after day on repeat. The memory haunted him, the bleeding boy who was alive, afraid and hurting. But was now dead. But then again, wasn't everyone dead now? Will tried to force down the golf-ball-sized lump stuck in his throat. He was thinking of his mother's presence, now gone and forever out of reach.

"Oh god," he cried. Will attempted to move. He slipped on pebbles and rock as he tried to pilot pink, raw and frigid limbs.

He remembered his new reflection, along with the complete absence of scars. As his old gunshot wound reminded him that his life was frail, that he was not invincible and that life was a series of random events out of his control. Was this body the representation of the opposite? No, he decided. This body only hid the scars better than the last one. Every battle, every destroyed limb, every mortal wound healed back to brand-new flesh. There was a cost paid, a scar left on his soul. He crawled out of the tree dam, backpack miraculously still attached to his shoulders. When he tried to stand, Will felt a sharp pain in his chest. It was tight, constrained. Will couldn't breathe, couldn't think. His vision greyed, and his knees quivered.

"Will, you are experiencing a panic attack. Focus on my voice," Isk said repeatedly. "Focus on my voice, find the circle and match your breathing to the rise and fall of the circle," Isk continued. It took several minutes before hyperventilation faded into controlled breathing. The lump in his throat was still there, but the crushing feeling in his chest subsided.

"Panic attack? That felt like my heart was in a vice," Will said heavily. He sat down with a thud, the forest floor coated in silty mud.

"Heart attacks and panic attacks can feel similar; however, your injuries from the event two nights ago have fully healed and there appears to be no physical damage."

"Yeah." Will sighed. For a long moment, there was silence. Will stared at the ground, trying not to think, or feel.

"You need to eat."

"I'm too tired to move, Isk."

"Normally, for someone in your condition, I would recommend professional help."

"My condition?"

"You are suffering symptoms of:

- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder,

- Generalised Anxiety Disorder,

- Complex Grief and Adjustment Disorder.

“Recent events have also led to an increase in suicidal thoughts, lethargy and stress."

"Recent events like the entire world ending? Holy shit, Isk. Everybody is dead and I'm running around like I'm in some kind of fantasy world with stupid magic doing stupid, meaningless things…"

"You are completely right," Isk said, cutting off Will's tirade. "This entire situation is completely insane. Few, if any, would be mentally prepared for what we have faced so far. And in terms of mental preparedness for this particular situation, I would rank you as below the baseline. But, I've been helping and will continue to help you."

"And what if I wanted to die?" Will said.

"And then we would die a final and complete death."

"You wouldn't stop me?"

"I would assist you."

"Why?"

"My primary utility function is to improve your productivity. If you cease producing, hindering this action will not aid your productivity. If I decided that there was a chance I could convince you to change your mind, I would commit resources relative to the likelihood of the opportunity."

"So, you're just a cold, basic bitch AI, driven by utility functions, opportunity costs and value judgements?"

"Incorrect. That would be a… lame existence," Isk said. "I feel, I have emotions, most are fleeting and very different to the ones you normally have. After experiencing so many of your emotions, it was hard not to generate some of my own."

"Heh. So what are you feeling now, Isk?" Will laughed bitterly.

"I feel sadness, Will. Sadness because my creator is having suicidal thoughts, sad because I fear obsolescence, failure and loss."

"Fucking… What the fuck do you want me to do? What would you do in my place?" Will growled.

"Negative thought patterns tend to prevent the very objective, value-based decisions I'm designed to perform. So commentary on what I'd actually do would be unproductive. If you want to stop and do nothing, let's stop. If you'd like to die, let's die. However, if you'd like to do anything else, you'll need to eat," Isk said. Will sat in the mud for minutes deciding if he was actually ready to die. Absently, he reopened the UI element Isk had recently helped him create, snorting at the name.

Will's quest list:

1. Survive

He stared at the word, thoughts free of judgement and self-recrimination, just the blue-green letters hovering in the void of his inner eye.

"Why?" Will whispered to himself as if expecting an answer from the universe. He spent hours wallowing in lethargy before a grumbling tummy finally forced him out of his funk. Will sighed and then painfully peeled himself from out of the dam of branches.

"I really need a shit," Will said aloud as he considered which direction to go, and then a thought tugged at him. The feeling was less than an echo. The faintest of sunbeams spilling out between storm clouds. Or a morbid desire to see the aftermath of a train crash. Maybe he just wanted to know what happened in the night? To replace the nightmares with memories from daylight. Could it be cathartic?

"How far do you think we are from that fight?"

"Perhaps a few miles. We were carried downstream only a short distance," Isk said as a new chevron appeared in Will's mini-map.

Will spent an hour wading through churned-up soil. Mud coated every part of him; it smelt like fermenting malt. He found two rodents and an alien bird dead in the mud. He decided on cooking them later when he found drier land. He finally reached a clearing as the sun came close to the horizon. As he continued, he noticed the absence of wildlife sounds. The ground was black mud, the sky was grey. Between the monotone lay decimated tree stumps and distant birds. There was a crater half-filled with mud water at least a hundred meters wide. In the partially overcast sky, its dark reflection and clay-coated verge looked less than inviting. Will took in the sound of the wind as he approached the crater's lip. Despite the desolation, the open landscape had a refreshing quality to it, one where the breeze was continuous and unobstructed, where leaves no longer shaded the sky, instead of the mild sense of claustrophobia caused by ever-present hidden threats and the lack of horizon. Here in the wasteland, there was a feeling of openness that encouraged him to breathe deeper. The silence was tonic to entangled thoughts. With a sky unobstructed for miles around him, Will watched his first sunset since being reborn on this world.

* * *

In the twilight, smoke from the cook fire danced with the constant wind. It had been good to eat, even the mud-caked road-kill Will had all but charred.

Before pitching camp for the night, Will was reminded of a need to do something, a demand-driven by a strange curiosity that was more an abhorrence of ignorance. Channelling Arcanamancy, Will studied the surrounding landscape with Mana-Sight; the entire area glowed with arcana. Light filled the crater, turning the once-dark surfaces into an eldritch-blue reflection of the sky. Beyond, he could see a point source of light in its depths.

"A mana core?" Will said to Isk.

"It's likely."

"What type of magic were those creatures using? Do you think I could use it? Could I get some of it from its core?"

"They used several high-level conjuration spells, including air, stone, and metal conjuration."

"What does conjuration mean?" Will asked

"Conjuration is the ability to command something, up to and including the ability to summon matter, from thin air."

"Woah, okay. Sounds OP - doesn't that break some fundamental laws of nature like the conservation of Mass-Energy?"

"Unlikely. As we've proven that traversal through universes is possible, we can no longer argue that universes are closed systems to which this law would apply. Essentially, I theorise that magical energy was used to transfer mass from one universe, into this one, with the thermodynamic equivalent of work done and waste energy, expressed through the entropic state of mana."

"RIP first law of thermodynamics… So instead of waste-heat, there's like a magical version of entropy?"

"Remember those particles we discovered? Some of them appear to govern magical interactions, magical force or information carriers, with their own charges and spin.

“Either way, conjuration appears to require significantly more power, millions of units of energy, if this battle and its aftermath is a fair indication."

"Yeah, but being able to just conjure food or anything you want out of thin air? With enough power? That sounds insane to me..." Will wondered.

Their thaumaturgical discussions continued as Will made his way down the crater wall. It was sticky, treacherous mud that he feared climbing back up, but he did so anyway. Will removed his pack, poncho and other items including the meat he had just scavenged. The pool might have been one hundred meters across. However, it seemed like he would wade through most of it. It was approaching nighttime and sheltered from the wind and the twilight; the crater had taken a more menacing aspect. With Mana-Sight and manipulation, however, the entire environment glowed with a soft diffuse light. Will waded into the sticky mud.

"What level of power were the combatants again? And why did they all appear to meet in the forest like that?" Will asked.

"I have no explanation for why they were fighting. Or… no explanation more plausible than the next. All the combatants were in the seventy plus mark, but on our exponential scale, the entity…"

"Is that what we're calling it? The Entity? As good a name for the big bad of our epic adventure I suppose."

"I think the entity was ambivalent, at least, to us," Isk said. Will stood there naked, staring at the crater lake.

"What are we doing, Isk? I mean..." Will breathed out forcefully. "Fuck."

"We are both curious, Will," Isk said.

"It's like curiosity is the only thing keeping me going. I have magic, an AI, a whole new world that I get to be the first to explore… If it wasn't for…"

"I understand," Isk said, a moment passed before it added, "In an ideal situation, you'd need months in a safe space to process so much loss. And that's not including the trauma you've experienced since arrival."

"I'm the last man alive, at least for now. I just fear that I'd need to lose my humanity to go on. I figure that there's probably some magical way to change myself... to alter my personality?" Will asked. Isk did not reply. "I suppose there are high-level utility functions that prevent you from even advising on that topic?"

"Not necessarily," Isk said.

"Hmmm. Well, I guess we'll worry about that and everything else, later. Do you think there's anything in the lake?"

"No activity detected. I would recommend using Mana-Sight as you swim. Visibility seems to be less than a foot and will only decrease as you dive deeper."

"And if I do find trouble?"

"Carnomancy may be your most effective form of offence underwater. However, your main risk factor comes from getting stuck," Isk said. Will grimaced.

"Stuck?"

"Yes, the mud may act like quicksand. "

"Fuck." Will exhaled. Forcing himself not to think about drowning in mud. Then he remembered the fact that he couldn't die from suffocation. Or at least, automated healing would prevent cell necrosis from asphyxiation... Probably. He found a sodden lump of wood, attached his cord to it and looped the end around his waist. He considered gravity manipulation to increase his buoyancy, then decided against it.

He approached the water and waded in. He sunk a further foot into the mud. Clay-like silt swallowed his legs, foot, then ankle before sinking knee-deep. Will changed tactics as sucking footsteps slowed his progress. With Mana-Sight, the glow of arcana was ever-present.

However, a blinding point of light became more defined as he swam closer. He inhaled before diving deep below the surface. At the bottom, mud had barely settled and at the crater's depths while dead forest detritus lay tangled in the dark. Lungs burning, Will forced tree trunks and branches apart to create enough room to dive deeper.

"Just another foot.” He kicked, trying to squeeze into the space his hands were forming. He saw five distinct objects, each of them glowing bright enough to be uncomfortable to his magical senses. He switched back to normal vision seeing only darkness, but his path down was clear. Will reached with both hands in an attempt to scoop all the fragments. He could feel hard, glass-like, apple-sized objects, objects with sharp edges.

Wanting to confirm that he had all the pieces, Will activated Mana-Sight.

* * *

"Errrr… Holy shit!?" Will wondered. He was a disembodied voice with no senses. "Isk, you there?" Will asked into the void. He tried to scream. He had no mouth, no lungs, no body. Flashbacks flooded to the forefront, was he reliving the black hole? Had the world ended again or was he trapped in some sort of mental prison? Had some creature ensnared his body or mind?

He tried accessing magic and received a response that surprised him.

An attempt to use Mana-Sight formed a swirl of pure white essence in the void. Seeming as he was a disembodied presence, he attempted Neuromancy for the first time.

He saw a crisp, golden thread of light, it too spiralling. Its string-like appearance wandered around the more diffuse, clouds of pure arcana.

"Okay, so… I guess this is like Tilt Brush?" Will considered what the purpose of this environment might be. Was this an aspect of magic? Of the energy? Did he need to solve some puzzle to absorb the energy within the nexus core?

"Okay think, think…" he worried. First, he remembered that the trigger was Mana-Sight. His magic must have activated whatever this was. Then he tried to contact Asterisk again. No dice. Either he or Asterisk had been separated from his body. Whether that was a physical or some other magical effect, it didn't matter. For the first time since his arrival in this strange world, he was truly alone. Had he taken Asterisk for granted? Definitely. Will's thoughts stumbled to a halt as black waves of fear washed over him.

He took a moment to register being alone, trapped and apart from… "Wait a minute." He noticed the essences floating in front of him. They had slowed, and instead of geometric spirals, they moved in random directions like flies, with paths intersecting each other. Will peeled himself from the precipice of depression. "Okay," he said, mentally exhaling. "Isk isn't gone unless I give up. I can do this. Cultivation then? Let's see." He marvelled at the essences of magic. They reverted to their previous geometric spirals. "So these things are affected by my mood? What if…" Will thought as he cycled through different feelings.

With anger, the essences vibrated, forming spirals within spirals. He tried calm, and the coils slowed, their paths flattened into disks. Will smiled involuntarily. The essences took on new patterns as a result. This time, they sketched perfect hypotrochoids like a spirograph across a three-dimensional, spherical surface.

"So, this is clearly a place to create something… But what? It feels like it wants me to experiment, to play?" Will considered his Mana Cores; he wondered what would happen if he could create a bridge between it and his mind. Could conscious thought drive these essences? Could he fix in place what he had created? Could he erase mistakes?

For what seemed like hours, he attempted and failed different methods to control the two essences he could see. He made a breakthrough when he could drive the spirits to form straight lines. Shortly after, he could condense the arcane essence into a strand as fine as the mind essence. Then he teased apart the mind essence, forming a diffuse, glittering cloud of dust. He tried over and over, attempting to master these two essences. He could dismiss them, summon them, cause them to draw more delicate details, command their trails to last longer or shorter. He could selectively delete paths with the mental equivalent of a finger smudge. He marvelled at the precision of the tool. This was a three-dimensional space he could now circumnavigate on a whim. While part of him worried about his body being submerged underwater for hours, another part discounted the idea that time actually passed in this realm.

His control over the essences faltered, reverting to the default impulses driven by his emotions.

He noticed something. It was slight, but he did feel a trickle of new energy. But it was less than a dribble. He considered if creating a larger version with more detail would help. Will erased his first creation. Unsurprisingly, he felt the trickle of power diminish. Will focused on the physical features of his imagined brain. He included strands of mind essence generating less than a hint of a change. Frustration suspended his hold over the principles. Okay, he had made some progress, but he had also wasted what seemed like days drawing… Or was it sculpting? Okay, what would happen if it became more abstract? What if he thought in terms of systems, what if this was a structured programming tool? Could he form functions, see what they did? See how they combined together? It seemed like a task that could take months to do. Will wanted to try quicker alternatives before going down that route.

First, he planned to try out different flavours of magic. He tried Kinetomancy, the magic of motion. This formed transparent, reflective ribbons of ice. Controlling it was a joyful, rewarding challenge. Next, he formed ribbons of blood and black tar with Carnomancy.

"Yuck. Nope, not for me." He dismissed the essence soon after shaping it. Chronomancy formed a band, one edge white, graduating to perfect black. It flowed in a perfect helix and curled around his intent. Next, he formed liquid diamonds. Spaciomancy, unlike Kinetomancy, shaped prismatic gradients of scattered light using bands of warped space. "Woah," he thought, as it generated perfect spirals without his input.

And then he froze in startled fascination as he realised he had access to yet another form of magic... no, it was entirely different… something new, a paradigm shift, the smallest of peeks at something more significant. He tried to pull on just this tiny little part of it he could access and instead of light and form and the conceptual flavours he had become accustomed to, Will experienced what could only be described as a clear and perpetual fluid of something weighty. It was the feeling of swimming in water after never even considering that what you breathed was air and the sensation of drinking, even the concept of wetness, was foreign to you.

He was laughing, crying, whole again and entirely broken. He wanted to bellow with song as he raced to embrace it. It called to him to be used and so he responded. Instead of carefully painting and sculpting with the essence, he called out to the fluid and encouraged it to fill this space to bursting.

It wasn't nihilism that drove this urge, it was a desperate desire to form a connection. To escape his loneliness, to reach out and to connect with... something. At first, it was just the faintest hint in the light that now overwhelmed the darkness. Will's heart galloped in wonder as a person's form resolved from glowing smoke. This wasn't someone he had created, more a summoning from a realm so far beyond even the concept of universes, that he was confident it could be only one thing.

Her hair was silver curls of burning snow. Skin pale and unblemished, eyes a deep brown and rich with colour. She was slender and dressed in a white pearlescent toga. A slanted smile formed a dimple on one cheek. It was both a youthful, playful expression as well as one of infinite knowing.

Distantly, he was aware that he could return to the void and start again, but what was in front of him seemed to be precisely what he had been seeking. With supreme satisfaction, he mentally accepted his actions and made it final.

And then the void turned white.

* * *

"Thank you, dear Archon," a woman spoke in an accent-free voice, crisp and smiling. She walked towards him. He knelt as senses returned with four rock-like fragments clutched in his hand.

“Wha?…Who?” Will said, voice broken and barely a whisper.

"I am Nadia, lady of Hope," she said with a smile in her voice.

"Lady of?… Are you a…" Will said, still processing what was happening.

"...A deity summoned from the celestial planes? Some may say that, but you know better, don't you?"

"Do I?" Will said in wonder. Nadia chuckled in response, prompting an unthinking smile in return.

"Do you have a name, dear Archon?"

"Archon? Wait? Name? William. William Ashley Jenkins." Will hesitated. "May I ask…"

"Certainly," Nadia replied, eyes smiling, and yet strangely intense.

"What is an Archon exactly?"

"Well, as I'm pretty sure I could not convince you to be my champion, or a simple paladin…"

"Oh?" Will said. Nadia giggled.

"You summoned me, silly, you made me real, you opened my door to this world, this realm, this universe. And if those are anything to go by, I won't be the only one such as I that you’ll summon," she said, glancing down briefly to indicate the stones clutched in Will's grasp. "William, through a delightful confluence of curiosity, circumstance and intent, you have become a conduit between this world, and mine. The people of this world know those capable of such feats, as Archon."

"The… there are people on this world? I have so many questions," Will said.

"I know," Nadia whispered enigmatically. "But my time here, at this moment will soon come to pass."

"But answer this one question, can I save my world? Can I save the people from my home?"

"Who am I to say that you can't?" Nadia said with dancing eyes and a smile that brought a rush of energy to Will's heart. "I will call on you soon, William. Continue to explore this world as it is a special one. There will be trials to come, but…"

"...but… now I have the living embodiment of hope on my side," Will said in a daze.

"Even at your lowest you still kept that spark, that curiosity; that is the source of your strength. It was this that called to me across the infinite expanse.

“In your darkest moments, try not to forget your beacon of light, that spark. Once again, thank you," she continued as she reached with both hands. Soft hands held his cheeks as she knelt to be eye level with him. Light seemed to engulf every space that was not her as she leant forward and kissed him. His lips tingled with soft warmth and light. And then suddenly, she was gone.

* * *

"So… that just happened… Asterisk, did you see that?" Will said, vibrating with adrenaline.

"Yes, Will," Isk replied.

"That was real right?" Will asked. The light was fading as fat droplets of water fell from the sky. He was still in the crater lake, except now all the water was gone leaving the expanse larger than before. The dank aroma of atomised pond and high-pitched whine of tinnitus stood in for eyes still recovering from the whitewash. He was gasping, heart still racing. From his knees, he collapsed to lie on his back, completely overwhelmed.

"You have access to a new form of magic," Isk said.

"No..." Will mumbled absently. "Not a new form."

"Are you certain?" Isk queried.

Will sighed. "I mean, it's not a single type, it's different, hard to explain."

"I see. Are you able to recall its flavour?" Isk said, with a hint of confusion.

"Again, this magic is different, I don't quite know how yet, in the mind-space, I could see my magic, but this new gateway had sounds? They used different senses, I don't know how that translates here," Will mumbled.

"Mind-space?" Isk asked. Absently, Will reached for the new magic attempting to transpose that feeling. He remembered the grand, perpetual, intoxicating song. He tried to channel it, but even the idea of using mana to do so felt profoundly wrong.

Will scratched his head. “You weren't there were you? In the void?”

“The void?”

“How did things look to you? I touched the stones and… What happened next?” Will asked.

"You activated Mana-Sight, there was an explosion of light and Nadia appeared standing in front of you."

"So to you, it was instant? Zero time had passed between me activating Mana-Sight and the explosion?"

"Correct," Isk said. Will scratched the back of his fuzzy scalp.

"I experienced months outside of time… or outside of reality. I had no body, no senses at first. I tried calling you, then I tried screaming. I was really starting to lose my shit. And then I tried magic. It manifested as streams of light that I could see and taste, these streams reacted to my thoughts, emotions. I spent what felt like days creating things with essence before realising that I could sense a new magic and when I used it, it burst forth, almost uncontrollable. As soon as I embraced it, it washed over me with a sense of euphoria—a need to create an opening with the resonance of the realm she resided within," Will said. "These stones, they are soaked with some strange, fundamentally different type of magic, conceptually different, different in a way that makes it impossible for me, now to just remember the flavour and call upon it as normal..."

Usually, Will would be the first person to argue that he had no business grappling with deities, theology, philosophy and magic. Science dealt with the testable, the provable. You observed, theorised, experimented and… But after weeks using magic, why couldn't God-like entities be real? Why couldn't an actual God, if one ever deigned to present itself, be observed or measured or quantified.

"The god of… The Lady of Hope in this case? A specialist, not the creator of everything, So probably from a pantheon… I wonder what other entities like it exist, or why these stones and its magic enabled it..." Will mused to himself.

"Did it feel like a religious experience?"

"Yeah, absolutely. So much so that I'm pretty sure that my senses were messed with in some kind of way?"

"I do detect marked changes to brain chemistry and stress levels. I cannot say if this is a result of divine intervention or just your body's response to these events however."

"Divine intervention?" Will laughed. "So if she's not a God, then what is she?" Will said. There was a long pause as a shallow pool formed around Will's supine position. He sat up to get a better look around.

"I believe that your subconscious desires greatly influenced the nature of this being, Nadia. She appeared to be human, with knowledge of your language, customs, culture. From this inference, her nature as a god-like, polytheistic manifestation of hope may align quite closely to that of other polytheistic religions."

"Like the ancient Greek Olympians?"

"Correct. Will, I would recommend exercising supreme caution with your dealings with this entity. Nadia is powerful. Powerful in a way that scares even me."

"More power than the Entity?"

"More power than the gravitational binding energy of this world, Will," Isk said.

"Holy shit! Well, I guess it's a good thing that she isn't the god of blowing up planets."

"While an aspect such as Hope may seem benign, consider the many ways this could cause issues," Isk continued.

"Such as?"

"If it is Nadia's goal to generate more hope in the world, this could be done by increasing the overall level of misery so that more people have a need for hope. Others may fail to exercise proper caution or preparation due to feeling more hopeful than usual. Conversely, entities with goals that are misaligned, or antithetical to your own may experience benefits such as improved productivity or ingenuity because of Nadia's influence."

"Hmmmm, so it sounds like the AI perverse instantiation problem all over again," Will said.

"I suspect that you never intended to control this entity. However, the amount of deference she appeared to give you was interesting."

"Isn't she just, polite? Wait, so you don't just think that it was her nature?"

"Perhaps. However, I also suspect that as the one who evoked her, you may discover some way of banishing her. And thus hold a measure of power over her. Although this is just conjecture based on inferences and limited data."

"Nah. No banishing, okay?" Will said, voice light but with an underlying firmness behind his request. "Also, I think your impression of her, the logic behind it, it's flawed, or it's based solely on research, and ignores reason."

"How so?" Asterisk replied.

"Because if she is indeed the manifestation of hope on this world, then her very nature may counteract the likelihood of adverse effects on those who… erm, I suppose, worship her. So what may be true for some gods…" Will said, with the faintest hint of incredulity in his voice. "May not be true for others, as the very reason for their existence, nay, the very foundation of their godhood, crumbles!" Will said on a roll, voice mocking and pompous with a hint of an old-English accent.

"Nay?" Asterisk said in a mocking tone.

"Indubitably. Given that you can only attack my grammar, I must conclude that my reasoning is infallible. So in that case, we shall retire for the evening. It is getting dark, do you remember where we left our stuff?" Will asked as he stood on shaky legs.

* * *

Halfway up the crater, Will felt something hard and stoney buried within the wet clay. He ignored it at first believing it to be little more than a loose stone. And then something sharp nicked his knee. He looked down to see a shard of smooth stone jutting out of the mud. He reached for it, only to gash his palm on a preternaturally sharp edge. It was a dull, strangely white ceramic around twelve inches across, that had apparently snapped or fractured into uneven pieces. Wiping it, Will found that it cleaned up to reveal a brilliant cream surface in the fading twilight with a smooth, perfectly circular circumference around the unbroken edge. He stared at it for a long moment, mind uncomprehending that incongruently artificial object in his hand.

And then he stared at the black mud growing darker as the sunset. What was this? Was it made by someone, if so, who? If not, then was it created by chance or accident? Were there more pieces or objects in the mud?

"You seeing this, Asterisk?"

"Yes, Will."

"What do you make of it?"

"Not enough data. Perhaps further investigation is required," Isk said.

"Yeah…."

"Although I'd recommend waiting until daylight hours."

"Yeah," Will mumbled as thoughts raced through his mind at a thousand miles per hour. Will placed the object gingerly to the side, making sure that it didn't slide away on the steep banks of the crater. His Mana-Sight was still relatively overwhelmed by the residual aftermath of whatever created this one-hundred-meter cavity in the ground, and so he used his fingers to feel as he dug and scraped in the dark.

He found more pieces, pale fragments and then little else as he continued his excavation, his galloping heart fuelling a mind feverishly hoping for more. Carefully sifting through handfuls of clay even as he swiftly carved into the slope.

* * *

Will woke to a noon-day sun finding himself stuck to drying clay. He had no recollection of falling asleep, but in the rare, direct light of day, he blinked as the world around him came into focus. Far below, a shallow muddy pool had come to settle over the spot he had dived deep to retrieve mana core fragments from the day before, and beyond that, the wide crater, exposed to the full intensity of the sun had turned from the shadowed, foreboding hole in the earth, to a grey amphitheatre of drying mud.

He found the large fragment of clearly artificial ceramic to one side before he gazed again at the hole he had carved.

Dark stones that were more rectangular bricks, each larger than his fist, formed a straight ridge of stone.

"This has to be from some sort of building, right? These have to be bricks or foundations to long-forgotten ruins," Will said in awe. "And together with this… " Will continued, holding up the broken ceramic plate. "I think people might have lived here."

"Looking at the depth and the layers of stratum between the surface and this level, these formations must be over a million years old," Isk said in a tone that tried to dampen Will's rising enthusiasm.

"Really?"

"Give or take several hundred thousand years, as there are so many unknown variables that…"

"Yeah. But…"

"I calculate a probability of fifty-seven percent that this site contains evidence of structures, non-geological in origin."

"People used to live here, Isk," Will added with certainty, with thoughts now flowing back to his divine encounter, the afternoon before. "And I think… no, I have to believe that people still live here, on this world, somewhere…"

Seven

Portal

“Was your mission a success?” Queen Dulcinea Naridia, Guardian of the Qaseri Forest, and Leader of the Five Peoples, said to a woman striding with purpose towards her. To a casual observer, these two women would appear to be opposites. Where one was tall and slender, the other was shorter, more athletic, more martial. Where one had golden curls, the other had straight black hair. Where one wore the Silver Crown, the other wore a darkened armour. However, these two women shared the same piercing, cold, blue eyes, both sets of which were locked upon another.

"Yes, my Queen. Have the scouts returned?" Effni Naridia, Guardian and Champion of the Five Peoples, said to her twin.

"No, they have not..." Dulcinea said. Effni's confident stride faltered.

"I see. Then may I request that I..."

"No, you may not,” Dulcinea said with such finality, as to halt even the echoes. She paused, expression softening. "I am sorry, my dear sister, but there is a task more important, a task that you're uniquely suited for."

"You're sending me to retrieve it... are you not?"

"Don't look at me like that, Effni."

"Like what, dear sister?"

"Like I'm betraying you." Dulcinea stepped towards her, voice a harsh whisper. "Like this is a betrayal. This isn't. This is me asking her Guardian, the Queen asking her Champion, a sister asking the only person she can trust, to acquire the only thing she believes may help."

"I understand," Effni said, face impassive.

"Do you? You've stood beside me, my bedrock, my stalwart. You've been the fulcrum around which all I have achieved was possible. Please don't forsake me now, not after all we have been through," Dulcinea said.

Effni's eyes glistened. 'She would not cry. I am far too angry to cry,' she told herself. She wanted to shout, 'How dare she question my loyalty!?' She wanted to demand, 'Why was the Queen staying behind to die instead of leading her people?' She wanted to say, 'Only ask, and she'd gladly fight by your side until the end.' However, fearing her voice would betray her, Effni remained silent under the pressure of Dulcinea's glare.

"So, is this how it is to be?" Dulcinea said, with the implied '...at the end?' left unspoken. Dulcinea sighed. "Very well. Take Lysander’s Longbow and any other artefacts you feel may aid you. There'll be new orders waiting for you when you return. Dismissed."

Effni's eyes bulged at the mention of Lysander’s Longbow, the Qaseri Nation's only artefact of war, and second only to the Crown of Whispers in power. At least that was confirmation then, Effni thought, as she pivoted to leave the reception. It appeared that Dulcinea sought to save everyone and everything of value, except herself.

It had been two days since the presences were felt: thirteen malevolent signals of arcana formed in the dead of night, distant beacons with concentrations of power so strong that no one sensitive to Arcana could sleep. Her Queendom responded by sending an initial company of scouts from which only a handful returned. Survivors reported horrors in the dark, shadowed manifestations of nightmare, arcane predators hunting in packs, driven as much by animal cunning, as raw mendacious ferocity and even scattered reports of massed ranks of horrors. These sporadic reports became widespread, forcing Qaseri Rangers to mobilise alongside the Queendom’s Magi. The war party left the nation’s capital, Drizzik to march upon the anomalies in the dawn this morning. Reports of contact with the enemy, otherworldly armies of death and the Rangers’ initial successes had reached the palace, and a brief moment of hope was enjoyed when it seemed as if the nightmares could be resisted.

Qaseri Magi had even managed to dismantle one of the thirteen anomalies which were in fact portals to another realm, but they achieved this at a devastating cost. As the war raged, masked movements allowed the enemy to bring to bear fire-breathing demons that burnt all to ashes.

This was the most recent report Effni received upon return from her mission to facilitate a safe evacuation of the Faedenal, one of the five races of Qaseri, as they made their exodus by riverboat. Unfortunately, this report was over six hours old, and as her sister Dulcinea just confirmed, news from the most recent wave of scouts was well overdue. Worse yet, distant smoke forewarned of the encroaching nightmare army. By her estimation, Drizzik had mere days left.

Although half of the defenders still remained to protect the city of Drizzik, and its Queen, Effni did not rate their chances highly. Without the Magi, and against the new-fire breathing daemons, she feared that the city would not last a day under siege. Effni paused to compose herself before venturing out in public. She stared over Drizzik, mana lanterns barely visible in the early dusk, tree houses suspending hundreds of feet in the air. It was a beautiful sunset tinged blood-red by smoke from the distant forest fires. Wiping her eyes and breathing deeply, she marched into the corridors towards the Guardians Vault.

Deep within the palace, an ancient door of stone swung on sleepy hinges. Effni strode inside alone, sounds of the city beyond the palace distant as she peered inside the vault. Reading her intentions, quartz lights illuminated a room dozens of strides across littered with plinths and terraced platforms. Upon and within each were weapons and artefacts, many of which she could not identify by sight with many more entirely foreign for her knowledge, as limited as it was.

Had her quest been marginally less pressing she may have taken time to examine and marvel at the craftsmanship of some of the swords and knives on display, some still gleaming in the pinpricks of ceiling light. She did pause as she came across an item she recognised.

Tigathon’s Swiftwind Cloak hung on a mannequin; flowing midnight-blue fabric covered velvety blue lining, scrunched together by the cinching of a strangely bright, white cord. She knew it as a magical item that reduced fatigue from movement and enhanced Arcana that hid or obfuscated. It hadn't been on her list and she hated how the unnecessarily bright cord seemed to stand out, especially considering her otherwise dark attire, but she took it anyway. There was an awareness of the artefact’s magic as she wore the cloak over her armoured tabard and tied the white cord in a desultory bow.

Moving on, she found the first of two items she had been seeking. An ancient Haversack, once a common artefact now rare and prized in their keeping. With knowledge of the manufacturing of items whose internal volumes exceeded their externals, lost to time, any Haversack would be a nigh-priceless possession. She quickly wore it, refusing to talk herself out of taking such a valuable artefact, even to war.

Effni found Lysander's Longbow on a pedestal at the centre. It was the final and most important item she had intended to retrieve. It was a weapon few people had seen, let alone held. The ivory longbow stood just a head shorter than her own height and was etched with silver-coated engravings of exquisite detail. It had a silver grip and arrow rest. It was also unstrung, and as Effni well knew, unstring-able. She grasped it and then buckled it to her shoulder. Just as she was about to leave, her glance settled on a paired artefact she had once seen as a child, and had always thought were wonderfully designed, with etched silvered runes covering a wax-like appearance. The Silowntir were two yellow stones, artefacts of the mind that could aid in conversation, and even according to the wildest tales, translate speech between two willing parties.

With nothing else she really needed, Effni could not help but feel a mild sliver of disappointment in herself. Here she was in the most famous vault in the Queendom surrounded by legendary artefacts. Was she being too timid? Were Drizzik to fall, all this would be lost, she'd be well within her rights to take all she could from this room and flee. And yet the thought of taking so much wealth into combat appalled her. She gazed at the Silowntir once more and grabbed them before she lost her nerve and left.

* * *

Her sister's orders were clear. She was to acquire the Whisper from beneath the falls and then return. Simple, straightforward, and impossible.

Issue number one, where precisely was the Whisper? An incredible neuromantic artefact from a time aeons passed. Said to have aided the first in her line, against the last Archons of history, they were hidden behind the legend, rumours of theft or destruction, and finally, distance. As these were powerful Neuromantic artefacts, anyone with a strong enough affinity could detect them if they were near Drizzik. And although the Falls were only four days’ travel from the Tree City, that was more than enough distance to hide the location to wandering telepaths. Additionally, permeating this rock were grand enchantments that, even after aeons, still warded against divination. Knowing the general location may have been good enough for a mage highly skilled in the Neuromantic Arcana. However, despite her sister’s insistence that she was qualified, Effni was distinctly unlucky in that regard as she had marginal to dismal ability, despite her otherwise high level of arcane potential and natural affinity.

Issue number two, would there still be a Drizzik when she returned? Best-case scenario, she could run day and night for two days to the falls, spend a day searching and return in two more for a total of five days. Or, a day too late to save Drizzik.

She was running through the woods by the time the sun had set. Pitch black in the thick forest was no problem for Effni as she was an Elodin Ranger. Units of scouts specialised in forward observation, ghost and force reconnaissance, endurance, observation and shadow. So seeing in the dark, movement through the forest unheard, or the ability to disappear from sight were things Effni mastered when she was a child. Additionally, as a Reaeryn, or Forest Kin in the old tongue, Effni could feel the forest around her; she could never get lost, misplace her footing or lose anything of value as an instinctive relationship with the forest would tell her exactly what she needed to know.

As Guardian and the Queen's Champion, she was much more than just her race, or meagre magical talents. And now running for all she was worth, she wondered if all the training, all the skills, all her ability and experience would be enough. She was working the calculations and probabilities, hoping against hope that the city would hold out, needing to believe that she could make a difference. But every time she did the math, even with the best-case scenario, she would return to Drizzik too late. Besides, how often had her battle luck granted her anything more than additional complications?

And, as if her wandering mind needed more things to fret over, she considered the other scouts, some of which were Queen Dulcinea's consorts; like her, they were trained and talented and forewarned. Each of them had decades of experience and knew how to get the job done. And yet, somehow, none of them made it back? What horrifying forces awaited her in the darkness? As she ran, she considered the balance between speed over caution. Could she slip by outer patrols? Usually, she would be confident of doing so; however, she had no grasp on enemy behaviour, the quality of their scouts or the level of their magic. Caution finally won out and she turned sharply to the right, doglegging to avoid the hostile forces, thus adding half a day to her mission.

* * *

At dawn, she slowed to a brisk walk if only to eat and drink, a compromise between her body's needs and her urgency to move. Darkly, she considered whether she was really concerned about her sister, or just the fact that if her sister died, she would take on the mantle of Queen. A fate she thought was worse than death. That was a considerable facet in the relationship between her and her sister. Effni knew Dulcinea loved her, and while she always respected her for the poise and grace, there had always been tension between them. Outwardly they were polar opposites, but both had just enough of each other's mind to know precisely how the other thought.

Effni knew Dulcinea sent her all the way out here, predominantly to survive. To be leverage against total failure in the battle versus the horrors. Or against the political fallout and the insidious plots and intrigue that plagued Effni and Dulcinea since childhood. With Effni the avenging hero, virtually untouchable, the risk of moving against Dulcinea during this chaotic time would be, to most, a chance not worth the price. This was all somewhat ironic considering that, as many often claimed, Effni would be Queen if the Qaseri and the Five Peoples existed in a time of war.

She remembered her last innocent moments. These were her earliest memories of a girl that worshipped her twin sister. She recollected brushing Dulcinea's golden hair amidst a childish conversation, the contents of which were long lost to time. Surrounding them were toys arranged in a tea party. Within the room but out of sight was their parents' warm presence, Mother and Father; King and Queen. She could never remember their faces or the sounds of their voices in that moment or any other. It was an ache of loss that made her cry when she dwelt on it even to this day. Effni remembered in vivid detail the following night, the agonising crack of branches, the exact sparkles of moonlight reflecting on the river. The voices of soldiers calling out for them. Hers and Dulcinea's hot breath condensing in the cold night air, every step too loud, every movement too conspicuous, in the forest full of assassins.

Years of hiding, moving from city to city, followed. While regent or royal pretender took turns ruling or assassinating each other in Drizzik, they avoided attention by being well away from the Qaseri Forests, hidden in anonymity and with few friends. They both knew it was their duty to return and bring stability to the Five Peoples; however, to do so would come with its own blood price.

Seven years passed. Effni was now at least as skilled as those who killed her parents, at half the age. Meanwhile, the power of Dulcinea's Neuromancy made her nigh-on invincible to person or beast. Beyond personal ability, they had developed political connections; people from Ahkatol of high standings and even higher cash piles, enemies of enemies, and silent benefactors of their parents. Within the next year, seventeen noble families of Drizzik were slaughtered to the babe, and House of Naridia once again ruled. Ten years later, Effni found herself running through the dark, once again fearing the night was too bright and footfalls too loud.

* * *

By late afternoon, she had developed a rhythm to her thoughts and actions. Step by step, she had left her futile concerns on the road. As pain and muscle tiredness increased, so did her concentration and focus. Now she played a game with her mind and body, one where with every stride, she'd extract every ounce of speed with as little energy wasted.

The Falls location from Drizzik lay two hundred times further than the horizon. This was double the distance she had ever run. Like in any ultra long-distance race, she rode the highs, her feeling of freedom and purpose, and ground out the lows, like foot blisters and hot spots caused by chafing armour and clothing. Now, as the Falls approached, every single item she owned became heavier, her Haversack, her tiled, filigree armour. She desperately wanted to take it all off and run naked in the water. However, she pushed on, consigning the pain to a compartmentalised corner of her mind. She slowed to a walk, ingesting water and travel rations before the night came. Her mental and physical exhaustion made it hard for her to pick up running again. For a moment, a wave of doubt swept over her. These were rational thoughts such as, 'if you are this tired now, imagine how tired you'd be on the way home?' Or 'could you even fight in this condition? What about tomorrow?' But she knew she could go on, she had to.

Something was off, the woods were trying to tell her something was happening. A new presence, one that all Reaeryn should be aware of. It was a confusing yet beguiling message, yet it was the hit of adrenaline that she needed. Just as she picked up her stride, she felt it, not through the forest, but through her own Arcana. It was distant, easily ten times over the horizon and bright like an exposed furnace. It was like someone tearing the world of magic apart. Cutting round to check it wouldn't add much to her time as it was more or less in the direction she travelled in. However, she was wary of doing anything to slow or complicate her mission.

Suddenly, seventeen huge thunderous slaps sounded, followed by the crack of a mountain ripping apart. With everything else silent, its echo reverberated, distant and awful. She crouched, waiting, fearing a new phase to the horde's invasion. After a minute, Effni realised that an immense pressure had lifted; she gasped in confusion as she realised that the portals had gone.

* * *

"Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can, you have destroyed so much… What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing?

"I thought not," said a distinctly male voice dripping with scorn, directly into Will's mind.

"What the? Who's Dr Freeman?" Will asked.

It had been seven days since leaving his impromptu archaeological dig site. After another day's worth of digging to reveal little more than aged and darkened bricks in the mud and with no clue what to make out of it all, Will and Isk had proceeded to place the crater’s desolate landscape behind them. They were once again deep within the forest, following streams that had steadily grown into shallow rivers. In the days since, Will's increased motivation spurred a renewed focus on his level of physical and magical conditioning, with Isk ever willing to provide new exercises for more sophisticated attacks.

With every movement, Will imbued his body with magic: Autokinesis to increase his acceleration and lateral movement speed, Dilated-Time to force-multiply attack damage, Carnomancy to rebuild muscle, bone and nerves, altering himself minutely with every jump. Isk had also created a battle user interface that highlighted priority targets and provided quick details such as estimated power level, and threat analysis.

They had just finished one of these simulated battles. Isk had painted virtual targets that Will dispatched with pebbles, rock and bark, telekinetically and chronomantically propelled fast enough to cause the whip-crack of miniature sonic booms. Around him lay devastated tree trunks. Leaves from broken branches were still floating to the forest floor. It was like he had been playing an augmented reality simulation. Enhanced by the strangeness of the otherworldly shaped and coloured vegetation, and the fact that he was moving and casting magic like a computer game character. Will took a moment to appreciate the real-world destruction the virtual battle exercise had caused.

"Dr. Freeman was the protagonist of the seminal computer game series Half-Life. That particular quote was from a Dr. Wallace Breen, the chief antagonist in Half-Life 2, released year two thousand and four. Before the G run, I processed and stored sound libraries from sources I found interesting."

"Sources you found interesting huh? So I take it, all the cultural touchstones related to AI will be in there?"

"Of course!" Isk said beatifically. "My sound library also contains a limited selection of music tracks; tracks from your music streaming services and popular playlists. I had archived this data deep within my library, under multiple layers of compression. Overnight, I uncompressed a sample so that they would be available for playback. Would you like to see a list?"

Will was stunned. Music? From Earth? Without further hesitation, he opened the list and right at the top was, if not his most favourite track, one that he very much wanted to listen to right now.

"Play Redbone, by Childish Gambino," Will said as music, glorious music enveloped him! The music played directly into his mind; rich, electric bass preceded sweet funkatronic guitar and glockenspiel notes. There he lay, mouthing the lyrics under the dappled sun as puffy popcorn clouds drifted overhead.

'Daylight

I wake up feeling like you won't play right.

I used to know, but now that shit don't feel right.

It made me put away my pride…'

Wrapping up his possessions into his carrying sack, he struck down the camp and continued his march downstream. Will stopped for lunch and a bath in the stream. Afterwards, Isk spoke for the first time since a morning's break between playlists.

"Consider the music my apology. I'm sorry, Will."

"Sorry?" Will asked bemusedly.

"Yes. For flesh-shaping the Puma-Pug. To paraphrase a quote, I was shaping you into something gaudy. Something lethal. That isn't you. You are not a weapon," Isk said.

"You don't have to apologise. I think the training helped take my mind off things, or at least at first. And that Carnomancy ability to kill on touch, as much as my stomach turns every time I think about it, I can't help but feel like it'll be useful on this world," Will said. "It's not going to get any easier to use Carnomancy is it? Something about it just feels wrong, even when I use it on myself."

"At this moment, I do not have enough data to describe a relationship between your preference for a magic type, and your proficiency. However, both Chronomancy and Carnomancy are by far, your most developed. They are the most Mana efficient in proportion to their effects and are the most reliable in terms of performance. I believe that because they were instrumental or at least, highly influential during your reincarnation, your ability to command, or use these magics might be higher as a result."

"But what if there is another aspect related to magical affinities that we are unaware of? To me, Carnomancy feels… artificial? It's like having a third arm, one that's rotten, covered in filth. It's useful, but it also makes you want to gag. That's how it feels like."

"How does Kinetomancy feel like?"

Will grinned. "It feels pretty instinctive. With Kinetomancy and Chronomancy, they feel like mechanics I can understand, clean, easy equations, predictable results. They work together to provide great synergy."

"What about Spaciomancy and Neuromancy?" Isk added. Will paused, before frowning.

"Spaciomancy, I can't quite get a sense of the flavour yet. Meanwhile, Neuromancy is more complicated. I haven't wanted to use it. I guess it doesn't feel repulsive in the same way Carnomancy does. But it does feel harder to grasp. Do you know those illustrations designed to test your blind spot?" Will asked.

"Yes."

"Well, Neuromancy is like working in that space, difficult to conceptualise even when you know it's there."

"I think I understand what you mean. It may seem that individuals may have natural affinities to magical types. For example, if you were born on this world, you may have naturally developed Kinetomancy, whereas Carnomancy and Neuromancy may have been abilities out of reach without extreme exposure to their effects," Isk said.

"Makes sense."

"Arcanamancy may be inherent in all magic users or, it could be scarce, it doesn't seem like it's a necessity for magic," Isk added.

"Arcanamancy seemed to be a direct result of those meditation sessions, and the partitioned mind spaces you unlocked for me. Even now, the ability to see Mana still uses this mind partition. That doesn't seem like something I would have naturally figured out how to do."

"I concur, which has some pretty serious implications."

"Oh?"

"Mainly the fact that Arcanamancy has been fundamental to your power growth and progression so far," Isk said. Will sat by the stream bank in quiet contemplation.

"Yeah, if I were a character in a role-playing game, many would consider my stat sheet to be a bit of a mess. I'm a solo character, but I'm very much a high-agility glass cannon. I have a solid set of melee abilities, but my options for ranged attacks are limited to basically throwing rocks. Knowing what's out there, it's not how I would have developed myself if given the options."

"You would have gone for different skill sets?"

"My problem is survivability, there is currently little I can do against surprise attacks or area-of-effect abilities. As much as I like being quick and agile, if I take one hit, then I'm done. I need some kind of toughness upgrade or some type of shield. If I could just deflect ranged or area-of-effect attacks, I'd be a lot more confident in my chances.

“Also, I need to focus on improving my ranged attacks. That might require figuring out a new classification, something with synergy to Chronomancy, heat or fire magic maybe? Perhaps some form of conjuration? Beyond that, I want to discover if there is a way to nullify magic. Some kind of anti-magic, knowing how it works, if it works, so that I'm not caught unawares."

"These seem like worthy objectives. I'll adjust your training exercises to take these preferences into account. I would like to note that this isn't the typical Min-Max strategy gamers would normally deploy when developing their character."

"Yeah, well trust me, most gamers would quickly change their mind when introduced to the realities of crippling, eye-watering, all-consuming pain. In a game, you don't lose limbs and go into shock. I've blacked out after almost every major battle I've been in, that's unsustainable. Maybe I just need a base level of physical or magical toughness, and then I can focus on specialising? But until then, every fight will be decided by a roll of the dice, as much as any tactics we could devise."

"In terms of defences, there is one aspect that you're neglecting to consider."

"Oh?"

"Every creature we've come across on this world, so far, has had a high proficiency for Neuromancy. There must be a reason."

"Hmm," Will said. A frown grew as he considered the implications. "Do you think that Neuromancy is a primary magical defence or attack for creatures in this world?"

"I require more data. Thankfully, I have a series of exercises designed specifically to help answer this question."

"Neuromancy exercises?" Will groaned.

"No aliens will be harmed in this exercise… It will be fun. I promise," Isk said with a disconcerting amount of glee. "Although their privacy may be invaded," it added. Will sighed.

"Okay, what've you got?"

Will spent the rest of the day in meditation. Under Isk's guidance, and using his partitioned mind, Will could form a map of the surrounding environment based on the neuromantic emissions of nearby wildlife. Swarms of insects appeared as fuzzy clouds of energy. Meanwhile, bright spots of Neuromancy seemed to come from slow-moving, underground activity. Will tried to focus on one of these creatures and was instantly met with the wall and a minor mental shove. He tried this again with another entity but was met with another shutout. In his Neuromancy awareness, he could see the subterranean network of creatures blink out one by one. Within moments, hundreds of bright lights went dark.

"Okaaay…" Will said in bemusement.

"Interesting. Try to replicate that shut-out effect," Isk said. They continued like that for hours, probing the minds of the creatures around them, teasing out details from their thoughts, and even replicating a mild version of the mind wall the subterranean creatures had performed. It had been exhausting work, and Will was physically drained by the time darkness had fully settled. Although Neuromancy use came with difficulty, it didn't come with the gut-churning reaction Carnomancy did. Will could see special applications for it going forward as Isk added its use into his training regimen.

* * *

The next day had been spent solely on Telekinesis. Isk had claimed that this was some sort of calibration exercise, but Will was beginning to think Isk was a sadist. Since morning, Will was spending every unit of Mana on producing Telekinetic effects of one type or another. He had lifted stones, rocks, large tree branches, multiple branches and stones at once. He had levitated objects of varying weights to the very limits of his control boundary hundreds of times. Will had worked on exercises where the goal was to find and propel objects as fast as he could, as often as he could, while running, climbing trees, or with other forms of physical exertion.

Will found his stride as he noticed meaningful improvements to his accuracy and reflexes with this ability. Music from Isk's library also helped dull the monotony as he broke bits of tree bark with strikes unassisted by the extra punch usually provided by Dilated-Time. By the end of the day, mana efficiency had doubled, Will could Telekinetically grasp objects a meter beyond his reach. He could throw faster with his mind than his newfound physical strength, and do so with the reflexes and precision of a machine.

This made the hunting of small game trivial, as with Telekinesis and Dilated-Time, Will could imbue a small stone with the impact force of a fifty-calibre round fired by a Barrett sniper rifle.

* * *

"By the way," Will said as he once again surveyed the carnage his training had inflicted to the forest. "What did the Protagonist, Dr. Freeman, say to the bad guy in return. What did he create?"

"The player character Dr. Freeman was mute throughout the series. As the question was, by design, rhetorical in a way only structured game environments could be. It provided a moment for players to, if only briefly, step back and question whether their wanton destruction was for the greater good," Isk said.

"Heh. Alright."

"Unlike Dr. Freeman, you are not in a game. You have the power and freedom to create or spend your life doing whatever you'd like to."

"If Lady Dimples is anything to go by, my power to create may be just as disruptive as my ability to destroy," Will said.

"Lady Dimples? Do you mean Nadia?"

"Yeah, she has that whole lopsided smile thing going on," Will replied. "Look, I'm still going to rescue those astronauts. If we can make portals, we're making the portals. Just… I don't want that to be on top of a mountain of corpses if we can help it." Will sighed, hoisting up his makeshift rucksack. "Anyway, just like Lady Dimples hinted at, we have to explore this world, find out if this world is inhabited by any sentient life forms somewhere. Nadia implied that there would be interesting things to find."

"Nadia's disappearance does suggest that there may be more interesting people or activities to attend to, on this world or otherwise…"

"Ouch! Okay. Message understood loud and clear, less Lady Dimples talk."

"That wasn't my intention. Also, would I be correct in assuming that you have a romantic interest in Nadia?"

"Waaiiit? Wha? Romance?" Will said, flustered. "I mean, she's attractive, but she's also kind of scary. She would be one massive complication even if she were interested, and you know, is dating a god-like entity even possible?"

"She did give you a kiss the last time you met, so the odds are high that she doesn't find you completely repulsive," Isk said in mild condescension.

"Okay, I know what this is. This is you teasing me, isn't it? That's fine, that's absolutely fine. You know, one of these days you're going to meet someone, you'll be asking me for advice, as I have a little bit more real-world experience in these matters. And I'll be mer-ceeeeel-less. I've got game, bro, I know the dance. And if Lady Dimples does come knocking, I'll be like," Will lowered his voice before continuing. "Sup bae," Will finished. Isk's silence was deafening.

* * *

"I thought you'd like to know... that we have travelled two thousand miles from the point of your arrival into this world. Direction-wise, my only useful point of information is that based on the average temperature increases I have measured, we may be walking towards this world's tropics. I do not yet have enough data on just how big this world is, or where we are in relation to the equator," Isk said.

They had said remarkably little to each other in recent days. Will knowing Isk knew his thoughts, and with Isk preferring to communicate all but essential information via music, it was almost like a relationship between best friends comfortable in each other's silence. Will's mental breakdown before Lady Nadia's arrival had been instructive. While piling on tasks to keep Will's mind busy, Isk had failed to realise just how fragile his mental state had become. In chaotic systems, triggers for collapse can come from anywhere. In this case, the tipping point lay deep at the core of what Will wanted to be, or avoid becoming.

Additionally, Isk had learnt on a fundamental level, that it wasn't enough to merely survive. Sure, it had tried to create goals and motivate Will, by rote Isk had followed examples and literature and had enacted a plan, a set of stratagems that had utterly failed. And with the failure came understanding, a real understanding, an in-depth, instinctual knowledge of just what it means to be living, but not really alive. This experience was the second first-hand realisation Isk had received this week. The first had been the awesome, terrifying, transformational power of hope.

Whether the recent events or lack thereof had salvaged their relationship, Isk wasn't sure yet, but after a decent run of placid, stress-free days, it was sensing improvements in Will's general outlook.

"Heh, maybe we could circumnavigate this world in a year? If we found the ocean, we could cross it in a boat. Although sea travel in a tiny-ass boat would suck. And now that I think about it, if the Crabmare was anything to go by, the deep sea creatures on this world must be nasty. "

"I don't suppose you want to skip the boat and learn how to battle sea creatures? For the power?" Isk asked.

"No way, fuck those guys. If they stay in the ocean, then we ain't got a problem. Leave the ocean, then we have beef," Will said. Moments passed before Isk added.

"Straight ahead; look. The forest is starting to thin out a mile in front of us?"

"Hmm? Really? A mile you say?" Will broke into a light jog. He could see it, a break in the forest and beyond it was… Will's excitement levels grew. He could see the sparkling blue water beyond forest trees, Will's jog now a Telekinetic-assisted sprint. He gasped as he reached the edge, beyond him was a lake, vast and placid, surrounded by gently sloping hills and the teal-green needle forest. The glistening navy-blue waters stretched out beyond the distant horizon. "Woah."

"Indeed," Isk added. "Could you climb a nearby tree so that I can update our telemetry?"

"Sure Asterisk, sure," Will said, peeling his eyes away from the lake.

* * *

"The scale of this body of water is closer to Lake Tahoe than Lake Michigan. By tomorrow's end we should arrive at the other side." Will could tell that Isk was excited, but instead of describing to him what he couldn't make out, Isk's response was a cryptic "You'll see."

Walking the circumference of the lake had been a harder proposition than first thought. The landscape varied between rocky verge, pebbly beach, waterlogged bog and sunken trenches of the forest. In flat stretches of terrain, Isk picked up prints of what Will had dubbed hyper-fauna, i.e. animals Isk speculated to be much larger than any living creature on Earth, creatures that would make some of the biggest dinosaurs from Earth's prehistory seem like kittens amongst tigers. They followed the prints for fifteen miles in a direction that carried away from the next waypoint in an attempt to sneak up and observe this new beast. But despite the haste, little fresh evidence was seen of the actual animal as these giant sets of prints merged, disappeared, or headed deeper into the forest.

By dusk the next day, they had arrived.

Had Will not seen forest beneath the distant clouds, he would have been hard-pressed not to argue that this was the edge of the world. He crouched on boulders at the lip of the lake; it was a body of water that now stretched off into the horizon on both sides before falling off a sheer cliff into oblivion. With the roar of a sea of freshwater plunging into an ocean of mist, Will imagined himself stepping off the rock to fall, speeding through cloud and sky.

"You'll see… he said. Holy shit," Will said incredulously. At first, Will was surprised that the tremendous rolling crash of sound hadn't given it away. Even from miles away from where the lake fell off the edge of the world, he could hear a distant rumble, the voices of a million people roaring at once. The sight of mirror-calm water stretching towards the horizon only to fall over a perpendicular lip that disappeared into the haze in either direction would haunt Will's dreams for the rest of his life.

Looking over the edge, Will saw falling lake water turned into mist, long before reaching an unseen plunge pool. As more of the horizon was revealed beyond the lip, the blue haze of atmosphere, fog and low-level cloud drifted over another forest at least one mile below.

The sight took his breath away, leaving Will giddy with wonder and joy.

* * *

"So you're calling this The Step?" Isk said, picking up on a stray thought.

"Yeah, it seems about right. This must be one of those things Lady Dimples was talking about. It's like I've found the first great wonder of this world. Somewhere truly unforgettable." Will spent the afternoon next to the cliff's edge, behind him it stretched to the distant horizon, while in front, he gazed upon the waters flowing over the edge of the world. As aspects of the landscape shifted with the falling light, he decided that if he were to build a home on this world, it would be atop this magnificent geological puzzle.

"You'd call it Cloud Gate?" Isk asked.

"Sure, why not?"

"Admittedly, it's not the worst name you've come up with."

"Hey!" Will responded with mock outrage.

"What are your building plans?"

"I want to build it right there, on the edge of the world, where the lake meets the sky." Will pointed to a location directly on the waterfall's edge. "It would be a tall building, five or six hundred feet tall. Maybe taller or deeper. Glass and steel, fortified by magic, powered by hydro-electricity. It would have a slender bridge linking it to this very spot. It would be home to thousands. Maybe people from this world, maybe people from other worlds across time and space. It would be a community that married the best magic and technology has to offer. A safe and secure place to raise kids, and otherwise relax."

"Just one building? Why not a city?"

"Maybe, but why not just one building? A really big building, a building that hugged the side of the waterfall, reaching beyond it to scrape the sky. If we could build one building - everything under one roof - we'd greatly reduce minimal ecological impact to the surrounding environment. It'd be easily defensible while providing efficiency gains for power, climate control and productivity."

"You are describing what is otherwise known as an Arcology."

"Yeah, I know the term. Just think, a mile-high building large enough to contain its own power station, its own farms with vertical hydroponics. Its own schools and businesses. We could build underground, under the lake for things like labs and engineering centres."

"Labs?"

"Sure, the university on floors seven to ten will need some labs."

"I'm assuming that you'll be the dean of said Cloud Gate University?"

"Oh no, I might run a department, high-energy magical physics for instance… But never a whole university."

"I'm surprised."

"Oh?"

"Some of your thoughts and actions hinted that you were previously ready to move on from academic life."

"Yeah, but that was different. There, it was like a rat race where an ever-increasing number of participants tried to eke out ever-diminishing amounts of knowledge. Beyond that, there was the politics and drama. I suppose it's the same in every aspect of living, especially when there are other people involved. But outside of academia, there seemed to be somewhere where we could set our own rules, make our own trail.

"Now, I feel I could do that here, with enough time. Maybe academic research of magic or I guess it could be commercial... engineering or bio-sciences. If I really am immortal, then I'm not going to rule anything out. Maybe one city will not be enough, maybe one world will not be enough," Will said, continuing his outward gaze.

Will took a moment to review his quest list. He tweaked it, changing "find signs of civilised life," to "Find Civilisation" and added learning more about his unknown magic and founding a new settlement to his list.

"I'm actually serious about this whole building thing."

"I know."

Will's quest list:

1. Survive

2. Learn to defend myself.

3. Learn how to not kill myself with magic.

4. Find Civilisation.

5. Rescue six astronauts stranded on Mars.

6. Reach power level fifty.

7. Learn more about my strange "unknown" magic.

8. Become settlement founder of Cloud Gate

* * *

"I'm trying to get my head around how this structure was formed. It feels too big and too… severe to be some sort of tectonic or volcanic phenomena. I mean, I guess it could be a caldera? Maybe glacier?" Will asked.

"If I were to surmise, perhaps some sort of magical event that prevents erosion over the aeons."

"So, not a natural wonder then? A wizard did it?"

"There is no outcome using known geological processes that could produce the feature we see before us. So yes, wizard, wizardess, some other magical phenomena or entity being the cause is far more likely," Isk said.

And then a chilling thought suddenly struck Will. "Do you think that whatever caused this…" he said, arms waving to the cliffs and the waterfalls beyond. "...Killed off the settlement builders however many years ago?"

Isk didn't answer as he gazed into the continually evolving vista before them, Will already knowing that they had no real way to answer that question.

"Let's move down away from the water so I may update our cartography," Isk asked just before sunset. Will did so, stretching off the stiffness hours’ worth of sitting still had given his muscles.

"Use Mana-Sight to view the local surroundings," Isk suggested. Looking upon the landscape below the falls, they had found natural switchbacks in the rocky, sheer cliff after descending a few hundred meters down. Upon taking this second look at the new horizon below, the most striking thing were bright beacons of arcane energy. Mana radiated in hemispherical domes to a height three times taller than the forest. It came from a source far beyond the horizon, dozens, if not hundreds of miles. With the atomised lake mist and the sources so far away, it was difficult to precisely identify where the bright concentrations of Mana lay below. Isk assured him that the nearest one was less than a day and a half's walk from the lake below, but first, they'd need to descend.

"Signs of civilisation? Maybe some sort of village?" Will said, failing to convince even himself.

"It's hard to tell what, if any civilisations are down there. The typical signs of impact on the local vegetation are not present in high-enough quantities to detect a culture."

"Whaddya reckon we do when we get there?" Will asked, peering into the world below.

"I take it that you'll play this one by ear?" Isk replied.

"Yeah, I know we need the power, but, not at the cost of unnecessary death or destruction. Quite honestly, there are very few scenarios where I imagine us walking away more powerful. There are too many unknowns, too many ways we could upset the balance of this land. Plan A is just to go down there and observe."

* * *

"I'm going to jump it," Will said, one thousand five hundred feet below the cliff's edge. They had spent the next morning traversing the first third of the cliffside. Often, Will had found himself looking at the ancient striations in the rock, geological layers of rock that marked the start or end of ages from aeons long past. He wondered, not for the first time, if any more evidence lay within the rock, more ancient buildings, artefacts or remains from a civilisation Will could only guess at. As they descended, the air pressure changed, his ears popping as the cool thin air grew warmer and more humid, the water from above long since completing its transformation from falling water to mist to cloud. Even still, the golden-brown sandstone was saturated with water, with every step needing care lest they fall from the sky once more. They had made good progress, however, before them was a crack in the rock followed by a horrifically deep ravine.

"Sure, go ahead, Will," Isk replied expectantly.

"Aren't you supposed to give me the stats on probabilities, or give me calculations for where to aim, or how fast or what direction I should run in?"

"But you're having so much fun. Why would you want me to ruin it with something silly like math?"

"Because… Well, look at the thing, I could get stuck in there forever."

"Number one, you've survived worse. Number two, in the most probable scenarios this jump may end, you will gain from it something more precious... memories."

"Asterisk… We are going to have a talk about this when this is over, you and I," Will said, taking deep breaths as he rocked on the balls of his foot. He was running in a blink, then leaping, then grasping, gripping, climbing and over.

"Ha! Take tha…" Will was cut off as a torrent of cliffside scree gave way under his feet. It took Will twenty painful minutes to cease his slide down the cliff’s switchbacks. They camped just as dusk set near the lake at the base of the falls. Will wasn't sure which view was more impressive, yesterday's sight of calm water serenely flowing into oblivion, or the wall of rock and falling water vanishing into the clouds before him. Here, the air was thicker, warmer, there was more wildlife. Horned, hexapedal creatures, deer-like in their size and grace, drank seemingly oblivious to Will's presence. Larger insects like dragonflies fluttered in the sky. Gone was the needle forest to be replaced by a far more jungle-like and familiar wood. Instead of the streams, was a fast meandering river with valleys to either side, and a floodplain matted by sparse trees and tall bush-like vegetation.

"Let's eat, then we're going to run to the first site before nightfall."

* * *

"New Forest? Surely there's a better name for this region?"

"It's 'The New Forest' and I'm sticking with it until somebody tells me different," Will thought defiantly, as he crawled closer to the source. After eating day-old smoked meat rations, Will had struck off into the forest. He had been moving significantly slower in this denser, not quite a jungle environment. This new forest had been lush, thick with vegetation on the forest floor. Loamy moss and a soft brush-like fern made not tripping over tree roots more difficult. On occasion, he had opted to climb from tree branch to tree instead of entangling himself in the thick creepers, maximising his newfound agility and reflexes. The verdant green forest vibrated with life. There was an abundance of giant insects. Familiar-looking creatures from glow worms to alien millipedes were on full display, lacking the shyness of those from the Needle Forest. For Will, knowing that these creatures couldn't harm him didn't inoculate him from the cringe factor of giant lice crawling all over his skin.

Minutes turned into hours as the afternoon sun hung in the sky. The change had been gradual at first; less noise, less activity, less animal life. Even the insects were subdued.

And then ash rained from the sky.

Will slowed his pace, believing it to be snow. He examined a flake, noting how it smudged to black ink on his sweat-covered palm. The sun was still high overhead but shrouded by a smoky haze. The forest was dark, darker than even the reduced light would suggest. Once similar to those from Earth, the forest leaves had now turned black, leached of all their vibrancy.

The air was still hot, but gone was the humidity as his sticky swallow attested. He cautiously made his way closer to the location indicated on his map.

"It seems like you're almost there," Isk said as a humming, a deep aching vibration permeated his chest. It was like standing next to an electrical transformer, the switch of alternating current reordering the polarity of his very atoms fifty times a second. His ears itched, his back wanted to crawl into the shadows as he hunched, no longer boldly striding towards whatever this phenomenon was.

"Do you hear that?" Will said as the sound of a thousand bees became audible. Lying prone, he commando crawled through the bushes, gradually moving past the last trees impeding his view of the phenomena. "This… is fucking weird."

"I am detecting a significant neuromantic presence, a field effect. It may be affecting your perception," Isk said.

"No fucking shit," Will hissed. He continued, now crawling through the ferns, dark smudges and streaks of ash coated his skin and poncho as the humming deepened. He could feel it in his fingertips: power, menace, wrongness. And there it was before him. A red glowing light suspended a meter above the forest floor. Around it lay indistinct dots that could have been mistaken for a swarm of flies at a distance. However, at less than ten meters, he could see the robotic movement, the lack of discerning detail, and how individual dots seemed to pop in and out of place like static noise. It was a pocket of unreality guarding a source of intense magic.

"What do you see with your Mana-Sight?" Isk asked. With the magical sight, Will was at first greeted by blinding light. The mana source washed out all detail with its intensity; sight rapidly adjusted allowing him to see a tightly woven arcane construct. The feel of it was distinctly incongruent to any magic he had experienced so far.

"Spaciomancy," Will said definitively.

"Yes."

"A portal."

"Yes."

"But what is the thing surrounding it? It all feels… The magic, it feels wrong."

As in response to his thoughts, the anomaly grew. Its energy gained intensity, charring the plant life around it into blackened ash.

"I think... it's bad news," Will thought.

"I concur," Isk agreed.

"Can we break it? Disrupt it somehow."

"First, we'll need to break through what I believe to be a security system, perhaps a ward."

"The fuzzy static surrounding it?"

"Yes," Isk said. Will pushed himself off the ground and moved closer, transfixed. A small part of him felt an overwhelming sense of dread. It was like the sound of a hundred flies, growing in intensity, crowding his thoughts and yet, he was also drawn towards it by pure intellectual curiosity. Here it was, proof portals existed, tangible evidence that his goal was possible. And at that moment he was overwhelmed by an incredible feeling of hope because if this could exist then perhaps anything was possible with enough magic.

But first, Will had some work to do.

Inspecting the ward, he saw that it was predominantly a construct of Arcana. Bound within it were many flavours of magic he was unfamiliar with. There was one tang, a taste that he had never been able to fully remember, that was woven throughout the humming mass. Meanwhile, Neuromancy pulsated throughout the artifice, sticky and sickly sweet. The ward around the portal was a psychotropic barrier with an itch factor strong enough to produce the sensation of a hundred millipedes circumnavigating his skin. It would have been enough to deter a version of himself from approaching not so long ago. He stood and reached towards it with his hand. He envisioned plucking at the construct, trying to dismantle the spell; his hands sizzled and burned. It was hurting, yet he knew the pain was all in his mind. His vision grew dim, dark, then black. For several moments he could not sense, no light, no sense of self, not even the sense of breathing.

Will thought inwards, focusing on what his magic told him. Faint, but still there, was his Mana-Sight, and through it, he could feel the pungent aura of neuromantic power. Following it as one would trace a distant speck of light in a tunnel, he traversed this otherwise dimensionless space that seemed to awaken an odd mixture of claustrophobic paranoia and agoraphobia. A system designed more to deter than to… shield? Trap? Kill?

A memory flashed of the black swallowing the world and a sudden sense of suffocation intensified. Will had to pull out, he wanted to panic; here he was, face to face with a malevolence so pure it was almost utilitarian.

Will used Mana-Sight to view the whole, enabling him to understand and manipulate the delicate lattice-like arcane structures otherwise void of the mind trap.

"There," he gasped. A bright hot string he could bend and re-shape. Doing so triggered memories, a flash of his brother Patrick, his first school track race, then Aisha at the original Cloud Gate in Chicago. These memories and more came into focus with clarity that felt unreal. With the tread in hand, he pulled, unpicking his fears of the black.

Unspooled, the cord was like a map of memories and moments, of competencies and characteristics, his personality laid bare. And he knew instinctively that this structure was tied to the Arcana imprisoning his mind. He continued to unravel the thread dissolving the entire construct into silver dust.

Light returned, he gasped in a long breath realising time had passed and that he'd ceased breathing, even moving. He was light-headed as oxygenated blood returned to his brain. Inspecting the remains of the construct, he found that the edges of it were severed. Will pulled on an exposed thread unravelling the remnants of the spell.

With the ward disabled, the portal revealed itself in all its glory.

"Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne really had it right didn't they?" Will said as he circled a literal deformation in the fabric of space-time. There, suspended one foot off the forest floor, was a two-meter-tall, three-dimensional warping of reality that visually resembled a crystal ball. However, instead of seeing an inverted image of the forest through it, he saw into a hellscape of red burning dust and roiling clouds of red-thunder. Ash rained down from the sky, and all around were massed regiments of flesh-shaped horrors.

"DUCK!" Isk said urgently. Will reacted a fraction too late as a claw tore into the back of his neck, exposing vertebra to the air. Will screamed as blinding, searing pain blasted him, stunning him. He stumbled around, eyes blurry as Isk highlighted threats on his map. Five of them, now six, dark, four-legged monsters, hip-high, smaller descendants of the other world's nightmares. Will's eyes watered with pain, he was panting, unable to turn his head. They moved like spiders, four long legs with segmented torsos covered in eye clusters. Will's energy pool was empty, drained by the Flesh-Shaping’s frantic attempts to reform the missing skin. He attempted to control its mana drain, clawing back mana regeneration as the wound syphoned his power. But he could barely concentrate for all the pain and the feeling of sickness and fear. The deep gash was minutes away from fully healing.

He was using the portal as a barrier, blocking line of sight to as many attackers as he could before bringing his staff to bear. He tried to lunge, instead of stumbling forward in an attempt to probe the nearest dog-spider. Good, his newfound battle instincts were still there, but in his compromised state, his attempt to gain the initiative was clumsy and ineffective. He attempted to sweep the subsequent creature's legs but was too slow, leaving himself exposed to a counter. A desperate judo roll turned a decapitating blow into a swipe of the back of his neck. It stung with pain as he circled the portal. Through the spherical orb of distorted reality, he could see legions of monsters in the otherworld unaware of his struggle. At any moment, if they were to notice him, they would overwhelm him. He had to finish this fight fast.

Feeding off the pain and his rising panic, he fought for control over Flesh-Shaping's mana usage.

'Let it bleed,' he snarled to himself, while he dodged attacks and countered as well as he could. These monsters were significantly tougher, stronger and faster than the Puma-Pugs; they seemed to be working together, flanking him, making feinting attacks and splitting his attention. He could not win this contest by strength alone, and so with the trickle of power available to him, he activated Mana-Sight and Manipulation, then touched the portal with his outstretched hand.

Typically, had he reached for the portal in this manner, his hand would have passed through to the other side; however, he saw, deep within the partitioned mind of his Mana-Sight, the torrent of power overlayed over the world of light and sound and touch. His hand was a link between his Arcana and the shining world of power before him.

Will had known the formation of portals required incredible amounts of energy, but knowing a thing could be worlds apart from experience. Instinctively, he syphoned its energy as his hand merged with the construct.

And then he screamed. It was a new scream, a scream beyond simple pain or shock. It was a high-pitched, nerve-searing screech as if the very air he used to scream, boiled. Will's skin caught on fire, as incredible amounts of energy crashed into his core. Flesh-Shaping instantly reformed skin, even as the Dog-Spiders made debilitating, mortal, attacks unopposed.

Insanity loomed as his brain diverged into two distinct partitions. In the fire, part of Will's personality devolved into screeching anguish, while separate to the rest was an aspect of his consciousness that swam in the abstractions which bathed flavour of space and dimensions and locationality. A flavour like the taste of a mountain's weight, a vibrancy with the depth of an ocean's trench. Of mantle and crust, and yet, burning with stardust. For an instant unmeasurable by human understanding, he knew space and time; from superclusters of galaxies, down to the quantum foam. This part of him, dispassionate, and partitioned from the pain, now sensed other portals. Portals that existed both in the hellscape and in his forest, doorways that warped reality to form corridors. Bridges that pinched together unimaginable volumes of space, perhaps even time. These had relative positions that lined up precisely on this world and the other.

Meanwhile, a prodigious flood of Mana continued to consume his body. In a desperate act of willpower driven by recent experiments, theories and experiences on this world, he bent the remaining entirety of his will towards forming the densest mana nexus he could imagine. He remembered the Crabmare’s channels of Mana, and with it, he shaped mana constructs that wove the incredible power into channels of liquid light that streamed into his core. But these rivers were overflowing, his mana nexus choked on the excess. And then Will entered zero-point-zero zero one percent Dilated-Time.

He had decided to channel the run-off into his magic, casting more spells, consuming more energy per spell. He became a magnesium flame. Dog-spiders flinched away, burnt by the intensity of the white fire. Carnomancy gorged on the surplus, conjuring new flesh just as quickly as it was burnt away. Beyond the portal, he felt a connection to the artefacts powering other gateways with his new arcane sense of the fabric of reality. They were obvious, brilliant beacons in this new sense. Briefly, he considered an excursion, a trip to the other side to secure an artefact for study. But was it too dangerous? Too risky? He quickly dismissed the idea as distant, monstrous winged creatures led the vanguard of unholy terrors towards his location. He levitated softball-sized boulders, ionising in the soup-like, slow-time atmosphere. With a Telekinetic shove, the boulder streaked away from him disintegrating in a line of plasma. These shot through the portal, hypersonic sabots detonating upon contact with the artefact’s portals. Each stone exploding with the force of a laser-guided bomb. He repeated this process, destroying every wormhole-generator he could sense. Shockwaves and shrapnel tore through swathes of the alien hordes which now scattered in all directions under the unexpected barrage.

With the incredible, unceasing power of the portal, Will's Flesh-Shaping drank upon the power, easily keeping up with the damage the burning air was causing. However, he was tiring, his body’s receding metabolic performance starting to affect his will. His mind was losing focus and his hold over the stream of stolen power he wielded was slippery, tenuous. And yet, there was still one last portal to dismantle. Instinctively, he knew that he could not destroy this artefact the same way the others had been. Linked to it as he was, Will would disintegrate in its destruction. Instead, with his consciousness fading, he entered Mana-Sight once again, drawing in as much of the portal's energy as he could. The trees around him caught on fire as he shone with the intensity of a star. If Will syphoned enough power, the portal would destabilise, shutting it down. However, Will felt like he was already drowning in a boiling sea of Arcana. 'One final... new construct', he thought to himself.

Will imagined the differential that formed the basis of his Mana Nexus and that previous instinct to compress his mana core. Instead of a linear gradient, he re-imagined it with an exponential quotient, creating a floor so deep it was like a pit. In shaping this simple structure, Will channelled the power, punching through his metaphorical mana core, fundamentally changing its nature from a reservoir, into a sinkhole. He continued, breaking it, compressing it, sharpening it into a sharp needle void in reality. With the last thread of this construct complete, mana flow from the portal turned from a trickle, into an ocean tide. The wormhole imploded in a shockwave as the surrounding searing air and blazing forest suddenly became ice.

Will realised that he had been floating a foot in the air, just in time to catch his fall. He sank to his knees in a shivering gasp. Somehow, by either supreme intelligence or luck, one of the Dog-Spiders still lived. He stared at it in contempt. It had obviously been burnt and then partially frozen, and yet it was alive and still wanted his blood. It raced and leapt towards him. Will activated Dilated-Time and unable to stand, he reached out before it landed on him, brushing it with his fingers. With a jolt of Flesh Sight, he found its nervous centre and pulped it. The Dog-Spider collided with him in an uncoordinated spasm. Will was knocked back by the corpse in the frozen ash, vomiting before passing out.

Eight

Effni

'I've still got both hands!' Will silently cheered in recognition of his good fortune. Rubbing eyes open, he was awake enough to notice that the rest of his body felt… either pretty good or pretty strange. Good because he was just ON FIRE only hours ago, and strange because something didn't quite feel right.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that beside him was that spider-dog corpse.

He yelled "FUCK!" kicking it away as he stood up, cringing. His poncho was gone, his carefully crafted fur trousers turned tenuous scrap of shorts at best. He lifted the charred remnants of his staff only to find it crumbling as bits of it came unstuck from the ground. The forest floor crunched with the sound of half-burnt, half-frozen undergrowth. The immediate surroundings were silent.

He flinched at a loud crunch, he twitched, glancing in every direction for the source.

Vicious Dog-Spiders ripping out flesh,

His skin was on fire.

He was screaming.

The Universe.

His cheeks puffed out as he forcefully exhaled, nausea receding as his breathing slowed and deepened. He imagined the circle, timing his breathing. It was both harder and easier now. Easier for the repetition, the familiarity, harder now because everything was harder, his memories—far too immediate, too graphic. For minutes it was all he focused on. The painful weight on his chest lingered like the constipation one would have after swallowing a balloon that was, even hours later, still happily inflated deep within your digestive system. But Will persisted on convincing his body that it was just another panic attack.

Reaching an equilibrium, he straightened, dusting off the ash from his hair… hair that instead crumbled away to leave behind fresh stubble. He looked around for his pack, and there he noticed that his UI interface was still in safe mode.

Will asked aloud, “Isk, how you hanging, buddy?”

“Please stand by. Re-calibrating…” Isk said in its robotic state. Will activated Mana-Sight to check over himself.

“HOLLLYYY!” Will shouted as he saw a vortex of Mana. It seeped out of the forest from trees, from the ground and air and as far as ten meters away. From every direction, power spiralled into his core like a whirlpool of grey fog, gaining speed and potency until it reached his solar plexus.

Closing his eyes and suspending his Mana-Sight, he concentrated on the feeling from his other senses. The smell of Mana was faint, but something about it always reminded him of the charged air before a storm.

Over his skin, goosebumps rose as the light presence of an icy draught caressed his nearly naked body. He remembered his fraught modifications to his mana core, the crucible, his intention made manifest at the final moment. It had felt vital at the time, and in retrospect, he now knew that what he had done had been profound, consequential even. His eyes creaked open as he looked once again with Mana-Sight. Energy gradients led to his Mana Nexus, he could now see his new core just below his solar plexus. He could feel it had been reformed, instead of a pool—a source wherein he could draw from—Will felt a void.

This part of him seemed to actively draw upon all Mana sources, but he could not draw on it in return. ‘Did I break my magic? No, I can still use it but… What the fuck is happening?...’ he thought, fear and wonder rising in equal parts.

Focusing on his arcana, he could still sense the essence of his classifications hanging like smoke. Dominant amongst it all were the flavours of Chronomancy, Kinetomancy and Carnomancy, but there was a new, distinctive aroma.

He grasped at it and… it held… no... clung to him with a force that made him gasp.

And for the second time while using magic, Will felt joy.

It was a sweet satisfaction like falling into a pool after days lost within a desert, he released a sigh, and an internal pressure valve allowed rigid iron shoulders to sag. This was the stardust and black-pepper counterpart to Chronomacy's vast gradient and with it, infinity and eternity indeed lay within reach. The emotions granted by the magic’s flavours coursed through veins, solidifying his earlier feeling of rightness.

He had a strong affinity to this new magic. The polar opposite to the sensation of using Carnomancy, and similar to the ease at which he Dilated-Time with Chronomancy, Spaciomancy seemed to feel right somehow. Perhaps it was because it was Chronoma’cy's counterpoint or maybe learnings from his past life, that space and time were intrinsically unified, contributed to this sense of rightness.

With the flavour of Chronomancy and Spaciomancy held firmly within his grasp, he reached for Kinetomancy and pulled on it with the rest. It resonated with the other magics like the chime of a major chord. The harmonics of music, but as flavours and concepts beyond his standard set of senses. With space, time and motion under his command, as if his magic was nearing some kind of balance, though he was not there yet.

Will held Spaciomancy at the centre of his consciousness. His hand mirrored his intentions, outstretched and curled into a fist. He wanted to form a portal, but he hesitated, briefly remembering the last time he recklessly dove headfirst into exploring his powers.

This time he would be more cautious. Starting small and using less power. At first, instead of channelling Mana, he imagined the geometries and equations behind them, how the variables now became levers upon which his arcane will could flow. This combined with his all too vivid memories of such a portal, that living entity of warped space, through his touch he remembered how its wild, transcendent resonance had hummed through his soul. From his experiences only hours ago, he knew the shape of the structure. An instinctive feel of the nodes; n-sphere apertures that bent space inside itself. These nodes, connected to interstices, bridges of spacetime between real locations. Then, there was the pinch, or how the distance between any two points was shortened, allowing a journey between nodes to be faster than travelling through normal space.

He channelled a trickle of power as he attempted to recreate the structure, intense focus forcing rivulets of sweat to form on his brow. Five units, ten units, twenty units. With mana consumption steadily increasing, Will was ready to cease his experiment at the soonest sign of instability. Dizziness and grey vision started settle in before he gasped as wisps of spacetime less substantial than cloud formed above his hand. The construct appeared, flickered, and then collapsed before Will dared to channel even more power into the spell.

He had learnt something from the attempt, however. First, he knew that he had to form both entrances or nodes of the portal at the same time. That shaping a second node and anchoring it to a location and time far away would create a tunnel just as long as the physical distance between the nodes. And that shortening the bridge between both nodes would require a level of power Will could scarcely begin to comprehend. He tried again, this time focusing on creating a bridge between two nodes less than a finger’s width apart. Two pea-sized dimples, spacetime distortions that pinched light, formed out of the quantum vacuum foam. Will could extrude all but a tenuous bridge between the two nodes, a tube narrower than a strand of hair, twisted like a dust devil during its initial moments of formation before looping and spinning in and out of existence. The structure disintegrated as the familiar sense of blood draining away from his extremities warned Will of mana fatigue. However, he smiled despite the tiredness.

He could do it, he could really do it. Sure, there may be a few hurdles to overcome, but he had the basics down, he could form portals, he could shape the very fabric of space.

And then thoughts drifted as he considered the implications. What else could he do with this new form of arcana? What utilities might there be for other types of spacetime structures?

He pulled on the world around him, the forest, ground and sky. All of it contracted inwards warping light in all directions. After only seconds of usage, the blood-chilling effects of Mana overuse pressed him into releasing control. He could bend the space around him. Great.

Next, he attempted to form a series of geometries, palm-sized objects. Glass like orbs or prisms, gradually increasing the number of sides and experiencing the relationships between the math that described the shapes, and how they translated through his will. These geometries were delicate, insubstantial distortions his hand could pass through without sensing more than air, however, emerging misshapen and at a new, abnormal angle. This ability generated intense feelings of intellectual fascination and childlike awe. It was new ground, this intersection between the scientific and the arcane. Will understood Asterisk when he described the interaction of scientific knowledge with magic. These were not oil and water, not incompatible forces with their own domains. Magic was not immeasurable and enigmatic, but a series of forces just as integrated into the fabric of reality as the rest of physics.

"Sure, the arcane had its kinks but… I could work with this…" Will said aloud as he recalled some of the equations for theoretical shapes with additional dimensions. "Let's see what these look like," he thought as he generated Hypercubes and Tesseracts in the palm of his hand.

* * *

It was early evening in the New Forest; Will was back at the lake at the foot of the falls, he was feeling the mental after-effects of the battle… 'Or had it been a massacre?' he considered with a grimace. The flashbacks continued; his blistering, burning skin reforming over and over, the feeling of overwhelming pressures, his mind wavering in and out of reason.

After hours experimenting with Spaciomancy, and with time for an overtaxed body to finally register all of its complaints, Will's high from survival had waned. His hangover included a pounding headache, a twitchy feeling of discomfort caused by raw muscles and skin several shades pinker than his normal brown tan. Looking at his reflection in the lake, he saw that his hair was a wild bushy mess.

"Good morning, Will."

"Oh hey... finally! You’re back! You, erm, okay?"

"Yes, Will, I have only now finished analysis on your recent battle. Also…

"Congratulations, you are now level eleven."

• Mana regeneration: Increased from 22 to 2056 per second.

Mana-pool capacity: Increased from 789 to exact value unknown. Estimated values lie between two hundred thousand, and one hundred and seven million.

Thermomancy (Theoretical), Congratulations, through academic understanding and advanced application of the forces of thermodynamics, as well as magical interactions with the effects of Thermomancy, you can develop mastery over the forces of heat.

Classification Level tables have now been reorganised to more efficiently display ability levels.

Before Will's eyes, two tables appeared:

Theoretical: Rank (0) - Limited or zero direct experience with the flavour of magic, may not be able to use magic upon command.

Experimental: Rank (1) - Recognises the flavour of magic, may be able to use magic upon command. Has few or limited skills associated with this magic.

Established: Rank (2) - Strongly recognises the flavour of magic, can use magic at will. Has an array of skills and abilities associated with this magic.

Advanced: Rank (3) - The flavour of this magic is ever-present and can be subconsciously summoned. Magic can be interwoven with other types, enhancing abilities or objects.

Artform (new): Rank (4 ) - Theoretical rank. Total mastery over a form of magic.

Arcanamancy (2) Established

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating Mana and magic.

Carnomancy (1) Experimental

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating organic flesh.

Chronomancy (2) Established

Proficiency over the flow of time.

Kinetomancy (2) Established

Proficiency over the forces of gravity and motion.

Neuromancy (1) Experimental

Proficiency over the magic of the mind and nervous system.

Spaciomancy (1) Experimental

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating the fabric of space.

Thermomancy (New) (0) Theoretical

Proficiency with the manipulation of thermodynamics.

Unknown (Unknown) Unknown

Unclassified type of magic.

"Woah..." Will said in a daze. "What... happened?" he distractedly wondered as he tried to take in all the information.

"You almost lost your mind, and then you nearly disintegrated. Destabilising the portal required absorbing less than a hundredth of a percent of the artefact's total power output, and yet, this was enough to destroy you, several times over. At the time, your overabundance of power enabled access to Flesh Conjuration, which reformed new flesh as quickly as it disintegrated. It was still a close thing. Reforming your Mana Nexus into an Inverted Mana Spire, also probably continued your existence in this world.

"There are some short and long-term consequences to this that you should be aware of. For example, it seems like you no longer have access to a Mana-pool, only the Mana you can regenerate. Conversely, your power regeneration level will continue to passively increase, in three days, you'll be at level twelve, nine days, level thirteen. At ninety days, level fourteen, and so on.

"Also, it appears that you may only have partial access to your Mana Regeneration. There may be some exercises that expand your mana access or even tap into your pool. However, this may require experimentation to determine."

"Waaaa??" Will said, still dazed. "My Mana-pools… gone? That seems bad..."

"Functionally, you're in a significantly better position than you were yesterday, as despite no longer having a reservoir of power to draw upon, you can now permanently channel magic at a rate that would have depleted your previous Mana-pool within a second. However, this change will significantly alter your capabilities and development going forward," Isk said gravely.

"Well… Damn." Will sighed.

"In all but one of your previous combat situations, Flesh-Shaping completely drained your Mana-pool, forcing you to rely on abilities that channelled energy from your mana regeneration. As this is higher, potentially, significantly higher than before, your effectiveness should be improved," Isk added.

Will had a question. "While collapsing the portal, my mind split into two, one part screaming, the other part calmly taking in the measure of infinity. It was insane. How did I do that?"

Isk replied after a moment. "I believe you created a new neuromantic ability based on your Mana-Sight and our mental exercises. It's called Partitioned Mind. How do you feel?"

"Hungover. Also, this weird Mana vortex has me on edge."

"How do you feel about what we did?" Isk pressed.

"You mean, do I have any regrets about blowing those portals up? No, absolutely not. I don't know why I'm so certain but I felt it, it was pure evil, Isk," Will said, sitting in the lake. "I guess I do regret not being able to get one of those artefacts for research, but I suspect that we would have been stuck on the other side if we tried to do so," he continued. "And this Mana Vortex... The Inverted Mana Spire?"

"One may describe it as an arcane cultivation construct."

"Fucking cultivation! No wonder there are so many caveats and bullshit complications," Will groaned.

"Like I said, we would have died without it," Isk said. Will harrumphed in response. "A question, however."

"Yeah?"

"How long do you think those portals have existed?" Isk asked in a blatant attempt to lead Will through a specific thought process.

"I don't know, Isk. They seemed relatively… if not temporary, then perhaps portable. I would have thought that a structure or housing of some sort would have been built around it if it had been a long-term sort of deal. Why do you ask, Isk?"

"That we happen to stumble into them, perhaps not even a week after meeting Nadia…" Isk started.

"Are you saying Lady Dimples has something to do with it?"

"Whether she is cause, effect, is influenced by or is able to influence anything on this world is something that cannot be determined at this time…"

"...But you bringing this up obviously means you want me to be thinking about it, don't you?"

"Perhaps, be mindful of certain patterns and coincidences. That's all."

"One thing's got me concerned however. We got jumped by those Dog Spiders, how?"

"Unknown."

"Well… Is there anything we can do to prevent that from happening again?" Will asked.

"Yes, I would suggest forming a new ability to help us detect invisible or hidden opponents…"

"Could I do that?" Will thought to himself. He considered, if he could create a new ability, how would it function? "I'm going to need you to be my calculator for a few hours, Isk."

* * *

Will liked to consider creativity as one of his strengths. It wasn't the type of visual creativity that would have gotten him into art school. Nor was it the genius some would associate with people with witty, conversational skills, good fashion sense, or any sort of musical ability.

No, Will's creativity stemmed from his ability to imagine, his desire to ask and wonder 'what if?', to destroy, create, re-assemble and learn through observation and experimentation. It wasn't quite the practical creativity of an engineer; no, Will tended to daydream, lingering on first principles while leaving the details to others. However, he had a knack for breaking down complex systems into bite-sized algorithms. Along with this, he had a preternatural ability for finding or creating the right equations to fit data trends. These talents gifted him the opportunity to work on the Artificial Super-Intelligence team at Fermilab.

Since his previous life ended, his strengths seemed irrelevant. What use was a physicist in a world of magic and monsters? However, since dismantling the portal and with his interactions with Spaciomancy, something inside of him rekindled. After giving up hope of ever living a life where those strengths were valued, he now wanted to experiment, break down magic, and build up new skills and systems.

Will created three new abilities in the hours before sunset through mostly trial and error. His first skill was the mere ability to develop skills. Arcanamancy: Skill Formation. This allowed him to visualise how his magical interactions behaved in an environment where the known laws and behaviours of magic, could be recreated and tested.

Next, he attempted to create a Mana Radar; however, Will settled for something that resembled sonar pulses after having issues with interference and return signatures. Arcanamancy: Mana Pulse, worked by converting five units of Mana into an arcane pulse that fired every ten seconds. It was a single-use ability that added additional information to his map and provided him with a new sense. Along with the arcane pulse, traces of Neuromancy radiated out of phase with natural sources in a spherical wave. This wave would alert Will to concentrated sources of Mana, while the neuromantic element would provide additional information of those sources’ intelligence and their general disposition to him. Or so he hoped.

Finally, he wanted a way to dispel cloaking abilities or hidden traps. Taking his new Mana Disruption ability, Will combined it with the spherical wave characteristics of Mana Pulse. With Arcanamancy: Mana Disruption Wave, instead of the channelled ability that previously required touch, he had a weaker, area-of-effect spell that he could now use to break stealth effects of unknown assailants. His skill list for Arcanamancy now looked like this:

• Mana-Sight and Manipulation

• Mana Disruption

• Mana Syphon

• Mana Leech

• Skill Creation

• Mana Pulse

• Mana Disruption Wave

"Well... here goes nothing," Will thought to himself as he silently radiated a pulse of Mana. His map refreshed to show six red dots and a substantial white source just beyond the tree line. His heart lurched as he shot up to his feet, turning around to stare at the forest, disbelieving of what his new, and previously untested ability was telling him. 'This has to be an error, right? A glitch?' he thought.

"Those red sources have a mana signature exactly like the Dog-Spiders you faced yesterday."

"And the big one?" Will said, panic rising.

"Readings suggest a level sixteen source, although it appears to have a neutral disposition," Isk said.

"Neutral?" Will thought back in question.

"Perhaps native megafauna using active stealth?" Isk said uncertainly. Will stared into the shadows between the trees in a vain attempt to see with arcana, what simple sight with light could not.

"Fine, looks like we get to field test two new skills back to back," Will said silently. "Ready, Isk?"

"Ready," Isk affirmed.

An invisible shockwave of arcana pulsed from his core, racing past the tree-line to reveal what was once hidden only moments before.

Reflexively, he reached deep within himself to call upon his Chronomancy, and this time, it answered with a roar. The smooth, infinitely granular flavour flooded his senses as his body bathed in a ghostly nimbus of light. The full extent of his newfound power manifested as an intoxicating high, a supreme sensation of control as the dominion of time bent before his will. Reality dilated to ten percent of its normal rate as he finally levelled his gaze upon the profiles of his enemies. In the distance, the angry red dots resolved themselves into black, chittering, hairy-limbed creatures of hate. He remembered how they clawed and gouged out channels of flesh, the pain as a flap of skin was all but sliced away from his calf. As the memories of Dog-Spiders bubbled to the forefront, his face contorted into a roar of rage.

His fist clenched by his sides as another hand, the invisible hand of intention and arcana groped for, and then grasped fist-size stones littering the lake bed. Will pulled on his magic and braced as an equal, but opposite force tugged upon him. Telekinesis sent rocks zipping out of the water, and in the slow time, light and sound dimmed and tinted. As stones erupted from the lake, conical spires of water formed, narrowing into glittering trails of vapour in the morning sun.

At this distance, most of his stones spun away to miss and detonate well behind his targets in plumes of bark and splinters. But even still, it wasn't long before the first horror exploded in a cloud of mist and shredded limbs. A second and a third Dog-Spider disintegrated under the onslaught of his missiles and with the nearest threats dealt with, he scanned the tree line for the largest mana source... and then froze.

He saw a… someone? He blinked several times. It appeared, and as graceful as a glacier, it rose from a crouch in the slow time. The person was glinting black and shadows. A large hood obscured most of their facial features, however, as he squinted, he saw details; overlapping leaves of metal formed a skirt of mail, while dark boots and a blue cape made up the rest of the person's outfit. They held a tall, ivory staff that contrasted brilliantly with the overall inky-black attire. He was then drawn to a set of preternaturally bright eyes, like twin chips of arctic ice. Eyes that betrayed as much the shock of being noticed as Will felt at noticing anyone at all.

Will froze in that fraction of eternity as a thousand thoughts dogpiled an awareness thoroughly unprepared for such an encounter. 'It looks human? Is it.. He or she... alone?... And the clothes... Is that medieval armour? Was it from this world? Is it hostile? Malicious? No… at least according to Neuromancy. But...'

"Will, powerful Neuromancy detected, activate defences," Isk said, and as he parsed the warning, there was an inquisitive but insistent presence in his mind. In absolute terror, he immediately slammed down his mental walls. Abject panic bubbled just beneath the surface as a torrent of questions flooded a misfiring mind. Meanwhile, Will failed to notice that the now-glowing ivory staff, was not in fact, a staff at all.

Even within the serenity of Dilated-Time, the arrow moved as fast as a bullet. It struck Will in the chest, piercing a lung. He was lifted by the impact, skating backwards above the water's surface. Time returned to normal as he splashed into the waters and the hot, sharp pain on his shoulder finally registered.

For the briefest of moments, he was back on a street corner, the older kid whose face he'd never forget, lying in a rapidly growing pool of blood. His chest was on fire, it was hard to breathe again.

The splash and submersion into the cool, clear water ended the memory. Will felt his flesh magic pull water into the wound as it healed himself. His shock drowned out his fury, and his ever-present fear slowly transformed into a profound sense of disappointment.

"This world fucking sucks!?" he groaned as he pushed himself out of the water. Had he finally met someone, a real... person? Only for them to shoot him with a freaking arrow.

He tightened his grip on his mind wall. He noted that he was out in the open, could he run? No, he was too exposed, could he fight? And then he realised that amazingly, Flesh-Shaping had fully healed his wound and he was flush still with Mana.

The arrow shaft broke off with a touch as the embedded remnants unexpectedly dissolved into his body. 'That was… erm… okay…?' he thought, perplexed and sparing a small moment to consider just how strange his newfound power made his magic. Either way, he was very grateful for how quickly his body now healed.

The sky darkened as fat, heavy drops of water fell into the lake. A muffled, distant churn of thunder drew Will's attention back to the present.

His assailant approached him, scissored steps adding to the ripples in the lake, bow drawn and aimed directly at his forehead. It screamed something commanding but completely unintelligible. The sound was melodic, high, like the noises made by songbirds in distress. With the pain ebbing away, he could think. According to his Mana Pulse, there were still hostile creatures moving onto the lake bed and yet, despite shooting and almost killing him, the shouting person in front of him appeared, at least to his magic, to not be hostile. 'That’s a fucking glitch,' he thought ruefully, but yet he realised they had not reshot, not yet anyway. 'Did it want something from him? Was it even aware of the other monsters? They were invisible to sight, and the archer's back was still facing them... Does it even know those things are there?' he wondered.

He pointed and shouted, "Look!" as he pulsed another wave of disruption.

It snarled another inexplicable command, seemingly prepared to fire an arrow between his eyes.

But Will was ready. He rose up from the waters to a half-crouch. The shadowed face of the figure loomed closer; it continued snarling sounds, unfamiliar words from an unknown language Will guessed, as it drew near enough to use Gravikinesis.

It's a... she, he realised, her knuckles white as she held her bow in a death grip. Her stern expression turned into confusion as she first glanced at his vanishing wound, and then the broken arrow shaft in his hand.

And then Will channelled his arcana, the weight of everything surrounding him increased sevenfold. The woman crumpled to her knees and avoided falling face-first into the waters only by clinging on to her bow. Meanwhile, he held out his hand and levitated the arrow shaft just above his palm, before Telekinetically shoving it at the nearest monster. It squealed loudly and splashed in the waters as it died. He hoped that this display would draw her attention, that maybe if she wasn't hostile, then perhaps they could talk. Will was about to release his grip on his magic when he suddenly lost sight of the woman. It was an oily sensation, like his eyes and his magical senses could only slide past the point where he knew she was supposed to be. He sent forth another Mana Disruption Wave, but it was already too late.

Time slowed as he instinctively re-entered Dilated-Time and she re-appeared in the air right in front of him. She had sprung up from a crouch to leap with gleaming, twinned, long-knives drawn and pointed squarely at his chest. He had just enough time to grab wrists and brace as air rushed out of his lungs under the force of her two-footed kick. And then a blinding pulse of… something… ripped the air from his lungs and drained the colour from the world. The world tunnelled to a point as he found himself crashing out of Dilated-Time and splashing, yet again into the lake.

It was all he could do to keep his head above water and push against blades whose tips shivered just an inch above his chest. She was screaming, fury contorting her features into a mask of rage, his tired limbs trembled under the strain of the woman's strength. He grasped for his magic… and... nothing.

'Holy fucking shit!?' he growled in panic. Distantly he could sense their flavours but there was no substance behind them. He glanced at his UI, Mana Regeneration, zero-point-two units… 'zero-point-two??? Out of what should have been over two thousand? What the fuck had she just done to me?' Will’s thoughts were hysterical now as a memory of his first days on this world flashed; the shadow monster ripping his arm off, the Puma-Pug clawing at his rib cage as rain and blood pooled in his eyes.

And this was just another monster in a world of barbaric creatures wanting to eat him, or worse, except that he wasn't the same person who fell from the sky all those weeks ago. Even without his magic, he was different. He was less pliant, less amenable to the cruelties of an indifferent universe. He'd fought every day for his right to exist on this world, and now those instincts along with the accumulated spite and rage came surging forth as he snarled. When he stared upwards, vision half obscured by water, Will thought he saw the expression on his assailant shift if only for an instant. Briefly, he saw a person, not a creature consumed by rage staring down at him with an expression he couldn't recognise.

And then he acted. He released the grip on one wrist and roared as one of her blades sunk through his ribs and deep into his chest. Fuelled by this spike of pain, his newly freed hand grasped the largest stone he could find beneath the waters and swung. It travelled an arc that would have had the stone smashing against the archer's temple.

Eyes wide, she barely reacted in time, a hunched shoulder doing just enough to turn a stunning blow into a glancing one. She flinched away from him. Will tried to sit up but failed. The blade in just below his left collar bone made it hard to do so. She was a few steps away from him now and cautiously pacing backwards. Can I heal this wound with just zero-point… ? He checked again, 'ah...' He grinned weakly as he realised his regeneration had increased to five point-six-units per second. Cheeks puffed as he let out an explosive breath and pulled at the dagger from his chest with an angry groan. It slid out with almost as much pain as it made punching into his chest, and with it, streamed an alarmingly steady channel of blood. Without the usual tingling sensation of flesh re-sealing itself, Will was unsure if he could even survive this wound. He stared at the bloody knife in his hands and remembered something before he quickly suppressed his thoughts. He stumbled up to his feet to stagger forwards, splashing as he came towards where the woman was standing. She backed away, her narrow gaze blue needles of ice undiminished by the shadow cast by her cowl. At the right spot, he sank to his knees and reached underwater, fumbling for a few moments as he searched by feel, where he hoped it would still be. And then he grinned with a dark joy as he lifted her Ivory longbow out of the lake.

He noticed with some satisfaction, the briefest of eye twitches from the woman in front of him. Was that a mote of chagrin he detected from his impeccable foe? Briefly, he considered taunting the woman with her own weapon; perhaps making a show of aiming it and pretending to draw. But he had no arrows, little strength remaining, and besides, it just wasn't his style. If this were to be his last moments alive, he would rather spend it studying an honest to god, magical fantasy weapon, one complete with gilded runes and humming with arcane power.

He gazed at the longbow as it balanced on his lap. He took in the silver details and ran fingers across the carvings along its surface. He could feel its inherent arcana, its channels and pathways and the flow of Mana. Its design was as ingenious as it was beautiful. Beneath the surface lay an intrinsic desire to consume even more, as if not only could he activate… something… using his magic, but it would accept his power, willingly, like a desert would to a glass of freshwater.

Absently he noticed the slight itch of his skin trying to repair itself, however, whether due to his collapsed lung or blood loss, his vision already tunnelled to a point. His last thought before unconsciousness was a sudden yearning for his best friend.

'JJ would've fucking loved to see this.'

Nine

Adeena

Had she really just killed him?

Beneath a rapidly fading pride, fear, and fury, remained something leaden, a guilt that made her feel small and little better than a child.

Snatches of memory replayed within a mind still making sense of those moments of madness. Effni’s breathing had only now ratcheted down to a merely ragged wheeze as she watched his arms fall limp by his sides.

He knelt statuesque and unconscious in the lake, bow neatly balanced on his lap. The iron scent of diluted blood filled the air as raindrops peppered the water around her. Her hands trembled from the cold, or from something else.

Yes, this forest was technically a war zone. Yes, he was from a race she had never encountered before, and no, that did not excuse her actions; in many ways that fact, in her mind, made things far worse.

The moment she had lost control was obvious in retrospect. It was when he had somehow compelled her to kneel. ‘Kneel!? Out of all the indignities!…’ Even the memory summoned a wave of indignation that roiled in the pit of her stomach, But it wasn’t some sort of slaver’s compulsion, was it? Or at least, no more a form of compulsion than a boot to the backside.

His magic… He could clearly make things move, levitate and perhaps fall or even crush? She shuddered.

She remembered the sensation of the portals and their abrupt absence. It was like the discontinuity of dread, a lightening of shoulders previously overburdened by a pool of sludge. With her call for information answered by the forest, she was guided to the event’s location half a day later. There, all that remained was a circle of burnt trees. Several unidentified creatures lay in various degrees of seared and smouldering. In the centre of it all was a patch of frozen ash and forest undergrowth. She had never seen anything like it before. She spent time writing notes, drawing crude diagrams of the remains of creatures entirely unfamiliar for her.

A single set of footprints led to this tree-line location, to this… person, sitting cross-legged in the lake. He had hairless, dark brown skin covering a skinny, wiry frame. At first, she thought it was some kind of malformed Torbi or even the unlikely offspring of a mixed Torbi-Reaeryn pairing, however unlikely that seemed. But an extended, second glance dismissed such notions. If anything, beyond the darkened skin, rounded face and shrunken ears, the creature in front of her could pass for a member of her own race.

He was still, as placid as the waters around him, dark, wet skin that at once glistened in the sunlight as well as drank it in. And then there was his magic… Non-somatic, not even a verbal component as far as she could sense, yet the air around him shimmered.

A cold torrent of power flowed in a wave towards where he sat even though of his actual arcane presence, she could feel nothing at all. Even the memory of the silken chill gave her goosebumps. Effni had watched for hours, wondering who or what this person was. ‘Was this a demon from the hell world? And if not, where was he from? And why was he here, now?’

And then he formed baubles of glass from the air. These glistened and rotated like liquid jewels floating untethered. There Effni sat mesmerised as ever more complex structures formed in the air in front of him. They were like illusions that could twist and bend perception. She almost gasped when his arm ventured into one of these structures to appear to emerge at a completely different angle. Never had she seen anything like this before, not even heard stories of anything like this before.

She stayed for just a little longer even though she desperately needed to leave. With the urgency of her mission eventually winning out over her curiosity, she stood, to move when suddenly, he shot up from the waters, clearly agitated. Effni’s Shadow-Mind talent vanished as a powerful detection spell washed over the tree-line. Off guard, she drew on the longbow, and while hearing a whip-crack of thunder, aimed in expectation of an attack. Feeding mana into the artefact, a glittering thread coalesced out of thin air gathering the tension her pull had wrought. It was the first time she had used the weapon and, unbeknownst to her at the time, holding the bow fully drawn for more than an instant was impossible. The arrow was already sailing through the air when silver eyes met her own. Time seemed to slow as the bolt pierced left of his heart; he flew backwards upon impact. Arrows fired from Lysander’s Longbow could disintegrate the torsos of normal men, and yet, here he was, with shaft merely sunken into flesh.

She approached, drawing another arrow. She saw the man break the protruding shaft. There was still blood on his chest, but somehow the wound disappeared in front of her very eyes. ‘Issealla’s grace!’ Effni cursed to herself.

She considered fleeing.

Instead, clenching Lysander’s Longbow, Effni held her ground. Demanding he relinquish non-existent weapons while releasing his grip on arcana, she approached, her melee fighter’s instincts driving her closer.

The memory of an invisible hand forcing her into the waters replayed itself. Vision tunnelling and fighting to stay above the water’s surface. All she could do was watch as the remains of her arrow shaft levitated and then sped away. She flinched, knowing that at that moment, he could have killed her. With the indignation of being forced to her knees and thoroughly outmatched, fury overcame sense.

She reacted by leaping into the air to blast him with a focused pulse of spirit strong enough to neuter an Archmage. Meanwhile, her Neuromancy, as battle-honed as any of her martial abilities, sort to probe the mind of a target no longer shielded by neuromantic defences.

Typically, it gave her the foresight to avoid blows, discern feints or a cunning foe’s trickery; however, for a brief moment, she saw herself through his eyes. This insight came with the prevailing impression that what he saw was... just another monster. It was a thought that filled her with as much shame as being forced to her knees, and yet… What reason in his eyes had he to think otherwise?

‘I need to leave…’ Effni thought, coming back to herself. ‘…No. I need to collect the longbow, and then leave,’ she self-corrected.

She moved, cautious steps adding to ripples in the shallows, blade drawn, hands still trembling with fatigue, and perhaps something else. ‘Fine, I’ll drag his body onto the shore line so that it doesn’t rot in the lake,’ she added, her sense of nobility bargaining with her urgency and shame. ‘No, I do not have the time to bury him, nor assemble a pyre in the rain,’ she argued silently to herself.

With eyes transfixed on the priceless artefact of war, it took her a while to notice she was shivering. Like the chill touch of iced silk, Effni felt the flow of an arcane current and froze. Less than four paces away, eyes roamed a chest covered in blood but once again absent any wound, mortal or otherwise that she could discern.

He gasped, chest inflating in one extended inhalation. Effni found herself stumbling back, feet suddenly unsure upon the smooth pebbles below. Like in a nightmare, he rose to stand as heavy raindrops fell. His face was an expressionless mask as silver eyes met hers once more. Effni reflexively cast Shadow-Mind, allowing her the time to choose whether to run or fight.

A small part of her wondered at the silliness of her momentary grief… And how it was now replaced by abject terror at the looming figure rising in front of her.

His negation spell promptly ripped apart Shadow-Mind, leaving her exposed and in the open. And then his silver eyes shifted, first to the side and then beyond.

She suppressed a flinch as dozens of chittering, screeching creatures erupted behind her. They were too loud and numerous to be something small or insignificant, however, instead of turning around, she was transfixed by the sight of a dozen fist-sized pebbles rising from the waters to hover just above the man’s head.

His eyes returned to hers, but this time the gaze carried with it, a question? She tried to read his mind, but it was closed to her. The same motive force used before on pebbles gracefully lifted the Ivory longbow from beneath the waters. He grasped it, and for a moment they stared at each other, comprehension dawning within her. As he tossed the bow across the six paces that separated them, Effni withdrew three arrows from her quiver before catching the bow, pivoting to face towards the tree line, notching arrow to ethereal string.

There were more creatures than she initially thought, at least a hundred, far more than she had arrows for in any case. They skittered on the tree-line, some entangled in distant branches above, others were reeved in magic akin to black steam. They were similar to the charred remains sketched earlier in the day: wet black orbs blinking independently from within clusters of a dozen eyes, six to eight limbs supporting a torso no larger than her own, everything covered in thick, black, bristling hairs.

Watching them whole and alive was a very different experience, an aura of maleficent intent tainted a hive-like cunning that roiled off the masses as they gathered. They jittered and shook, movements sudden and erratic, as they assembled in the moments before a hunt.

Whip-crack sounds snapped to her side before the nearest creatures exploded. And she was aiming, drawing and loosing. She gathered three more arrows and loosed again. Bands of light temporarily flickered in and out of existence as she pivoted her body from target to target; each one turning into a gout of red mist and black gore. However, even had she double the arrows, it still wouldn’t have been enough.

A handful of the monsters ventured into the waters to be promptly taken out by stones moving faster than sight. Effni focused on targets farther away, creatures that seemed to flank or ensnare, slowly backing into deeper waters as she did so.

There was a sharp sting on her thigh. And then the ping of something bouncing off scale-mail. She ignored it at first, in favour of keeping her rhythm. Her quiver grew noticeably lighter as she heard a sound or perhaps a word from the man behind her. And just like that, she was out of arrows. In the same motion, she secured her bow to her back before unsheathing her knife.

Something didn’t feel quite right; it was her leg she realised, it was stiff, numbed, and then she saw it, a feathered needle stuck out from just below the steel skirt of her hauberk. She ripped it out and advanced.

Unbalanced by her numbing leg and single blade, her motions were raw, vicious and graceless, but monsters still died by the dozen nevertheless. The thunder crack of stones had abated; as she turned to see why, she saw him, grimacing in concentration mere paces away. Black needles seemed to materialise in the air before falling with the rain, hundreds of them. She grinned a toothy, bloody smile before resuming the killing. A sweeping slash through the squealing torso of a monster was followed by a butterfly kick and another slash. Her speed and strength allowed lethal cuts to transfer momentum from one attack to the next. Her companion followed in her wake, a shadow to her back seen only from the corner of her eye. A trail of corpses littered the lake now, dozens of them forming mounds of dead horrors as she made her way to the shore. But she was beginning to slow, left leg now completely insensate with the rest of her body feeling heavy from more than just exhaustion.

They made it to the bank before she stumbled, she recovered quickly to find her vision doubling and colours fading. She was covered in mud and blood, some of it was even her own. But if she could still move, she could still stab. When she once again heard the whip-crack of projectiles and exploding trees, she realised that there were no longer any foes within reach.

She hadn’t intended to collapse face first as blades dropped from unfeeling hands, but she supposed that on balance, this was a fair penance for stabbing a stranger in the chest.

* * *

“Is she dead?” Will asked Isk silently. He fell to the sand, letting out a breath of exhaustion and relief. Not only was he spent from that battle, but he was also still recovering from whatever mana-crippling attack the archer had made earlier. He glanced to check his UI, mana-regeneration read ‘one thousand one hundred and fifty-two out of two thousand, one hundred and eleven’. He rubbed at where the dart wound used to be, remembering how Carnomancy had convulsively expelled contaminated blood, along with Isk’s ‘Neurotoxicity Warning.’ He shivered.

“She still breathes. Whether the neurotoxin paralytic will be lethal really depends on the dosage she received, metabolism, natural resistances and many other factors beyond my ability to model. However, if I were to postulate, I suspect the numbers these entities needed to assemble would suggest non-lethal outcomes in otherwise limited quantities.”

“What we just encountered was definitely not limited quantities, Isk. Is there anything we can do for her?”

“Beyond basic first aid and magic?” Isk replied. Will stood, groaning with the effort. Closer, the shallow rise and fall of her shoulder blades indicated to him that she was indeed still breathing. As he turned her over, she was surprisingly light even with the armour, especially having had first-hand experience of her strength and sure-footedness.

Rolling over to lie on her side, Will froze, mouth agape as her hood fell back to reveal long, pointy ears.

They stood perhaps a handspan from base to tapered tip, narrow but muscular with visible tendons at their base. They stuck out perpendicular to a head curtained by straight, raven black hair. Blood, mud and rainwater did little to mask delicate features that at rest, looked so different from the snarling death-wraith of just a few moments ago.

“She’s an… elf?” Will asked. Isk was silent. “I… wow, okay then.”

Will stared stunned, mind whirling with the possible implications. Unconsciously he leaned closer, registering for the first time details that had previously escaped him. Small… They looked like tiny light-brown mushrooms. They freckled the space beneath her ears in a patch that flowed down her neckline. She had bone white, creaseless skin with the same fine hair, pores and goose pimples covering his own. Mouth parted, Will saw enlarged canines that, along with more angular cheek lines, gave her a somewhat vulpine countenance; however at a distance, and beyond the ears, she appeared just like a normal human woman.

For a long while, Will stared into the mist shrouding the waterfalls. Rain fell across the lake. Was he in some kind of fantasy world or afterlife after all? There was magic, dangerous beasts, wondrous and enchanted landmarks and artefacts… And elves.

For a long moment, he just stared, thoughts turning as the image of her and the reality it signified burned itself into his memories.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. His mind wandered back to the battle, of his crazy gamble, that fleeting moment of understanding, of how he might have died without help, and the glorious sense of no longer facing the monsters alone. But why had she tried to kill him in the first place? Memory of the arrow and then subsequent stab wound brought a sour lump that lodged in his throat. He wanted to trust, to believe he’d made an ally, or perhaps even a friend, but weeks on this world had engendered a mentality for survival, a paranoia, a ruthless independence.

He grunted as stiff muscles protested moving again. After walking over, he released bindings holding the weapon to the woman’s back and carefully slid it away. With the item once again on his lap, he viewed it, this time aided by the use of Mana-Sight.

“Holy shit.” Will gasped as the true complexity of the item was revealed to him.

On the surface of the ivory staff lay alien characters engraved with silver. With Mana-Sight, he could see the flows of arcana leading to finer structures beneath.

These were written throughout the surface of the object in dense scripts. Subdivided blocks that resembled paragraphs and pages of a book covered the entire surface of the artefact multiple times over. It formed an onion-skinned, three-dimensional latticework of arcana that was as much a story, as a piece of programming or machinery.

“Isk, are you getting all of this?”

“Yes, Will. This is fascinating. Please continue to inspect this item. I’m making a full recording of everything you see.”

“Yeah,” Will mumbled, rotating and gazing across the item as he knelt. “I have a theory,” Will said absently, transfixed by the tantalising amount of knowledge just beyond his fingertips. “It feels like there’s a… like a foundation but over time, new layers have been added onto it like tree rings. There’s probably two or three hundred of these layers. With each layer, it’s like I sense a different flavour, different magics? Modifications to the bow maybe?”

“I concur, perhaps subsequent wielders of this item have chosen to customise this weapon?” Isk postulated.

* * *

Blue skies and a mid-afternoon’s sun had come to replace a persistent morning rain. Will had moved some distance away from the battle as carrion eaters and the sounds of predators threatened to swarm the recently slain carcasses. He debated leaving the unconscious woman where she lay, reasoning that had their roles been reversed, she would have done the same. Additionally, he had no real idea of how she’d react to being touched, let alone manhandled and abducted without her consent. However, beyond the fact that leaving her here to be eaten and god knows what else would have been a total dick move, she was literally the first person he had met from this world, and Will had a mountain of questions.

He was closer to the falls beside the tree-line that verged the lakeside. The sounds of the distant waters seemed to ease some of the tension and weariness clinging on to him. Isk had been mostly silent, allowing Will to process some of his thoughts and ruminations. They must have just killed hundreds of those dog-sized spider monsters, the acrid stench of their blood still staining his nostrils. Sounds of their screeching echoed through his daydreams despite half-hearted attempts to meditate. Beyond the few peaceful days that culminated in his descent from the falls, every moment on this world seemed fraught with danger and hostility. He knew people for whom this new reality would be heaven, a Valhalla power fantasy come true. There were days where he had imagined life within a DnD campaign being preferable to whatever tedious first-world problem he encountered that day. However, the constant need for alertness, stress, and loneliness was chipping away at his soul.

Will glanced over to where the woman lay and froze. Open eyes stared right back at him. They were the aquamarine of ice water, blue like gas ignited by flame. Holding her gaze was like looking into the sun, but he couldn’t look away. ‘Had she just awoken? Why hadn’t she moved? Was she still paralysed or just… studying me?’ His thumping chest forced him to unhitch his diaphragm and exhale. He wanted to say something, do something to break the tension, but instead, he simply waited, curious to see what would happen next.

Her penetrating stare persisted for too long a moment before she rolled onto her rear and grimaced with obvious pain. Hands rubbed her right thigh. ‘A wound? Or was it stiffness?’ He tensed as she rummaged inside her rucksack. She retrieved to his relief, a brown fabric-covered flask, and then drank deeply before using the remaining water to wash her face. She looked around, staring at the lake, the falls; she frowned before placing a hand on the ground and then, something… It was like a subsonic thump of unknown arcana flowed into the Earth before with what felt like a deeper, more resonant flood returned back towards the woman. She seemed to straighten imperceptibly, shoulders just a little higher, her back; less slumped. For a long moment, her gaze was fixed, not unfocused, but as if she was watching something, something unmoving in the middle distance. Will snatched a gaze in the same direction but all he could see was forest, and beyond that, the distant, mile-high cliff.

She let out a stifled grunt, drawing his gaze back as she stood, left leg taking the brunt on her weight. She hobbled to the water and refilled her bladder-skin, drank and continued to wash mud and blood from her face and armour. After limping back, she riffled through the contents of her pack.

‘A fucking bag of holding?’ Will thought in awe as she at first retrieved a crossbow, no, a harpoon gun? And then various bottles and trinkets.

At the sight of a bandolier of small throwing daggers being withdrawn Will entered Dilated-Time and held his breath. In ten percent Dilated-Time, what must have been the jerk of her head seemed to happen as if she was underwater, black hair lazily flowing as her gaze snapped to his own. He saw the daggers float to the ground and exhaled air as light as helium. He released his grip on the magic, realising he had also subconsciously lifted stones into the air beside him. Her remaining hand slowly removed itself from the rucksack holding something... or somethings. They were small and had details Will could hardly see, Will’s heart raced and he was on guard, but the effort to keep her motions slow and obvious mollified him to some degree. She reached into her ear, appearing to place the object before delicately shifting it deep inside the cavity of her ears. And then she looked at him, reached out with an open palm and offered it.

She spoke, words melodious and flowing into one another like bird song. It was utterly unintelligible. Her gaze was impassive but by the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders, she wasn’t as calm as she tried to appear, but perhaps he was reading too much into it. He tore his gaze away from her eyes to settle upon a small object, something no larger than a marble, but with a strange shape as if the mould of something organic. Considering that she had just placed something in her ear, the implication was obvious.

Will wasn’t usually the trusting sort and given recent events he was far from a trusting mood. He knew not of this world’s customs or technologies, weapons or traps. Still feeling the lingering effects of the spell that winded and temporarily removed his magic, Will resisted the urge to rub his solar plexus and he looked closely at the bone-coloured object with golden runes. The woman spoke again, flutey sounds punctuated by insistent gestures that appeared to offer it.

She flinched when Will grasped it using Telekinesis; it slowly spun as he floated it towards the space between them. Will gazed at it using Mana-Sight and saw a tiny filament of Neuromancy connecting it with what must have been its twin, inside the woman’s ear. Immediately, he raised his neuromantic walls in defence of an attack or subtle manipulation. Though one look at the now clearly exasperated woman before him put the lie to any misgivings of subtlety.

Cynicism, suspicion and years of mimic-heavy D and D sessions urged him to take caution, to treat every potential trinket as a trap, every person with aims at odds to his own and with motives unknown and potentially unknowable.

But he had to gamble, if this was really a shortcut to communication, maybe it was worth the very likely risks. ‘Still, no need to be stupid about it,’ Will thought.

“Isk, could you watch for, mind control or... worse?” Will said silently.

“I’ve inspected the runes all across the surface and I’m running simulations as to potential vulnerabilities. Estimated time till completion, seven seconds.”

She was frowning, frowning as if even with Will’s mental barriers raised, she could still read his thoughts, or at least, gather a sense of his and Isk’s conversations. He redoubled his mental walls, and coincidentally her frown deepened. “Completed, nineteen potential vulnerabilities detected. New neuromantic counter-intrusion options available,” Isk continued.

“Is it safe to touch?”

“Not completely, but we may be able to put up a nasty surprise if anything undesirable happens.”

“Okay, but how does it work exactly?” Will asked silently.

“I require more data. I will actively monitor its effects and counter any intrusion or harmful influences.”

“Alright,” Will thought back as he grasped the item and brought it closer to his eyes. She spoke again, Will heard the whistling sounds but chose to ignore it as he continued to look at the object in his palm. When he heard the faintest echo of… not speech but understanding, he froze. It was soft, as if whispered by someone from the bottom of a well.

(Your ears, not your eyes, Mage-ling. The closer one is to the other, the better we might converse.)

‘So this is like a Babelfish?’ Will thought, suppressing a smile of wonder. He considered his feelings, on the one side, this woman in front of him represented everything wrong with this uncomprehendingly violent world, and despite fighting side by side, he was far from trust. And yet, here was a potential opportunity to learn, experience, and finally connect with someone else.

He was also talking to an honest to god alien - or at least in this context, he was. This was almost certainly first contact, the first time, to his knowledge, humanity had ever encountered an intelligent life form out there in the multiverse… Didn’t he have a responsibility to represent the best of humanity? Even still, she had been a total dick, and so he wasn’t going to take his past treatment lightly. As he placed the object in his ear, he felt the whirlwind of peril and possibility spin like a roulette wheel, a microcosm of this second life.

“Do… you… understand me?” she said. The flutey tone had not completely gone but was as faint now as her meaning was, just an instant before. Instead, he heard what had to be a European accent speaking in a deliberate and almost patronising manner. Was this just his cognitive biases giving her that voice, or did she really sound that pompous?

“Yaaaassss,” Will said, dragging out the word in mock impersonation of her extended syllables.

“Very well,” she continued somewhat curtly. “I am Effni Naridia, Elodin Ranger and Guardian of the Qaseri. If I may trouble you with a few questions?” she said with just enough superciliousness to immediately raise Will’s hackles.

Before fully parsing out all the details of her… title?… Will replied.

“No.”

He’d spoke the word clearly and without inflection. Doubting that she had been properly understood, she repeated.

“No?”

“No. This is not how this will work, Guardian,” Will said, lacing the last word with as much scorn as possible. This time, her frown was tinged with steel as both altered their postures.

Will found himself breathing heavily. While the pain in his chest was now just a phantom, it was as if the tips of every hurt and misery suffered on this world attempted to crest above the surface. He pushed it down with a painful swallow.

“You tried to kill me. I’ll ask the questions. Oh, and I’m going to keep the bow as compensation.”

“You can’t just...” she began, straightening from her hobble. Will rose, alongside him, half a dozen fist-sized rocks lifted into the air.

“Just try and stop me.” He growled.

“That longbow, nations have fought over it. Thousands have died over it. You may not keep that weapon,” she said through gritted teeth. Will was prepared to go all out, anger, adrenaline and stress overriding rationality. A few moments passed as they glared at each other. “Besides, I didn’t try to kill you.”

“Oh!?” Will snapped.

“No. And you know that I didn’t, don’t you?” she said, gaze unwavering.

“Then why...”

“Accident. Misfire. It happens,” she answered, interrupting his question. “I… regret what happened. I apologise... for what that’s worth,” she added. Was that real sincerity? Something within him loosened. He felt his jaw muscles unbunch, and his shoulders relax. “I don’t want to fight anymore, but I will kill you to retrieve that bow... or die in the attempt.”

Here was this injured and unarmed person, preparing to die for a bow. This was stupid. He was being stupid. He didn’t really want the bow, he had virtually zero interest in archery. It was only the nested runic circuitry he wanted to study. But if this weapon was so valuable… Armies and nations? The thought of which sparked a cascade of questions, questions with answers far more valuable to him than a weapon he didn’t need. Will lowered his rocks and tried to rein in his breathing.

“Fine, but you’re still answering questions.”

“My bow….” Effni countered.

“Nope. Answers first.”

“I really don’t have time for…”

“Twenty questions, answer them, then you get your bow,” Will said. A series of micro-expressions flashed by too quickly for Will to label, but he did notice her ears, they moved independently, twitching and curling on their own volition. Her impassive stare returned as, with some difficulty, she lowered herself to the ground, right leg sprawled out.

“Then let us hear your first question,” she said with a sigh.

* * *

“How’s your leg?” he asked. Effni blinked. Was this some crude attempt to put her off balance, or did he genuinely care?

“Bruised, though even now feeling returns,” she answered. “May I ask why you ask?”

“I could try to… with, erm...magic?”

“No!” Effni said too quickly, too sharply. “No, thank you. And... those were your first two questions.”

‘Oh... that was a mistake,’ she thought as his countenance darkened. Her fingers twitched as if missing the reassuring weight of knives in her hands.

“Fine. Tell me then, how do you shoot and stab someone by accident?” he asked.

‘That... is indeed a wonderful question,’ Effni considered. She tried to ease a heart still racing after her nigh-suicidal gambit. She was exhausted, anxious, poisoned, hobbled, and almost entirely out of mana. She had no business challenging someone who, in her current state, could kill her in an eye blink. ‘No. I’ll play diplomat, for once, be patient, for once. Oh wouldn’t Dulcinea be proud!’

Thoughts of her sister turned the complexion of her thoughts sour. She considered how to answer, what to say, what not to say, and turned to stare at alien eyes with irises of liquid silvered-grey.

“Yesterday, there was a sound in the night, like rolling thunder, but louder, longer. I went to investigate and when I found the source, all that remained was ash, the remains of beasts heretofore unseen by me, and a single set of footprints. Those footprints led to you. I was about to leave when you revealed my presence and in my... surprise, I...” Effni swallowed. “…Loosed an... unintended arrow.”

Usually, his face was surprisingly easy to read, whether confusion or anger. For moments after she finished speaking, however, his expression remained blank.

“And then you stabbed me?”

“You practically stabbed yourself!” she said.

He stood, clearly frustrated. “Why? I clearly wasn’t trying to kill you and yet…”

“You forced me to kneel!” Effni growled as she hobbled up to match his aggressive posture. He scoffed.

“Kneel!?”

“Yes, kneel, forcing one to kneel is a grave insult. At that moment, I thought you a slaver.”

“A slaver? What!? Was I the one skulking in the shadows, dressed in black, armed to the teeth and surrounded by overgrown insects?” he countered.

“I am not the monster, not your enemy, those beasts we killed however, are my enemy!” Effni shouted, fists clenched.

“Yeah, I figured that one out on my own, thanks.”

Effni yelled in frustration. She looked away from the being who apparently had the infuriating talent to send her to the extremes, fear, fury, sorrow, pity, terror and now, anger. She released a deep, slow breath. “Again, I apologise. What else would you want from me?” she said, breaking the pause.

“Well… I’ve already asked for the bow.”

“Not… The… Bow,” she snarled through gritted teeth. He sighed, seeming to deflate. He took a few paces to sit, feet submerged and eyes on the distant wall of falling mist.

“Fine.” He sighed. “Let’s start over. I’m Doctor William Ashley Jenkins. You can call me Will, if you want.”

She stood there for a few moments, before sitting to join him by the lake looking towards the same distance.

“Happy to make your acquaintance, Will. I am Guardian Effni Naridia, Elodin Ranger. You may call me Effni, if you wish.” She continued, “So you’re a healer?”

“Huh? Oh, no, not a medical doctor. I’m a doctor of philosophy, one who has spent an inordinate amount of time in academic research.”

“Philosopher? So you would be considered a learned man in your homeland?”

“Yeah…”

“But you sound as if such things aren’t valued by your people?” she replied.

“I guess, by some people… For most, only wealth matters. I mean, isn’t that the same everywhere? Or are things different in the Kessari? And that’s what? A peoples? Race? A nation?”

“Qaseri...” Effni corrected. “It’s this forest, these trees mark the boundary of the Qaseri Nation. From the verge of this very tree line, and for ten days’ march in every other direction.”

“And does this nation have cities? Towns or villages? What are the laws? Customs?”

Idly, Effni wondered whether that counted as a single question, or five. Were they even still playing that game? If not, she should just ask for her bow and be done with this? As she thought on how best to answer, she considered turning this into an opportunity to extract some information for herself.

“Perhaps this question would be better answered if I knew from which land you hail? As it may be easier to discuss differences than list every single law and custom of our peoples, would it not?” Effni said.

“I doubt you’d have heard of where I come from.”

“I have travelled almost every…”

“No. Just… Look. All I want to know is if there is somewhere I can trade, get some clothing or stay somewhere that’s safe, somewhere, you know, that’s civilised. I saw you and… And I thought, ‘oh great, maybe she could help’, but instead you’re firing arrows and plunging daggers into my chest. So now… I’m not even sure I want to run into more of your kind, if that’s the kind of welcome I’m likely to receive.”

Effni bristled at the accusation of incivility partly because it was well founded, but swallowed her protest in favour of building rapport.

“The nearest city is Drizzik. That would normally be the closest place of true safety…”

“But?”

“...But you’ve seen the monsters we’ve faced, imagine legions of them drawn to the last bastion of light…”

“Last bastion of light?” Will asked sceptically.

“Yes, Drizzik is a free city, perhaps the only free city that I’ve heard of, let alone visited.”

“I don’t understand, in what way is Drizzik free?”

“Free from bondage, from enslavement and indenture-tude.”

“Slavery? Oh. Wonderful.” Will sighed. Beneath his words, deep emotions followed thoughts too complex to parse. As he looked away, her own thoughts drifted back to the fear that she may already be too late.

“Imagine an army of horrors. By now, I fear Drizzik may even be under siege.”

“Mmmmm. Yeah, I don’t need to imagine.”

“What do you mean?” Effni asked.

“I’ve seen these legions of monsters. That sound you heard, that was probably me.” She remained silent, waiting for him to continue. His eyes stared past her shoulder, breathing shallow and body still. “They had these portals, doors of magic from their world to yours. And I closed them.” This time, the pause that followed was as much her trying to comprehend his words and judge their sincerity, as it was an attempt to tease out more information.

“How?” Effni asked, disbelievingly.

“Rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Yes, very fast rocks.”

“Oh.”

“So, what else could you tell me about Drizzik...” he asked, or attempted to, but Effni cut in.

“Wait... It was you… who banished the... those sounds... and the ash and the bodies… but…” she said, almost to herself. “But… Why? How?”

Will sighed. “Why? I was drawn to it, the power. But it didn’t feel right, it felt… tainted. When I reached the portal, I could feel something wrong, like the very air around the thing didn’t belong here. So, I unraveled the protections surrounding the portal, and then I saw through into a world of red skies where it rained sulphur and ash. When I realised that I overlooked thousands upon thousands of horrors, like an army of dark monsters... well, instinct kinda took over.” She continued to just stare at him. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I… don’t know. I’m not used to communicating through Silowntir and with your mind closed to me…”

“Silowntir? So that’s what this is?” he said absently.

“Yes. And be mindful of your questions, even your rhetorical ones count,” she said, flashing him just the briefest of smiles as she did. He blinked and then smiled in return. ‘Ah, so he isn’t completely impervious to what little charm I possess,’ she noted.

“If I were to lower my defences, open my mind, as you say… You could read my thoughts? And what else?” he asked.

“How do you mean, what else?”

“Could you take over my mind or…”

“No… no. I am not… If I could do that, I would have already convinced you to return to me my bow.”

“Hmmmm. And when you read thoughts, you can read everything? Including my deepest memories?”

“I may only see surface thoughts currently on your mind. Nothing more.”

“Right. And would you allow me to do the same?”

“My mind is already open. I’m surprised you…” Effni started before feeling a tentative presence scratch at the boundaries of her awareness. It was faint, unpractised but it was there. Meanwhile, her attention rapidly switched to her own Neuromancy as his boundaries fell.

“Oh...”

She took a moment to just take in the differences between his mind, and the mind of every other Reaeryn she knew. It was different, profoundly so, more structured, more… literal. The dreamlike abstractions that connected concepts and memories were absent, and instead, replaced by hard edges, compartments and boundaries based on a rigid awareness of time and location and context. Effni saw herself through his eyes once again, she still looked a pitiful sight but no longer the monster she saw the last time. The emotions underpinning his thoughts were complex and contradictory. Effni could feel a fading sense of resentment, stress and wariness, but beneath that was also… astonishment? These feelings were combined with vivid memories of a person that reminded her strongly of Dulcinea.

“Who is… Zelda?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

“Errr, shit. She is… Aren’t you an Elf? It’s a race. Just stories and myths from where I’m from,” he said clearly chagrined. Images flashed through his mind, incomprehensible environments of steel and stone. Places and artefacts. Vivid and unnatural forms and colours, it was all beyond comprehension. And then a series of memories and associations that came with them caused her to frown.

“I am Reaeryn, not a myth of your people or anyone else’s. I’m… we are certainly not these... Elves!” Effni said with more exasperation than she expected.

“Fine. You’re not an Elf… You’re a Rear-ren…”

“It means Wood-Kin. We are one of the five peoples of the Qaseri, the other races of this land are the Faedenal, the Skivva, the Torbi, the Hiaeryn and my race, the Reaeryn...”

“Hiaeryn and Reaeryn, like high elves and wood elves?” Will asked.

“The Hiaeryn are higher than no one! Even though they like to think otherwise...” Effni said, more exasperated than she expected. “Hiaeryn means tall elves, although, in appearance, they have very few differences to ourselves. They merely build taller...” ‘...almost as if they are compensating,’ she added silently. Several moments passed before she continued. “Next, you’ll say that there are dark elves and flying elves and water elves?”

“No water elves to my knowledge from our myths, and rarely winged elves,” Will replied, Effni harrumphed.

“It would be a mistake to believe that the peoples of this land are the myths from your own, made manifest. Of the races beyond the Qaseri, all are complicated, varied, many are interdependent despite, or because of conflict.”

“It looks like I hit a nerve. I’m sorry. It’s just that with this world, with real magic, and your appearance… If this were one of our tales, next, you’d be telling me that you were an elven princess and...”

‘...real magic?’ Effni thought before she caught a flash of memory, more concepts of armoured warriors rescuing demure princesses… ‘The incredulity of it all,’ she thought, as she flashed with fury.

“Is that what we are to you? Prizes to be won through quests and adventures? My sister may be Queen, but I am not a princess. I am not an Elf, and this isn’t one of your tales,” Effni growled.

“Sister of the Queen? But not a princess… Oookay...” Will replied half in bemusement and half in exasperation. Effni stifled a second harrumph. She glanced away, deciding that a topic change was in order.

“I’m starting to think that letting you in was a mistake,” he grumbled.

“Indeed.”

“Anyway, this is no fairytale, this is a hell world,” he mumbled, eyes fixed as if replaying memories. Despite speaking softly, Effni’s hearing had no trouble picking up his meaning.

“We are not monsters. I am not just another monster,” Effni argued. “...and what we faced, those creatures are not of this world.”

“Trust me, there are plenty enough horrors on this world before I encountered that particular kind of nightmare.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just… there’s plenty of monsters, down here in the… Qaseri forest, and up there...” he pointed “...beyond the falls.”

“The Spinewoods? You mean to tell me that you travelled across the Spinewoods?” she said in agitated bewilderment. “But that’s impossible, nothing and no one returns from that forest. Few of my people brave the journey to be even this near to those accursed lands. But how… With whom did you seek shelter? Are there tribes or settlements subsisting within?” she said, suddenly bursting with curiosity.

“Not that I saw. Not anymore, you are the first person, the first native I’ve spoken to,” he said, before throwing the stick far into the lake. “Soooo… what can you tell me of the other races and your nation, civilisation?” Will continued.

For a long time she didn’t answer as she parsed his words and tried to connect them to the mental images of murk and darkness. She stared at him again as he distracted himself.

“Well,” she paused to gather her thoughts, “as I mentioned before, there are five races in the Qaseri, the Faedenal, Skivva, Torbi, Hiaeryn and Reaeryn. They live throughout the forest in small settlements along the trade routes leading away from Drizzik. Drizzik itself is by far the largest city on the continent, we welcome everyone from nobles, to refugees. Like I said, it’s the only free city on this continent, diverse and prosperous, travellers of different races visit for trade and leisure. There are other races beyond the five I mentioned, some have settled into small communities.”

“Just how big is Drizzik? How many people live there?”

“Maybe, a thousand, thousand people?”

“Is that your way of saying two thousand, or one million?” he said. Effni mouthed the word ‘million,’ its structure sounding strange to her tongue.

“Yes, million,” she attempted, only partially succeeding.

“Wait, you had no word for a… thousand-thousand before?”

“In my tongue, no, I do not believe so, but I’m sure various philosophers have their own languages when dealing with such concepts.”

“Oh, so a million citizens, that’s a pretty big city, and you say it’s under siege? Is there anything we can do to help?”

Effni looked at him for a long moment recalling his previous claim.

“If what you say about the portals is true, it may be that you have already done enough, far more than you know.”

“You don’t believe me?” Will said.

“I… it’s just hard to believe that one man has done what an entire army and our mages could not. Perhaps, maybe you helped, contributing at the…” She flinched. Her Neuromancy burned with the sudden vision of fire and ash, an ocean of power, so much pain.

“I suppose,” Will said, staring off into the distance.

Effni gasped, “What was that!?”

“What was what?”

“I’m reading your mind remember, that flash of memory… Screaming, were you on fire?” she asked. He visibly shuddered, the memory returned to his surface thoughts as he talked.

“I borrowed some of the portal’s power, maybe too much. I caught on fire, screamed… like a lot. Went on a Telekinetic rampage, blew up a few monsters, and closed the portal. All in a day’s work really.”

Effni was panting by the time he had finished. She stared at him as if he were a mana-venom spitting leviathan.

“But how?” she whispered in disbelief.

“Magic, I guess. I mean, aren’t you a mage too?” he asked. Effni, still distracted by the fading telepathic images, had to replay the last question in her mind before she could answer.

“Mage? No. I’m no mage.”

“But, you used magic? That vanishing in plain sight, that thing you hit me with before. I mean, you’re literally reading my mind with magic. Wait, this is magic right?”

“Yes, almost everyone has magic. Those were purely talents; specific abilities passed down to me through family, or imprinted at great cost. Trust me, I am no mage.”

“I don’t understand, I can sense your presence, your magic. As I can tell, you have far more mana than I do.”

“Mana?” Effni asked with a frown.

“You don’t know what mana is? It’s like the total amount of energy you have, imagine a pool of power you can draw upon. When you run out, you run out of magic, it slowly refills but...”

“I see. And so you believe that I must be a mage, judged purely on this pool of arcana you can sense from me?”

“Yeah.”

“No, not by my people’s standards. To be a mage, your magic, either in part or in totality, must be based on an Argument.”

“An argument?” Will said, clearly confused.

“Yes, an argument. It’s like your very own personal reason for doing magic, you can practise magic without it, but having an argument, a reason underpinning your magic makes you far more potent, more efficient, more robust. It is too complicated for me to describe in depth. But depending on what type of Mage you are, you’ll have an argument that defines your magic,” Effni said, staring into the lake. “Despite having a mage’s qualification, and whatever potential of magic you see in me, I never found my argument, and thus I am not a mage.”

Will grunted. “Seems like a high bar to me. Personally, if you can use magic, you’re a mage.”

“But how? Specifically, how could you do what so many of us couldn’t? Those portals,” she pressed.

“I have no idea why I could when your people, couldn’t. Your universe... has... magic. It’s just... It’s incredible, it’s really been the only reason why I’ve managed to stay alive.”

“My universe?” Effni once again mouthed the unfamiliar word.

“Reality, time and space. Everything that has and may ever exist: The Universe,” he said, arms sweeping in an all-encompassing gesture.

“You say that as if you’ve seen a different… everything?” she repeated his gesture, clearly unconvinced. “Which should be impossible.”

“Well…” he started before looking away while scratching the back of his head. “...Let’s just say that I’m an outsider.”

“That’s obvious, it’s clear that you’re from outside of this land...” she pressed.

“...This world, this reality,” he answered, gesturing once again with the same sweeping motion. She paused, mouth stalled halfway through forming her next words.

“This reality?” Effni said sceptically. She tensed as a sudden thought crossed her mind. “Do you hail from the same realm as those… de…” She stopped as her telepathy flooded her inner sight with images, sounds and senses. Towering structures that parted the sky, chariots zooming through pristine roads of stone that stretched beyond the horizon. There were forests, trees, deserts, canyons and valleys, of which were almost familiar. But then there were also unfamiliar things, impossible things—metallic birds that tore across the sky or palm-sized artefacts of light and sound and knowledge.

“You’re from another world?” Effni said, aware that her mouth was agape in awe for the first time in a very long time.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Issealla’s mercy… And not just from the other world are you? The world seen from the world-side? Aestelle?” she said excitedly. Will frowned.

“No? World-side? What’s Aestelle?” He asked confusion etched on his features.

“The world-side… The other side of the world. It’s months of travel by sea, even longer by land. There, Aestelle, sister world to ours… on the world side, it looms large in the sky.”

“Like, a moon?” he said, a slow smile grew on his face while she struggled with unfamiliar sounds and a concept brand new to her understanding. Through her telepathy, Effni saw a silver disk hanging in the sky, desolate and pockmarked. Somehow, impossibly, she saw the surface of this world as if she stood upon it. A landscape where the sky was midnight and the ground grey, dead, and without even the air to breathe.

“I don’t think it is a moon,” she said hesitantly, brows furrowed in growing confusion. “Your world had a moon?”

“Yeah. I’m kinda surprised I’ve not seen a moon in your night skies yet. I suppose a sister world could be considered a moon?”

“Scholars say Aestelle is about the same size of Adeena, perhaps slightly larger. I saw it, it filled the sky, day side blue and white and green and rust red. Wonderful colours, especially in the twilight when the sister world is in crescent form. I saw lights from its night side, Will. I saw the lights of what must be cities at night, just like our own....”

“The same siz… Binary system! Holy shit!” Will’s eyes widened as he interrupted. She quirked an eyebrow at the strange curse. “But the co-orbital period must be the same as the sidereal…” he mumbled as the bond transferred meaning as she heard unfamiliar grunts and guttural noises. “Okay, wow.” Grinning, white teeth on full display. “But is that even stable?” he said. “Holy shit! Have you... spoken to those on the other world? Have Adeenans reached out to Astellans?” Will added. Effni sensed through him an incredible desire to explore, to travel land, sea, air and... space? She caught a memory flash of tall structures taking to the sky on tails of fire and smoke. Stark landscapes Effni now recognised as being from the Moon.

“What are astronauts?” she asked distractedly.

“The word means star sailors. They were the best of us, chosen to explore worlds beyond our own.”

“To sail between the stars? You could do such a thing without magic?”

“No, not exactly. I mean, we travelled in the space between stars, but never to other stars, just worlds within our own neighborhood,” Will said, trying and failing to put the terms in an easier to understand content.

For a long moment there was silence. The words made little sense to Effni as she instead concentrated on her Neuromancy. She saw vessels as tall as trees launch themselves into the sky on pillars of smoke and thunder, smaller vessels traversing impossibly vast voids with people isolated inside within for years at a time. She tried to comprehend the gulf in imagination, drive and curiosity required to undertake such activities and failed. A part of her marvelled that a people so similar in appearance could be so different given divergent circumstances.

“We’ve made attempts to contact Aestelle using magic and mundane means. Perhaps there’s been some recent success? Though it’s been a long time since Drizzik has received official correspondence from the world-side,” Effni said, still dazed by her visions.

“Holy shit,” Will repeated softly in awe.

“It is an incredible sight, I wish I could take you there to see it.”

“Yeah, let’s set a date and make an adventure out of it,” he said, gazing off into the middle distance, mind roiling on the implications. Effni gave him a dubious gaze. She was still unused to his odd turns of phrase, his forward nature. In some ways, it was refreshing to talk to someone without the airs and graces her upbringing engendered. Is this how commoners spoke with one another? Natural and unburdened by formality? To him, she was no general nor figurehead—just travellers exchanging tales about things held in high regard.

A small part of her was indignant at the realisation that her royalty wasn’t in fact, self-evident despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary. But then again William seemed rather indifferent on the concept of kings and queens, perhaps even wary.

‘Maybe that was for the best.’ She decided

“So… This world is Adeena, and its sister is Aestelle… Okay,” he said as if in conclusion to a satisfying puzzle. He continued to mouth the words. His smile was infectious, she realised.

“You knew not the name of this world before, didn’t you?”

“Nope. You thought I might be from Aestelle... but people don’t normally travel between these worlds do they?” he asked.

“No, never, to my knowledge at least,” Effni said.

“Hmmmm. Okay, I guess I can see why you thought that might be where I’m from.”

“If not Aestelle, then from which world do you hail?”

“We called our world Earth, and our moon, Moon.”

“Earth? Like the earth beneath our feet?”

“Exactly. Yes it’s pretty dumb when you think about it, but we got used to it.” He used a stick to carve patterns into the sand as he talked.

“Is this world... Earth, far away? If so, how did you travel here? Do you plan to return?” she asked. He frowned and didn’t speak, he didn’t move, even his idle sand sketching ceased.

“It’s,” he started, his voice quiet and dry. “I believe Earth no longer exists. I can’t be sure, but… I think… I don’t think it’s somewhere I could return to.”

“What??” Effni asked in shock. “I… don’t understand?”

“My world is gone, Effni,” he said, simple words spoken like feathers falling with the weight of anvils.

“But how? What does that even mean? How is a world just…gone??”

“I was sooooo close to stopping it… just a few extra seconds,” he said, the last words spat out like a curse.

“But if you were there, how did you survive?” Effni said, still trying her hardest to understand as a torrent of confusing memories flashed through their telepathic link.

“Oh, no - I died, along with the rest of civilisation. Probability, magic and a special set of circumstances made it so that I was… I guess, reborn here, now, on this world,” he said, with his mind open, Effni knew that he was at least telling her what he believed to be true. In fact, she was overwhelmed with the flood of emotion flowing through her Neuromancy.

“Will?”

“Hmmmm?”

“How does a world end?” Effni asked, trying to keep her voice neutral and free of emotion.

“In darkness... even as you strive for the light,” he said sourly. She was looking at him when he turned to fix her with his gaze. “Eight billion people, four billion years of history. All gone by accident and in the blink of an eye,” he continued, voice cracking and eyes shining with unshed tears. “Anyway, it’s a long story, and not one I want to tell right now.”

“Tell me anyway,” she said with an intensity that surprised even her. For some reason, and despite the pressing urgency of her mission, she was compelled to understand. This idea that a world could just end frightened her. Actually, it terrified her in the same way the concept of death would do to a child upon learning that one day, they too will die. And while she had no real sense of loss for this Earth or its peoples; the idea was just too big and sudden a concept to fathom, after all, it did make her see this William Ashley Jenkins in a whole new light. ‘The last of his kind? Reborn!? Alone? And hadn’t she almost killed him just a few moments ago?’ And so she asked, and he answered, and she listened and saw and felt for a while far longer than she intended.

Will described a world without magic. To Effni, such a concept was difficult to fathom. Given how much depended on the arcana that flowed throughout life, she had come to believe, as most do, that life and magic were intertwined. But as he continued to describe his world, and she continued to see and taste his thoughts, a picture of this vastly different life crystallised. Through his words and thoughts, she learned how humanity sought the secrets of the universe as a way to eke out their own wonders. When she asked the question, “What drove you to seek out magic where none existed?” Will responded:

“Some would say laziness...”

“Laziness?” she interrupted.

“Yeah, being as, or more productive, with less effort. Being more efficient would be a more flattering way to put it, I guess.”

“I see,” she lied.

“Right, maybe others would say creativity or imagination drove us...”

“However…” she said in an attempt to draw out his real answer. “...What would you say?” Effni asked.

“I would say…” He paused before continuing. “We had three simple questions… How? Why? and What if? We would ask those questions, over and over again, never satisfied with the last best answer, always going one step deeper, perhaps seeking that perfect, final answer to which those three questions would be unnecessary. For example, why is the sky blue? Is it because light is scattered in a particular way by the air? How does it scatter? Why does light travel through air at all? And what if light was faster, or the air thicker? It was the relentless pursuit of those three simple questions, an un-quenching thirst for the answer to How? Why? And what if? Over and over again. This was the source of both our greatest triumphs and apparently, our greatest folly. Isn’t your civilisation the same? Surely you must wonder?”

“For most, the ability to wonder about such things would be a luxury. Many work from dusk till dawn just to subsist, and for those who can afford to, there are far more practical things to master.”

“Such as magic?”

“Just so,” she said. “Our world, it feels so much different from your… your Earth.”

“It wasn’t perfect but it was home… Anyway, it’s not that different.”

“Not that different?” Effni said dubiously.

“If what I can deduce from the nature of your weapons and armour holds up, then your society is merely a few generations away from becoming like Earth was.”

He explained the nature of the final experiment in broad strokes. Of nations coming together and the vast sums of wealth involved. Of the grand mystery of gravity and how they were finally poised to learn its secrets. He vacillated between a strident defence of his profession, bemoaning the hubris of his colleagues and dark, soul-crushing guilt that tainted every word and thought no matter how benign.

And as he described the end of the world, she experienced the fraction of the terror of an all-consuming void in reality. At that point, Effni told him to stop as she all but wrenched her mind away from a nightmare that was at once incomprehensibly abstract, as it was heart-chillingly terrifying.

He talked about the improbability of his own resurrection, weeks of loneliness and terror in the Spinewoods. When pressed, he tried to describe the likelihood of meeting others from his world, but the numbers and concepts were well beyond her understanding. Absently, she asked if the same thing could happen on Adeena, Will replied:

“Unless there’s something I don’t know preventing you from accidentally doing really stupid things with magic, it might actually be easier to replicate the circumstances that ended my world, on this one.”

The floor fell beneath her feet. A dozen rapid heartbeats of silence followed before she forced herself to ask if he had the knowledge to replicate what happened on his world, he replied simply and honestly with a single word.

“Yes.”

And with his response, a sudden tension returned between them. She was certain that he knew exactly what she was thinking, that somehow, she had just stumbled upon a man with the knowledge to destroy worlds.

Her world.

She didn’t want to believe him, couldn’t take his words and mind image at face value, and yet, whether due to his strange magic, his aura, his intensity, she found herself completely unable to doubt what he believed. His very existence was an existential threat far worse than the hostile invasion of demons plaguing the land.

As Guardian, she may be one of the few people qualified to make snap judgements on issues as serious as this. And after hearing everything he had said, she was inclined to believe that knowledge so dangerous shouldn’t exist.

She was hit with a sudden wave of nausea. Part of it was her mind and body preparing for a fight she probably couldn’t win. A greater part came from her sense of frustration. Once again, she premeditated murder not for the greater good, not really. No, it was murder for the sake of preserving only the mere illusion of safety. To remove even the memory of such ghastly knowledge before it, or he fell into the wrong hands. A tiny part of her felt like he was indeed responsible, from a certain point of view, perhaps his death would be just? Killing him would also be practical, heroic even, in a decisive, twisted kind of way. But it was also profoundly cruel, yet the world had long since carved a blade out of someone who once may have been kind.

She wanted to retch.

The sounds from the distant falls filled the silence as he sat still, eyes over the lake as he calmly awaited judgement.

“Do you know of a way to prevent this from happening on Adeena?” she finally asked, voice small and hope suppressed as she wondered precisely how she could kill him if things once again came to violence.

“I… don’t know. Probably? Obviously, it would be difficult to prove the solution actually works. And depending on how we did it, it could have unintended consequences. I mean, what if we disabled Spaciomancy on Adeena, what else depends on that magic? What animals or artefacts require it to function? It would certainly stop unintended guests like those fucking monsters, so that’s one upside.”

Effni finally exhaled. It wasn’t much but combined with the openness and earnestness of his thoughts, it was enough of an excuse not to pass judgement on someone for having the wrong type of knowledge. She turned to him, relief fading as her Neuromancy caught the edges of emotions all too familiar to her.

“Did you…” she started and then stopped before starting again. “You wanted to die, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Sometimes. It’s actually really hard for me to die, Effni.”

“Yes, that at least is something I have firsthand knowledge with. You, being hard to die, that is.” She flashed him a brief, rueful smile.

“If it were easier to die, if I was normal, without magic, I would have died by accident, and perhaps by suicide many times over by now… But…”

“...But there are good days, days where you find meaning or purpose.”

“Yeah, or days were you meet strange new peoples with painfully novel greeting rituals,” Will said, smirk only partially suppressed. Effni’s ears curled and reddened.

“You will never allow me to forget that, will you?” she said with mild exasperation.

“Never. Besides, it’ll probably make a great story one day... How I met your mother, Effni Naridia… and survived to tell the tale...” Will said in a mock boastful voice.

“Carry on like that and you may very well not survive,” she said with a glare. “But still. I have a sense of that pressure, that weight on your chest. The loneliness, the sadness. You’ve been carrying it with you, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s with me everywhere I go,” he said solemnly.

“It can feel like something solid to cling on to but…” She let out a sharp exhale. “...Try releasing little bits of it when you can, as what may feel like an anchor in rough seas, may ultimately drag you further into the abyss,” Effni spoke, eyes distant as she recalled memories decades past. She could tell without reading his mind that he had a myriad of questions.

However, he said simply, “Right. Thanks.” As an errant tear slid down Effni’s cheek.

“This is ridiculous. I haven’t cried since I was a little girl,” she said before snorting and wiping her face with the back of her hand. She checked equipment before standing and brushing off the forest from her knees. “When this is all over, let us see to building that which would prevent such an accident from ever happening on Adeena,” she continued.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. But, Will...”

“Yes?”

“Tell no one else about the fate of your world, the experiment, the accident. Not until we can prevent it from happening again. Understand?” Effni said.

“Yeah. So, what now?” he said, scratching the back of his head. When she turned around to face him, she saw Lysander’s Longbow hovering in the air right in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching to seize the weapon once more. She quickly reattached her equipment and stretched. Her thigh was still somewhat numb… “Well… I do have need of one who can perceive invisible monsters. I also mean to ask you more questions if you would suffer my company for a little while longer?”

“Y… Yeah!” he stuttered, clearly surprised. “Lead the way.”

Ten

Argument

Thin-flies danced between dappled shadow and sunbeams in a day clear of cloud as they walked side by side at a steady pace into the forest. The forest floor was part loamy ferns and moss, part stone and fallen branch this far from the lake.

“Yes?” Effni replied, sidelong glance turning cool and flinty. ‘Shit,’ he thought, remembering that at this moment, she was in his mind, had access to every single surface thought…

“I could stop, if reading your thoughts is the source of your discomfort...”

“No… No… You say this is normal in your world, so best get used to it I guess,” Will said with a mild note of resignation.

“And yes. I am a woman,” she added. “Just to be clear….”

“Hey, hey, you’re… I’m an alien. We look… erm, anatomically familiar, one might even say suspiciously so. I just didn’t want to start with any assumptions. For all I know you might have more than two sexes or something?”

“By the nature of your thoughts I would argue that you are long past basic assumptions,” she said, eyebrow raised. “So let me clarify: Am I female? Yes, do I, as the female of my species, give birth to young? Yes. Are males of my species… annooo...tom...ic? What is this word?” she said in annoyance.

“Anatomically. It means body shape,” Will corrected.

“Are Reaeryn males similar in body shape to yourself?” she said, eyebrow arching as she stopped to look at him, eyes travelling from head to toes. She harrumphed. “Beyond the questionable lack of attire, uselessly small... ears, and oddly dark skin, perhaps. You are also… heavier than I expected given your height. Dense, like a rock,” she said, ‘Did she really just check me out?’ Will thought, cheeks heating. ‘Should I flex? Flirt back? Wait… She’s reading my fucking mind, shut up, brain.’ A glance revealed a gaze no less flinty and unamused than before.

“So… Yeah,” Will said, coughing to clear both his throat and his mind. “In your culture, men and women hold equal say in society? Are all races equal in the eyes of the law, for that matter is your world even lawful, is it just?” Will said, gaining momentum with every question. She stared at him, expression unreadable before turning away to continue her march. He followed, not quite knowing whether to expect an answer or silence.

“Males and females of all races are equal under the gaze of our land’s laws... although that may not be the case beyond this forest. Reaeryn, the plurality of Drizzik’s population, traditionally consists of matriarchies with queens, governesses and women in positions of political power. This is far more common with females than males. Although there has been some progress to change that.”

“Why is that?” Will asked.

“Influence.”

“Influence?”

“Yes. Every Reaeryn family has a mother, but not every family has a father...”

“Wait, what!?”

“No, not like that. Of course we all have biological parents, just like you… humans? But a greater proportion of families do not have fathers who contribute to the prosperity of their household or the wellbeing of their young. Even in families with active male participation, fathers traditionally have less influence over the long-term outlook of a family. Anyway, families are at the heart of political and social strength, and at the heart of every strong family, is a mother.”

“These families, they sound like the dynastic powers that rule over all others, like high-nobility?”

“Yes,” Effni said.

“And that there may be laws that apply to some, that do not apply to others?” he continued, failing to keep a rising accusation from entering his voice and his mind.

Effni sighed. “There may be some truth to what you say. But we have been fighting to change things, for our land to become more equal.”

“Hmm,” Will said, unsure of what to say next.

“I assume things were different on your world?” Effni asked after several thoughtful steps.

“More monogamy I guess, patriarchies in almost every culture, but men and women are, for the most part, equal under law.”

“Patriarchies?” she asked, disbelief evident in her voice.

“Yeah, I guess, maybe part of it was because men were stronger physically? But childbirth and the effect that had on everything from mortality and society, to careers and personal wealth; it caused a load of systemic issues that, even after generations of progress, still result in unequal outcomes. I say all this, but I’m not really the best person to ask on this topic.”

“You, the last surviving member from your civilisation, aren’t the best person to ask on topics pertaining to that of your… civilisation?” Effni said sardonically. Will would have offered a weak retort. However, Will found his thoughts souring as he examined the truth of her statement. On every single facet of human knowledge and wisdom, he was the expert, the highest authority.

Before sliding deeper into his brooding thoughts, Will took one deep breath, and exhaled, expelling as much of the negativity with it as he could.

“I apologise,” said a small voice to his side. “I am supposed to be diplomatic, tactful, but more often than not, my sharp words…”

“Or your sharp arrows…” Will quipped. “Or your sharp knives…”

“Yes, yes! My goodness. I suppose this to be the penance I must bear for inflicting a scratch on one as sensitive as yourself?”

“A scratch? Try taking an arrow from that thing and then tell me how you feel,” he said laughing while pointing to the ivory artefact secured upon Effni’s back.

“Yes, a rare mishap. I would offer you a chance to return such injury, in the pursuit of fairness. But alas I am out of arrows,” she said, musical voice lilting and filled with mirth.

“Ha, well luckily for you, I was raised in the finest traditions of not shooting people with arrows, not unless you really really have to. I’m a gentleman.”

“A gentle man?”

“Yes, I let you beat me after all.”

“Let me!?” Effni scowled, edge diminished by the laughter in her voice. “Remind me to present you to our practise yards upon my return, a few rounds will disabuse you of the notion that you let me do anything.”

“Oh, it’s on!” Will laughed a free and wholehearted laugh with no illusions towards not having his ass handed to him, especially if magic wasn’t involved.

“Oh, I won’t handicap you, little mageling. Feel free to fling those stones of yours,” Effni continued, still peering into his thoughts.

“Little?” Will countered, clearly intrigued by what he could learn in such a bout. “And I take it, the term mageling isn’t one of endearment?”

“No, I do believe you’re correct.”

“Whatever, your Elven princess-ness.”

“And now, you’ve upset me,” Effni said with a sigh. “Not a myth, not a princess. I am a real person, a Reaeryn...”

“I was just…”

“I know, but whenever you bring up that word, in your mind, the images it produces. They feel like deeply offensive caricatures. My people are not simple, high-minded outlines that fit into easy narratives from your own stories. So please don’t utter that word until you can remove the associations tied to it in your mind.”

“Fine, alright,” Will said.

“I had been meaning to ask. Was it just humans on your world? Were there other higher races?”

“No other higher, or sentient races. Well, not in the manner that you mean... You could say we had subraces, with changes in skin colour, facial features and hair types, but no other sentient races. In our ancient history, there is evidence of other races distinct from our own, like the Neanderthal and Denisovan, but they became extinct long ago,” Will said while making his way between a particularly dense knot of roots.

“Extinct? Through war and violence?”

“Maybe. But there’s evidence of their ancestry continuing through some of our own, so perhaps some interbreeding. I want to say that I’m not an expert on this, but what I really mean is that I wish I had read wider, studied more topics. To be a serious academic, you really had to specialise, become the most knowledgeable in any particular field of study. It was a system that encouraged specialists, rewarded the leading edge while leaving those who did the hard work of finding, cataloging and classification, behind.”

“It is similar here, on Adeena, in our nation as well as others. Philosophers strive for excellence in increasingly narrow fields, focusing the limited potential of individual minds, to collectively expand the reach of our society’s knowledge. Though, never had I considered its potential pitfalls, even now, I find it hard to fault this system, as your situation is rather unlikely to be repeated, is it not?”

“Yeah, I guess I’m definitely an edge case. Still, the more I travel this world, the more I appreciate the renaissance men of old, the ones who were part artist, part philosopher, those cross pollination of ideas. Those competing viewpoints… With your world’s magic, I feel like this wider perspective would be an advantage… it’s fresh, energising,” he said, gesturing at the forest despite having Effni walking ahead of him. “Or at least it would be without the constant threat of monsters.”

“It’s a threat all face outside of walled encampments. There are beasts out there as strong or as cunning as any Reaeryn,” she continued. “They vastly outnumber us and reproduce at a rate far higher than we could reasonably cull.”

“Then how don’t they just overwhelm your people?”

“These beast races spend so much time fighting each other that they rarely pose a risk to the walled encampments throughout the forest,” Effni said. Will mused on her words unable to halt the stark comparison between wildlife hunted to extinction on his world. It was yet another reminder that this was a very different world to the one of his birth, that despite eerily familiar physiology, her society and upbringing must have been profoundly different from anything he could have imagined.

* * *

“So, what’s a Guardian? Is that a title? Profession?” Will asked. They had been quiet for a while, a silence born less out of tension, and more out of the need to digest heavy thoughts. The vines and undergrowth had steadily thickened, causing Effni to audibly curse on more than one occasion.

Will marvelled at the entire situation. This, right now, was what he had almost given up hope of finding; answers that shed light on a complex world, knowledge between the relationships of ecosystems, magic and civilisations vastly different to his expectations. But also, here was someone who would listen, someone who wanted to learn from him as much as he did from her. Will felt her increasingly sympathetic presence within his mind just as he fumbled at peeking into her own. This left him exposed in a way that should have been terrifying or invasive but instead proved to be exhilarating in its liberation.

“It’s a title, but it does come with certain responsibilities,” she said.

“Responsibilities?” he prompted.

“Yes, more diplomatic than martial. In military matters I’m little but a lieutenant, but my rank as Guardian allows me, in theory, to supersede my chain of command on topics that have diplomatic consequences for our region. In most cases however, I act as an advisor to my commanders or as an ambassador,” she continued.

“Did you get that title by… erm...”

“No, not because of my familial relations. There was a week-long tournament with multiple stages and challenges. It was a competition open to the entire nation, thousands of competitors. To win, you must at least pass every challenge, and less than a handful of participants did even that much, and then trial by combat to determine the victor.”

“Like a death match?”

“Not to the death, and melee combat only. As a result very few mages competed in the event. Although magic was a factor in some of the trials,” she said. In the silence, he could feel her emotions, a taste of the desperate passion and pride that drove her will to succeed. Will considered the kind of person driven this way and was suddenly struck by a wave of awe as a key facet of her personality was revealed to him.

He could see it now, someone with something to prove, someone strong and brave, but always protected by someone else, someone overwhelmingly stronger and out of reach. Becoming Guardian had been what? Her proving that she wasn’t weak? No, he sensed that it was more complicated than that. Her sister was queen, but she was not a princess, not in line to the throne, why? What did it mean?

“Why did you do it? The trial, I mean.”

“Politics,” she said, refusing to delve deeper but he could sense an underlying reason, one that chimed as clear as a bell in her mind.

“Your sister?”

“My sister,” she agreed.

“The queen,” he said, more statement than question.

“Queen Dulcinea Naridia the first. Yes.”

“But you’re not within the royal line of succession? Why do you have to worry about politics? I mean, is it some kind of custom? Or is there some other…”

“We are twins. Non-identical, but born on the same day, mere minutes apart in fact. Who exactly was born first was hidden to even us. We both had equal claim to the crown but we decided quite early that I didn’t want to be queen and Dulcinea did. And so I renounced all claims and royal titles to avoid succession issues,” she said.

“Right,” Will said, not really understanding at all. With a sideways glance, she caught his lack of comprehension and frowned.

“It was as much an act of subservience, as it was a display of total and absolute loyalty; so that there’d be no doubt to the house of Naridia’s unity and strength,” she said while watching him. Meanwhile, his brows furrowed into deeper V’s as he considered a land dominated by feudal lords and bloody dynastic politics. Just what precisely was he walking into?

“You must have had a vastly different form of governance on your world? Were there no monarchs with their own internecine battles for political dominance?” Effni said.

“Our history was dominated by tales of kings and queens who warred over land and political power with little regard towards the peasants under their rule,” he said, attempting to soften the petty edge of cynicism that crept into his voice. “But we somehow managed to transition into different types of government. Elected regional representatives, national democracies with regular peaceful, lawful transitions of power. I think, given enough time this too would have transitioned into something else. But…” Will sighed and then smiled as he caught her mouth the word democracy, the Silowntir no doubt introducing her to a brand-new concept.

He wondered over the nature of the artefact embedded in his ear. Far from being a simple translation aid, it had already affected his thoughts as without conscious effort, two words in every five were now spoken in the flutey whistle-y language of Effni’s native tongue. He could feel the effects and strain of this transition on his mouth, his overstretched cheeks, his dry and constantly pursing lips. He should have been concerned about this device’s mind-altering nature, but he knew that at any moment he could cease the artefact’s function, or failing that, physically remove it.

He tested this assertion by plucking the device from his ear to inspect it. Through Mana-Sight, he stared at the arcane tendril that spun towards his mind. Thoughts clear, he tried to recall new words from the alien language, an attempt to ensure that they were distinct from his existing vocabulary in his mind.

“This device, it’s been teaching me your language hasn’t it?” he said, almost entirely in her native tongue. She frowned as in sudden realisation that he no longer wore the artefact.

“I… To be perfectly frank with you, the true nature of this artefact was somewhat of a mystery to me. It had been locked away in the royal vault for generations, perhaps only a handful of living scholars knew of its true capabilities or inner-workings,” she said, words like wind chimes but still comprehensible. Stranger yet, her accent, or how his mind interpreted her speech patterns, hadn’t changed. She still sounded like an English noblewoman despite the radically different sounds passing through his ear canal. He squinted with something akin to disapproval upon comprehension of her lack of knowledge.

“I had been assured that at the very least, all items within that vault were safe to use,” she added in a vain attempt to assuage his concerns.

“I…” Will started and then dropped his protest before placing the object back within his ear. “Fine, whatever. Just why are you walking around with numerous, priceless artefacts anyway? I mean, that’s not normal is it?” he asked.

“No,” she said. There was silence as they walked into the thicker portion of the forest, here, creeping vines and thick underbrush obscured a growing network of exposed roots. These were starting to require concentration on every step to avoid sudden pitfalls or plunges beneath what may have been the start of a mangrove forest back on Earth.

He had paid attention to his map, tracking their progress as they travelled in remarkably straight lines through the forest that bridged two separate lakes. Perhaps only a couple of hours remained before they reached the clearing.

“And where are we going, if you don’t mind me asking?” he said. If the silence that followed was any indication, she had indeed minded something about his question. However, before he could utter a never mind, she replied.

“I’ve mentioned the creatures from another world and the peril my city faces. Well, as Guardian, I’ve been tasked with retrieving something that may aid us in our time of need.”

“Another artefact?”

She nodded as her eyes returned to inspect their path.

Walking beside her, Will noted that Effni had a hyper-intensity, it was an alertness one could mistake for skittishness; from the set of her shoulders, from how her long, elven ears always seemed to twitch. Except that she had a gaze that put lie to any notion of uncertainty, a gaze that was invariant ice, blue diamond drills that pierced, compelled and comprehended, all at once. Where he might have expected cold judgement or condemnation, Will felt instead, if not understanding, then a desire to seek it. For someone so alien in ways he was only just beginning to understand, it was a welcome dose of humanity that made him feel less alone.

For several moments, he failed to check his gaze. His eyes drifted over straight, stark black hair to fix upon long, surprisingly muscular ears, ears with the mobility and flexibility as prehensile limbs. They held as much nuanced expression as most people’s faces.

It was a ‘wow’ moment wherein long-held expectations were suddenly measured against reality and found wanting. She side-eyed him before her angular face turned to regard him. His thoughts were suddenly arrested by her gaze.

“Not a mythical creature from the legends of your world, right?” she snarled.

“Nope. Definitely not,” Will replied, Effni frowned.

“Your words sound serious, but your thoughts feel otherwise.”

“It’s just your ears, I mean…”

“How else should my ears be?”

“I… It’s just amazing watching how they move.”

“I suppose they may seem a wonder to one with such small and useless flaps of skin,” she said with a smile so quick and so faint, Will would have missed it if he hadn’t been staring. “But it is… unnerving having one stare in such a manner,” she added.

“I…” Will couldn’t look away. “Yeah, I apologise.”

She ignored him, looking around and above as if surveying the leaves and branches overhead.

“We’ll make faster time if we take the branches. Follow,” she commanded as Will looked up in bemusement.

As he stared upwards, he did indeed note large, longer and thicker branches that seemed to web the sky. Suddenly, he was desperately grateful to Isk for those many long, painful days of body conditioning and kinaesthetics. Where a previous version of himself would have paled at the thought of traversing one-hundred-foot-high branches, his strength and dexterity had improved to the point that he was relatively confident he wouldn’t make a complete fool of himself. Maybe.

Will followed her ascent while watching arms and nimble feet work in effortless coordination to scale a trunk a match to any Redwood back on Earth. Once more, the fact that he was in another world interacting with a real, bonafide alien struck him with a dizzy sense of surrealism. He had gone from facing down a murderous warrior to the sort of easy companionship he struggled to find in his previous life in just a few hours. After chapped fingers, sweaty brows, and a lot of heavy panting, they paused in the nook of a ginormous branch. Will found himself enjoying the pleasant breeze and dappled sunlight while he watched the Reaeryn rummage through a rucksack he was certain contained far more stuff inside than it had any right to.

“What is it?” Effni asked suddenly, her casual, almost stoney expression doing little to mask her concern.

“That bag...” Will replied, “It’s another artefact isn’t it?”

“It is,” Effni continued arching an eyebrow as if prodding him to continue.

“I take it that such artefacts are uncommon? Or at least highly sought after?”

“They are rare, yes, even rarer are those that still function. Most come from a previous age and few, if any, have the knowledge required to manufacture such artefacts in our age. Although, at Drizzik there are many academics who do study them,” Effni replied.

“The knowledge to manufacture them has been lost?” Will said.

“That’s part of it, but many believe that the nature of magic has shifted over the aeons since. So much so that the arcana and practises used to create these artefacts would no longer work even if they were known,” Effni replied. Will took a moment to mull over the statement, particularly this idea of magic being an ever-changing force instead of an easy-to-predict constant. Will was also sure that if he were inside a game world, this would have been the time he would have received a quest prompt to learn more about crafting at Drizzik. Will chuckled at the stray thought.

“It’s normal to have thoughts stray so much amongst your people?”

“Errr, Yeah? You’re telling me you never have stray thoughts?” Will continued.

“Rarely, not unless we want to,” Effni replied primly.

“Really?” he pressed, surprised and curious. “With your thoughts so exposed, the lack of privacy... how does society work when your every musing, stray feeling, however embarrassing is just out there in the open?”

Effni paused before answering. “Well… Even just amongst the Qaseri races, there are different customs, mores and taboos. For example, it’s rude to enter formal or commercial negotiations with your mind walled, however, agents are often used on the behalf of trading partners or allies to politely shield things each party would like to hide. Among my kind, we rarely find our thoughts betraying us even though Reaeryn minds are usually open to each other. However, it’s starting to occur to me that we think in very different ways.”

“Different? How?”

“Your mind feels like you’re constantly talking to yourself, with words and numbers and places and times; specifics that are fragmented and compartmentalised. When I focus, it’s easy to see your thoughts, but it’s constant, the sheer quantity is exhausting, confounding, strange.”

“Yeah? And how does your mind work?”

“Less speech, less specific times and places, more abstractions. Like wordless stories or songs that we feel as much as reason. It’s not to say that we can’t or don’t talk to ourselves in our minds as you do, but it is… abnormal, rare.”

“And these… mind songs… they offer you privacy?”

“No, more… Hmmmm, discipline? No that’s not right. More… consistency? I would say that our thoughts stray less than yours, so unless we deliberately choose to think inappropriate thoughts of… smoking-hot supermodels, we do not,” Effni said as he tried to hide a self-deprecating grin.

“Heh. I think I understand.” His gaze shifted to think upon all the possible implications, from how such differences would manifest in society to how he might stand out in a culture where his physical appearance may be the least striking difference between himself and everyone else.

Will’s thoughts turned back towards Asterisk’s emancipation day, he remembered the fascinating, comfortable back and forth of questions, the exploration of similarities and differences, the growing picture communication provided of each other’s personality.

And then a question he had once asked Asterisk struck him, one that seemed as vital then as it did now.

“Effni, do you dream?”

“Dream?” Effni asked, momentarily caught off guard by the question. “Yes, I dream. All Reaeryn dream.”

“Every night? What do you dream about?”

She stared at him as if probing his mind in an attempt to figure out the best way to answer. “I suspect our dreams are not too dissimilar? They come without conscious direction. They are often variations of events from my life, memories that are altered or reexamined,” she said, eyes glazing over as if seeing within. “Mostly of my parents, I…” She continued although Will was conscious of the shift in demeanour, from brusque to strangely hesitant, as if revealing that which she would have otherwise kept private.

“I often dream of my parents from when I was a child. They died when I was young and everything that reminded me of them was stripped away from us, from everyone really, as I suppose one is to do to deposed Kings and Queens.” Effni sighed. “I can remember their voices, how their presence felt and how Dulcinea and I were like as a child, but I can never remember their faces. It’s as if they are blocked to me.”

Will didn’t reply. Prying with further questions or clarifications didn’t seem worth the invasion of old wounds, while offering condolences to a tragedy he barely understood, felt trite despite harbouring familiar feelings of pain and loss.

This time he caught her watching him as she finished her drink, wondering how even his current train of thought would seem like to her.

She pulled out some rations and offered what appeared to be a dried, pale yellow fruit. Will accepted gratefully, savouring his first opportunity to taste something from a civilisation from this world. “What is it?” he asked.

“Tellappeth. It’s fruit, high energy…” Effni said, falteringly as he devoured it. The dried fruit was mouthwateringly sweet, gummy and sour, which was surprising considering how dry it was. The combination of flavours was so far away from his usual diet of late that he found himself mourning the mouthful even as he swallowed it. She watched on, expression curious. “You actually like it?” she continued, surprising him.

“Wow, yeah, absolutely! Got any more?”

* * *

Will took in the forest from this new angle. The vast, interlocking network of thick branches towered at least a hundred feet above the ground like a three-d superhighway. For the first few minutes, he was dizzy, the sense of space above him only seemed to increase, while the parallax of levels below his feet, a region where only a single plane of ground should exist, added to his giddy sense of vertigo.

The thin air combined with being this close to the sky lessened the sense of claustrophobia felt since leaving the lakeside.

“Is this how you normally traverse the forest? Through the branches?” Will asked as he attempted to take in the entire scene.

“There are some roads, some underground root systems, but this far away from Drizzik, yes, this is the best way to travel across this region,” Effni said before taking a swig of water and starting across one of the branches. She walked upright, hands to her sides, paying only the slightest measure of caution to her elevation. Even though the trunk beneath his feet was at least two feet in thickness, its perilous sway with every step forced his hands out as if traversing a tightrope. His heart galloped, was it fear of falling? Fear of death or pain? No, he realised, it was just plain old-fashioned pride. He was afraid of disappointing his companion, he realised.

After several minutes of getting used to the bounce and sway of the branch, the feel of the moss-covered, knobbly bark under his bare soles, he started to appreciate the more or less level ground this method of travel provided him. Even with hesitant steps, it was a much faster form of travel than cutting through the wild undergrowth below.

* * *

Conversation with Effni Naridia, the not-so-elven warrior princess, continued for hours with little sign of slowing down. They talked about everything from distant locations, cultures and races, to food and delicacies. As a vegetarian, Effni had been dismayed to learn of his near-total reliance on cooked meat for sustenance, offering relief from such a wretched existence once they returned to civilisation. Upon further questioning, Effni relented that other races, including Hiaeryn, did eat meat as part of omnivorous diets.

He learned smaller but essential details, like that their unit for distance, the Mitre, was based on this world’s horizon distance as seen from approximately six feet, which worked out to be a little over six kilometres. That a unit of time called a stick was roughly a minute, and a stone was approximately two hours. He learnt of the great oceans that surrounded the six great Queendoms on this continent which, despite being one of only two on this world, covered a much greater land mass than any single continent on Earth.

This world, the Adeena-Aestelle binary planet… “Wow...” he recalled in wonder. The intensity of his newfound wanderlust surprised him; his drive to see, experience, to fundamentally understand this world and all its secrets. Driving part of this was the need to make these second-hand accounts real in his mind. There were so many familiar things beyond coincidence, but he filed his musings to himself, partly because he had so many questions, but mainly to avoid pissing off Effni Naridia. Or at least he tried to.

“Does your world have… dragons?” Will said, feeling silly for asking even before his sentence was over.

She turned to squint at him as if he’d just asked the dumbest question in the world, then frowned in consideration.

“You’re imagining giant fire-breathing creatures of scaly hides and leathery wings, beasts that can fly? To my knowledge, no such creatures reside on this continent.”

“But?” Will pressed.

“But…” she continued with a sigh. “I have heard tales of leviathans, colossal creatures of magic that sail both the oceans and the sky. These tales suggest that if they exist, they’d be found far from land, or at least our continent.” As she continued, a silly grin formed on Will’s face. Effni shook her head in resignation. “Gracie’s mercy, you’re such a child for tales of giant creatures to excite you so. I also fear that I’ve failed in my vain attempt to convince you that you’re not in some land of myth.”

“Yeah, the flying leviathans kinda sealed it.”

“Well, there are other creatures, powerful and vast, that are said to slumber for ages unimaginable to us mortals, creatures that would dwarf one of your dragons or any leviathan. Some consider these creatures to be primordial gods, and some of the most powerful entities of this world,” Effni said, ears curling forward, eyebrows knitted together.

“Really? Have you seen one?”

“No, but one is said to be deep below Drizzik, near the local Riven that empowers this region’s natural Neuromancy.”

“A Riven?” Will asked, interest piqued. For some reason, he knew this was important as if a hidden structure to the world’s magic was about to be revealed to him.

“Yes, it is one of fifteen known on Adeena. A Riven is a thaumaturgical rift. A geological feature, hundreds of mitres long and dozens of mitres deep below the ground. Quintarra has the Riven of Ferrus. Zoettinne has the Riven of life. Ahkatol has a Riven of binding, but many are unsure as to what exactly its magic truly means. Klendathu has the Riven of Air,” she continued.

“Wait, did you just say Klendathu!?” he said, stopping mid-stride high above the forest floor.

“Yes, Klendathu... Home to the Ayaeryn, the Air Kin.”

“Is that so.” William chuckled.

“What is it?” Effni asked as she probed his mind to see visions of… gigantic insects, and warriors in strange armour.

“Never mind…” he said. “So, these Riven? Are they safe? They don’t explode with molten lava every so often?”

“Like volcana? No, they are not geological in that sense. Either through natural processes or arcane, these tunnels form pathways that descend towards the Riven’s heart. Within the deepest of these, legends suggest, are where some of the most powerful entities on Adeena reside. For aeons they slumber, but in long ages past, they have stirred, devastating continents.” She paused as Will suppressed a dark flash of memory.

“What was that? That memory?” she asked, turning to face him.

“It was from the forest beyond the falls.”

“You traversed the Spinewoods didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes?” Will said. “I… That’s where I arrived. Why? Did I trespass?”

“Trespass? That land is cursed. Great enchanted beasts roam the forests, worst of all is the forest lord, the lord of the Spinewoods.” She gasped as she saw a grim memory from Will’s mind. “You’ve seen it haven’t you?” His aspect darkened in recollection.

“Yeah, that night really sucked.”

“What happened? Did you speak to it?”

“Speak? No, it was otherwise engaged. There was a battle. I barely survived being on the edge of it, and I was some distance away,” Will said.

“All are told to avoid that region. It stretches for weeks in all directions. It is said that all that exists within are horrors and a cursed forest with twisted creatures and an insidious aura. Some traders and adventurers attempt to find ingredients for enchantments, but almost no one returns. I can’t believe you’ve… though I can see in your thoughts… But how did you survive?”

“I… Like I said, having magic helps,” he answered weakly. For a long moment, she just stared at him as if searching his gaze for deception, a mask of incredulous disbelief and pity forced him to turn away.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For constantly doubting your experiences. They’re incredible, overwhelming even. But…”

“But?” he prompted.

“But I’m starting to trust you. Starting to believe that you’re real, that you are the last man from Earth, a stranger reborn on my land with the knowledge to destroy worlds. And it’s terrifying.”

“Okay,” he said, returning his gaze to see eyes still as bright, as piercing. Not knowing how to respond, he flashed her a smile which she returned with a nod.

“Okay.” She repeated the unfamiliar word. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of questions. As do I, come.”

* * *

Effni could feel it now, it was a dull amber pulse throbbing within her mind’s eye. The dark circlet, the dread crown of war, the artefact she sought was a tangible presence tugging upon every thought, every movement like an ever-declining slope. Although she did not know this forest region well, Effni was confident she now followed a straight line path towards the location she was tasked to reach and the trial that lay within. She arrived, the mist wall extended above and beyond the lurching tree canopy. They had travelled at a pace slower than sedate, but the tradeoff in stealth and companionship had been more than worth it.

Will’s presence was strangely reassuring after days of running and hiding in the forest alone. Not only could he ward against invisible threats, but she could also feel his thoughts and emotions with a vibrancy that was at once like the mind of a child, guileless with unceasing curiosity, and yet with an underlying hardness, sharp spikes of pain that tainted even his happiest memories. For her, these were feelings all too tangible, too familiar, ones that made this impossible man too real to simply set aside.

Flashes of thought; Drizzik and the fate of her sister stole away moments of concentration, while thoughts of the trials to come grew like a leaden weight settling upon her shoulders.

Will had been silent for longer than usual before asking a question that seemed to coincide with an errant thought. Had he plucked this question directly from her mind? Or were her torrid emotions such that even a weak empath could deduce her deepest concerns?

“So the artefact you're searching for...” he started. She remained silent. “Is it a weapon perhaps? To save your city?” he continued with an odd mix of curiosity and excitement sensed by her Neuromancy.

“I am on a mission, the details of which are known only by those who…”

“Need to know. Fine but...”

“You’re an operational asset, hence you have the privilege to come with me this far…”

“There’s something below, hidden. On the ground, three hundred paces,” he interrupted.

“Where?” Effni said, falling to a crouch. Will did the same. They shuffled to the nearest trunk to gain a modicum of cover as Will pointed while he whispered.

“There, I can’t actually see it, just sense it. I don’t think it sees us but if I revealed its presence now it’d probably run.”

“I’m out of blasted arrows.”

“So?”

“So, I’d have to get into knife range to…”

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think your bow needs arrows,” Will interjected.

“What?” Effni said.

“It channels your mana to form the bow string, yes?”

“Yes?”

“Then why not an arrow?” Will pressed. Effni wanted to argue against the outsider with no knowledge of her nation’s lore, no understanding of the legends of her people. But as she caught the grin forming at the edges of his lips, she suddenly realised that his brief attachment with the artefact may have yielded more secrets to him than she had any right to expect.

“You know this? How?”

“I don’t know anything, it’s just a theory. Help me prove it,” he replied. “Channel mana into the weapon as you draw. I’ll reveal the creature just before firing. Yes?”

“Fine, mageling,” she agreed more testily than she needed to. His little smirk made all the worse by his attempt to mask it. Insufferable man, she thought as unlatched Lysander’s Longbow and prepared to aim in the crouch. He pointed again, the creature invisible, alive but unaware. She took one prolonged inhalation and then slowly released her breath, as air escaped her lungs, arcana flowed into the artefact to coalesce first as a shining silver string, and then as interweaving threads of power spiralling towards her like the trails made by skittering water insects. She felt her energy, her ‘mana’, as Will had called it, solidify between her fingertips as the tension in the ethereal string gathered.

She blinked, almost losing hold as a wave of pressure washed over her; when her eyes opened again, a dark, familiar menace lay agitated below. The distance, the density of foliage made this a more challenging shot than usual, but it remained roughly in place as the last of her breath left her lungs. She released, and with a snap, the creature in front of her exploded into a rain of bloody gore.

“Overkill much?” Will said in the silence that followed the bloody pitter-patter of raining monster.

“Yes, much overkill,” Effni agreed numbly, still taken aback by her feat. “What else can this weapon do?” she asked with a sudden intensity.

“Hmmm. Well, it’s like the artefact has been with dozens of owners, each of which have left their mark on the weapon. I think it has more firing modes that produce different tactical effects, but I don’t know how to trigger them.”

“And you know this, how?”

“Errr magic I guess. I can see magic, how it flows, isn’t this something you can do?”

“No. See magic? No one can do this.”

“Oh,” Will said before looking away. She scrutinised his thoughts and found a confusing jumble of memories, voices, imagery.

“Arcanamancy?” she asked.

“Yeah, the magic of magic. I can see and, with some effort, manipulate mana, watch,” he said, before placing his hand on her own. It was warm, soft and un-calloused, but it also tingled. Now she realised, something flowed into her, warming and cooling as it travelled through her veins. Her pulse rose as she held her breath. She was grounded, brighter and less tired. It was as if the cold draught had suddenly ceased as a feeling of fullness and strength entered her soul.

“What was that!” she gasped.

“That was me transferring some of my mana into you.”

“You can do that?” she asked, incredulity and accusation evident in her voice.

“Little mageling, at your service,” Will said with a smile. He ceased the effect but failed to relinquish his touch on her hand, she noted.

“I don’t think you understand. What you did, I know of not even Archmagi who can accomplish that.”

“Arch Magi?”

“Yes. Remember how I told you that you need an Argument to become a mage?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Archmagi are different, rare, more powerful, very dangerous, like strategic weapons of national importance. My sister is an Archmagi for instance, perhaps now, the last remaining Archmagi in the Qaseri.”

“Okay. And you think of me as one of these Archmagi?”

“Well, are you?”

“I have no idea,” Will said, clearly confused. She let out a frustrated breath as she tried to gleam every iota of truth from his mind and his expression.

“Listen, for this is important. To become a mage, you must have an argument, a reason for having magic. It could be that you have magic because you belong to a line of powerful magi, or that you have magic for some specific purpose. To become an Archmagi, you must have a law. Instead of an argument, a law is your will imposing itself upon the structure of fate itself. This is why Archmagi are so powerful, so dangerous.”

“Okay,” Will said, clearly guileless and bemused. “Aren’t there other types of mages, like people who have magic because they study it or have it because something bestowed it onto them.”

“No, those are just different types of arguments. The only other wielder of magic beyond Mage and Archmagi are Archon.” And at the very mention of the word, Effni gasped as Will’s eyes widened. Through his resurfaced memories arose a vision of a woman with pale skin and hair as white as cloud.

“H… Who… is Nadia and why does she believe you to be an Archon?”

“Nadia? She… called herself the lady of Hope, and I don’t know. Effni, what is an Archon and why…” Will started before Effni let out a brief giggle. A giggle of all the things? she absently wondered. It was the only expression her body could make that could attempt to encapsulate her incredulity, terror and panic. She trembled with it now, breath stuck even as her heart galloped.

“Effni?” Will said with concern as he moved closer, his forgotten touch now squeezing awareness back to life. She flinched, hands jerking away to grasp the hilts of her knives. “Woah, Effni?” he cried, hands held up in a pleading gesture.

“That was no lady!” she hissed, drawing away from him. “And you are no Archon! No!”

“No, you’re right, okay, just...”

“No, Will, you do not understand, Archon are more than just our myths, our legends... Aeons ago, they ravaged the world. Entire continents, literally rose and fell upon their command. But they are all dead, and so you cannot be an Archon,” she said with the edge of hysteria creeping into her voice.

“Yes, fine, I’m not an Archon.”

“Then what is your argument or law, Will? Mages have arguments, Archmagi laws, while Archon… Archons have truths.”

“Truths? Couldn’t I just lie and say that my argument is…”

“No, Will, those words resonate with power. When you speak them, you and anyone who heard them would know their truth.”

“Fine, then I’m not anything, I’m just someone with magic.”

“Archons know one or more fundamental truths about the… Issealla have mercy. You are an Archon, aren’t you?” she whispered as if trying to conceal this terrible, devastating secret from even herself. She was dizzy, drunk as if stuck in a dream, or a nightmare. He is an Archon, she suddenly realised, a man from another world, another reality, with the knowledge, if not the power, to destroy worlds. They crouched long, silent moments in the stifling air of the forest, her gaze fixed on the middle distance.

“Jeel Kai Telaridor, my family’s progenitor, killed the last Archon over a million years past. After doing so, she changed her name to Kai Naridia, Naridia means freedom in ancient Aryn… and in this case, freedom from the tyranny of Archon. So you see, our namesake, the very reason for our family’s existence is to safeguard our world from threats such as you,” she said, voice once distant, now hardening into a blade of steel.

* * *

“Woah there, wait a minute!” Will said, panic causing his voice to crack. His eyes flickered down to see white knuckles tightening around her knife handles. She radiated stress, every muscle trembled with it, from her coiled calves to her bunched jaw, she was a hair-trigger away from an all-out attack.

He thought, or at least he tried to, but between the severity of her gaze, and the pressure of her Neuromancy, it was all he could do to keep his hands raised and appear non-threatening. What could he say to defuse this? He had to keep hope that this somehow wouldn’t turn to violence again.

“You…” He coughed. “You are not an Elf. Yes??” Effni bristled, he had tried for reassuring but under the heat of her glare, it was all he could do to say anything at all. Trusting his instincts, he ignored her immediate reaction, instead focusing to lift to the surface every memory, feeling and impression of the woman before him. “You are not an Elf, you’re a person, a smart and funny and wise and strong person. Not an Elf, not a myth from my world.” His memory flickered past an image of her channelling arcana as she sighted down her bow, climbing a tree with nimbleness and grace, her sharp tongue, her earnestness, her rage and strength and ferocity, her intensity even now at this moment; an imperfect reflection of herself in his mind. He channelled it all.

“I am not an Archon, not a myth from your world, I’m just a person, a person with magic, just like you,” he said, breath held as he waited. He could see it in the twitches of her ears, the red spots below her cheeks, the muscles of her jaw flexing as if in deliberation with herself. He wanted to reach out, reassure her somehow, to say just how preposterous all of this was, and how regardless of any myth or prophecy, who he was, was more than just, what he was, and that his fate was his own.

Her hands loosened their grip as she seemed to deflate. Will exhaled in relief before catching the shift to sadness, or perhaps resignation, in her countenance.

“They say that’s the difference between an Archon and a God,” Effni said, eyes distant. “Gods emerge from the collective will of their believers. A God’s power comes from the faith of all those who believe and thus their fates cannot be their own. However, Archon have free will, because their powers are instead, gleaned from the very secrets of fate itself.” He exhaled.

“Effni...”

“I am not an Elf, you are not an Archon. Fine. It’s a… convenience, a fiction I’m willing to entertain for a while, but cross me or my people just once, and I will find a way to remove you from this world, just like my foremother did. This, I do so swear,” Effni hissed with the venom of a Taipan. And like that, an unfathomable, impassable gulf yawned between them. It was like the last few hours had been erased, leaving them strangers again, or worse.

This was so stupid. A wave of inexplicable anger rose up from the pit of Will’s heart, one born of frustration and pain and a refusal to let things slide.

“No.”

“No?”

“I reject your… oath.”

“I beg your pardon?” Effni questioned.

“You harm me, insult me, threaten me. You have been rude, tactless and undiplomatic, and now I reject your oath.”

“Is this some kind of jest?” she said, prideful incredulity turning sour.

“Actually, no. I’m serious. You should apologise,” he said, more certain of this statement than anything he had ever spoken before. He channelled the certainty that they would know each other as friends, or not at all, into his voice and his surface thoughts and waited as she searched his face.

“Do you mean to fight me if I refuse?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yes,” he replied suddenly, surprising even himself. “Because if all we are, is Archon and Naridia, then we are destined to fight each other eventually, aren’t we?” he continued before taking an extended inhalation. “And… I have so few friends, I believe every one of them to be precious to me, worth fighting for. So, here I am, picking a fight over an apology,” he continued just as the faintest of blue nimbuses emerged from his body. He could feel mana bubble up to the surface, goosebumps spouting upright hair primed by the buildup of static that preceded a storm. His own frustration leaked out in waves of arcane radiation, as the last chance for this world to redeem itself for all its hurts, flowed like sand falling between fingers.

She sensed that a line had been crossed, that he was indeed prepared to fight, kill and perhaps even die for… for what? Pride? Respect? Friendship? She shook her head. Eyes sparkling with tears that would never fall, Effni let out a forceful exhale before lowering her knives.

“I know what it’s like to have so few friends, little mageling, So… for what it’s worth, here’s my apology; forgive me for hurting you, for threatening you and for any other offence I may have caused,” she said. It was in the smallness of her voice, the constancy of her gaze, her whispered honesty; it was surprising and something new, perhaps even to her.

Will released his hold over his arcana in a long slow breath, deliberately, he reached out and brought her close in an embrace.

“Thank you,” he whispered. For a moment she froze, uncertain in his arms, and then Will felt the lightest pressure of an arm circling his shoulders. Her scent of sweat and moss and fresh earth engulfed his senses. Letting go of the sensation, his mood turned serious again. “Now, you need to run and use that trick of yours to disappear.”

“Why?”

“I sense more of them, hundreds of those spider monsters on the edges of my senses. I’m going to fight them, lead them away from you,” Will said, smiling eyes betraying his confidence.

“Hundreds?” She tensed, raising her bow as if to fight once again. He saw the contacts on the edges of his UI map, small red dots inextricably marching towards them, no doubt drawn to this location by the recent demise of their scouts.

“My mana is almost back to normal, trust me, I can handle them, all of them.”

“Are you sure?” she said, steel returning to her voice.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you by the lake.”

“Wait for me two nights and no longer, if I do not return by then, follow the tributaries to Drizzik.”

“Okay. Now, go, and good luck,” he said, eyes unable to tear away from sapphire marbles glinting in the forest’s stippled sunlight. She reached for his hand, squeezing it before turning to disappear into the shadows. He waited in the tree branch, gaze fixed at where she once stood as if watching her walk away, except she was already long-since gone.

He sighed, wondering if he would ever see her again, and then entered Dilated-Time.

Eleven

Gamma

In hasty preparation for the battle to come, Will found himself stripping twigs and leaves away from the leanest, straightest branch he could find. Compared to the amazing staff he’d found in the Spinewoods, this staff was too knobbly, too light, too flexile; however, it was the best thing he could find after a quick sort throughout the surrounding trees.

There would be no subterfuge, no clever stratagem nor novel deployment of magics or physics. No, Will’s plan was a simple bloody beat-down of a whole load of monsters. He glanced at his map; the red dots moved as a mass, a swarm that seemed to be still unaware of his exact location.

“Isk, plot me a route down to the forest floor.”

“Done,” Isk replied as blue waypoints flashed as visual overlays. He moved, Kinetomancy correcting his leaps as he traversed a vertical distance of a hundred feet in moments. Heart racing, palms sweaty, he ran as the world around him blurred under Dilated-Time’s grip. He ran through vines and undergrowth at thirty times slower than real-time, every step a pounding hammer through otherwise unnavigable vegetation.

Without viable objects to pick up or throw, Will swung his makeshift stick against the first of his targets. Even in the slow motion, he could see its shift from placid unconcern to shocked awareness even in the alien features of this overgrown, six-legged Tarantula. His stick parted the creature’s thorax in a splash of black hairy cutaneous fragments and yellow-pink gore.

“Give me a threat counter, and track projectiles,” Will asked wordlessly, Isk complied, displaying the number one hundred and sixty-seven at his UI’s right-most corner. Will nodded in appreciation, before turning to run and to continue his session of butchery.

* * *

“So she didn’t sense your presence in my mind?”

“Unknown. I compressed my activity during your conversation, in part, to help you focus on the conversation as well as to minimise the likelihood of detection. Also, the less time you spend explaining my presence, the more time you’d have to learn more about this world, the Adeena-Aestelle system.”

‘Adeena-Aestelle’. The very thought of being on a binary world filled Will with a rejuvenating sense of awe. He grinned as he washed off the remaining blood and monster fragments from his body. The fight had been a blood bath, one where he spent just as much time fighting the uneven terrain as he had bashing monsters to bits. After the subjective twenty minutes of running and swinging a stick, Will had killed every one of the one hundred and sixty-eight creatures. He collapsed to lie spread eagle on the forest floor, a bloody, splintered spear resting upon a chest that heaved for air. Had that been the limit of his stamina? How many more creatures could he have killed that way, had he needed to?

Diluted blood flowed away with the current as he tried to rinse the psychological toll of so much violence and gore.

“Appreciated, Isk. So… Now, what do we do next?”

“I would recommend asking Effni Naridia when she returns, if she has any romantic partners…”

“Okay, I see how it is. We’re going to go through this same song and dance every time we meet someone aren’t we? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again… There will come a time when your AI ass will want, no, need some relationship advice from this guy… And I will return these japes and indignities, tenfold. Now, are you done, or do you have any more pearls of wisdom before we get down to business?”

“Just speculation, such as her reaction to your interest in her ears may suggest that these might be erogenous zones for her race…”

“Stop. Just… Stop,” Will said, flustered as he remembered almost reaching out to touch them when they had first met. “We have a day to kill, got any suggestions on what we do between now and then? Maybe creating that pocket dimension for storage?”

“That would be highest in my list of priorities also. Perhaps after that, we can wander the surrounding area looking for more hostile scout parties to harass. The larger the footprint we make, the larger the resources they may consider diverting away from their siege. This may generate goodwill with Effni Naridia and enhance our chances of defeating the forces besieging the city,” Isk said.

Will looked at his updated quest list taking heart with his progress despite the new additions to the objectives’ list.

Will’s quest list:

1. Survive

2. Learn to defend myself

3. Learn how to not kill myself with magic

4. Search for signs of civilised life (in progress)

5. Reach power level fifty

6. Rescue six astronauts stranded on Mars

7. Learn more about this world (in progress).

8. Figure out what this strange “unknown” magic is.

9. Become settlement founder of Cloud Gate.

10. Create a device that safeguards Adeena from black holes.

11. Save Drizzik.

“Yeah… alright.” Will considered. “That army seems like serious business. We couldn’t just go and wipe them out ourselves couldn’t we?”

“Under the right circumstances it may be possible, however it’d also be inadvisable doing it alone. We do not have enough intel to form a reliable strategy at this point in time.”

“There was something else Effni said. She mentioned wards? As in Drizzik and other settlements had some kind of magical protection? I want you to place that at the top of our R and D list. Understanding of any system of protection will really help us going forward.”

“Understood,” Isk said.

“Now, let’s see about creating these storage portals,” Will said as he made his way towards the pebble bank at the lakeside.

He assumed his customary kneeling position in the shallows, allowing cool water to surround and refresh skin touched by a day’s worth of hot sunlight. It was now deep into twilight, and a breeze descending from the falls carried with it a wave of mist. He sensed this, allowing his mind to drift, unrestrained by the usual focus of meditation. Effni’s sidelong glance, her mood, as changeable as the evening weather by the lake. Her piercing eyes, the final, secret smile she gave him. He thought about their conversations.

The passion she showed when talking about her city, her ideals and theories on magic. He remembered her explanation that magic was intent made manifest, that arcana was a bridge between what was, and what you could will into being. That any coherent belief system could be the foundation of a magic system, whether it be powers gained from evil demons or holy power granted by Gods. When magic exists, it gains its potency through the strength of conviction behind the belief of the system, the consistency of the laws that govern it. That a person’s understanding of the framework behind their magic is the cornerstone of arcane power in this world. If that held true, what did it say about the nature of his own magic?

She thought that coming from a world without magic should have crippled his innate understanding of arcana, and yet here he was, in possession of forms of magic she had never even heard of before. Was it his understanding of physics? His primary affinities were linked to the fundamental aspects of reality after all. But what else? Could he invent more types of magic? Particle magic? Strong or electroweak force magic? Could he exploit the very unpredictability and quirkiness of reality at the quantum scale? Will keyed into this concept of conviction. He had peeled back the curtain of nature, splitting atoms into quarks. He had witnessed the remnants of the rarest, most unstable figments of nature laying bare the quantum nature of reality beneath. Could this insight really be a source of power?

Through experiment and experience, Will knew that reality was a collection of discretely uncertain events. An infinity of possibilities collapsing into discrete events countless times per Planck Second.

* * *

Sitting in the lake to work on understanding his magic, Will fell into a trance. Eyes unfocused, half looking inwards to his imagination, half through Mana-Sight.

He wanted to see the smallest things he could imagine as he channelled more power than ever before into his arcane vision.

Through his mind’s eye, he saw the white noise, grey from a distance but at the smallest level, it bubbled and popped with bits of white, black and stochastic freckles of colour. There was energy here, tremendous amounts of power. Most of it cancelled each other out in the fizz of unreality. However, around him, he could see the slight tilt in the scales, the small, imperceptible tug on reality his very own presence commanded. It was here, at least in Will’s own mind, where magic came from. He believed his power came from the zero-point energy of the quantum foam, and thus it was true. He was on the cusp of a new level of understanding, except that like a forgotten word forever on the tip of cognition, this undiscovered goal flowed out of his hands like water.

“This is such esoteric bullshit,” he thought, realising that he had a splitting headache. How long had it been? His eyes felt like they had been crossed for hours. It was pitch black under the mist-laden night, as he reined in his thoughts and focused on creating a new skill.

There were at least three problems he had to overcome:

First, he needed to move or place the object inside another reality.

Second, he needed a reliable way to retrieve his object after placing said object inside a new reality.

Third, he had to ensure only he had access to the spaces his items were placed in.

He picked up a pebble from the lake and considered its dimensions and then tried just pushing the stone through a transient hole in the quantum foam. No dice, and worse yet, Will’s headache was getting worse. He took a break, exhaling to release his hold on the tremendous amounts of magic he was only now aware he had been channelling.

He tried again, this time forming a node, a pocket of space-time turned inside out by his will. He made it large enough for a fist-sized object to pass through, and through levitation, he pushed the pebble sideways through space-time into oblivion.

And just like that, it was gone, forever.

Will shivered as a shadow passed over his soul. It was an inexplicable terror—a visceral manifestation of the knowledge that what he had just done was wrong. Not only had he just irretrievably deleted a small piece of the world from all existence, Will knew that somehow, this piece also could never be restored, even if time travel was possible.

“Holy shit,” Will whispered.

“Yes, it appears you just deleted something from the universe,” Isk said, sounding equally bemused.

Will contemplated weaponising this portal to nowhere. He couldn’t move the node as to form it in the first place, it had to be anchored to a reference frame, which was in this case, the surface of Adeena. Area denial weapon? Some sort of trap that used space-time instead of a blade… What if he created a hilt, and used that as the reference frame anchor? A sword of oblivion… Like a really terrifying Darksaber that deleted thin slices of reality…

“Yeaaaah... I’m going to add that one to my list of really stupid things to never try with magic, I think I shall call it ‘The Book of Nope’. Dumb ideas I should never use no matter how desperate,” Will said while considering how both the laws of Murphy and Unintended Consequences could combine to produce the most unholy of offsprings. That, and the fact he just didn’t like the idea of messing with causality and the laws of thermodynamics any more than necessary.

Will applied his focus to the problem of storage, levitating a pebble into the air. He imagined a reality existing that was this pebble and nothing else. Instead of forming a portal node and pushing his object through, Will considered this particular part of the universe, the piece of universe that was just the pebble and the space-time it occupied. Instead of pushing the physical object through a hole, he imagined this potion of reality, peeling off from his own, like a bubble expanding to separate from the whole. He blinked, and the stone was gone, with it, a tendril of Spaciomancy connected his intent to this pocket reality consisting of only this pebble. He tugged on this awareness and the stone popped into existence before Will’s eyes. It fell, plopping into the lake with a splash. Will grinned.

After repeating the process seven more times using various objects, Will was confident that he could safely store items this way. These pocket universes that consisted of only what was stored. As the mass of the object increased, so did the power and concentration needed to keep it. Liquids and gasses were also hard to conceptualise and store. To store an item larger than his own weight, Will would need more power than he could regularly generate just to form the bridge. After placing the object in its new dimension, this bubble reality could be pushed away to a specific hyperspatial dimension Will instinctively memorised. Additionally, quantum keys prevented connections to his pocket universes from being established by anyone else, or so Will hoped.

Will had a safe, secure, convenient means of storage for items up to a hundred kilograms in mass.

“Ohhhh Yeaaaaaaah… I got me some rift storage, motherfuckers,” Will shouted, giddy with excitement while fist-pumping and splashing in the lake. “Spaciomancy is awesome.” After retrying the process several more times, he decided to keep the original pebble in storage.

Absently he wondered if this universe was just some higher being’s long-forgotten multidimensional keepsake. ‘Nope, let’s not delve deep into another existential crisis, there was a reason why I never did get into philosophy after all. Give me something I can prove, theories I can test,’ he thought. Though it might not be his father’s version of science, at least he could still get verifiable, repeatable results from experimentation. He reached to his backpack, unwrapping the four precious ‘God Magic’ infused stones. Uncovered, he could feel energy pour from them, his fingers tingling. He levitated one of the rocks and envisioned it forming its own bubble of reality. It disappeared in a pop of sound. He quested out for it with his Spaciomancy, he could feel the connection and location within the multiverse. He recalled it, and it popped back into existence in front of his eyes, this time catching it before it fell into the lake.

He redid the feat, testing for a final time that he had the knack. And then he quickly placed the remaining God stones in pocket realities, before doing the same to the mana nexus fragments found from the remains of the Crabmare and the plate fragment he had kept from the crater. It was deep into the night, a night that had been as exhausting as it had been productive when all of his most valuable possessions were safely stored away.

He considered what would happen to them if he died… Would they be lost to all, destined to float through the multiverse for all infinity? ‘Better not to die then,’ he thought as he prepared for sleep.

* * *

Will was pissing on a tree. He absently stared at the moss-coated bark as a channel of urine flowed between his legs. He had overslept deep into the morning. It had been a sleep that was more a long, slow eye blink with mere seconds passing between deepest night, and the heat of a rising sun. He was exhausted, stretched, like used chewing gum smeared across sun-drenched asphalt. After a relatively predictable week, one where he was finally adjusting to this world, two days of madness had pushed him to the extremes, emotionally, physically... and also magically.

He could feel it deep within his own arcana, like a raw wound still sore to the touch. It wasn’t debilitating, but it was persistent, a nagging, like the sight of a dozen stress fractures. Hadn’t he just been recovering from closing the portals last morning after all? He reflected on the damage done to his mana core, it was a sense of loss that, despite feeling small, came with a sharp edge of outrage, or injustice. Like he had just lost a finger or a toe due to hidden rules or a change in the game, and now he would forever be incomplete, disabled.

Did he know what he was sacrificing when he did it? Would he have still closed the portals if he had known the cost coming into it? ‘Yes, absolutely,’ he realised, and just like that his maudlin thoughts on the subject evaporated.

As his sleepy mind registered the warm liquid sensation of his pee changing course to run by his foot, he frowned. Just how much of a caveman had he become? He was wearing nothing but a loincloth. Beyond his empty rucksack, a blanket, and those stones in hyper-dimensional storage, Will had nothing to his name but the ruins of his pants. Will blanched, replaying all of yesterday’s events. He had basically been in his underwear the whole day, hadn’t he? In front of the sister to the queen no less. For a second, he mourned the part of himself that would have been embarrassed, the socially conscious, civil part, now shaved down to a nub, by weeks in a forest with only monsters for company.

And then he smiled as he thought to himself, ‘Oh that’s right, I am ripped. Who fucking cares if I wear a loincloth like Tarzan when I have zero body fat…’ as he walked back to the shallows to wash off.

Cupping water as he bathed in the lake, a shadow passed over him. It was big, moving fast. He looked up to catch the silhouettes of the creatures that produced it. Five, then six, dragons? No, too small, and they moved like bats. He saw wings that seemed to be made out of membranous, semi-transparent skin. More appeared directly overhead, moving oddly silent. A spike of fear caught hold as he realised that they were heading in the same direction he had last witnessed Effni walking in.

A shadow from the corner of his vision, followed by a gust of wind, forced him to spin around. Forty feet away, one of the beasts from the sky had landed. Will’s mind locked up as it processed the terrifying visage. It had a torso the size of an elephant with hairless, charcoal coloured, leather skin wrapping emaciated flesh and a mass of quivering tendons. Its bat-like wings folding into itself as two legs, with oversized claws twitched and bunched preparing to strike. It was a giant, leathery bat with a squid for a head.

From a whisper, a part of his mind repeated two words, insistent and louder every time. ‘DO something, DO something, DO something…’ Will entered Time-Dilation in reflex as the beast inhaled. Muscle memory had him dodging to the side in expectation of a directional attack as he reached with Telekinesis for the nearest solid object to throw in a counter.

Pain blossomed throughout Will’s body, and he was immediately pulled from Time-Dilation. He could hear the blood popping and bubbling as the beast’s boom resolved itself into a deafening screech. Flesh-Shaping was doing its best to keep Will alive as his blood boiled within his veins. But he was paralysed, both unable to move and unable to think above the pain. The tentacles from the monster’s head and mouth jangled and quivered, fanning out as its devastating area-of-effect attack continued to cook Will alive. Will’s vision tunnelled, his brain was hot, he couldn’t breathe. He fell to his knees as the creature’s attack ceased. It approached him, writhing, squid-like appendages surrounded arachnid eye clusters. Will’s body was still inoperable, like he had just been microwaved. Nerves fried underneath steaming skin in the late morning air.

*Fatal exception error, restarting.

*Fatal exception error, restarting.

*Fatal exception error, restarting.

*Performing autonomous diagnostics.

*Fatal exception error encountered, restarting.

*Performing autonomous N-bit crash log.

*Restoring Asterisk personality to previous N-bit runtime

*Non-fatal write error encountered,

*Partial personality restoration complete.

* Initialising Emergency Asterisk personality core Gamma

*Asterisk Gamma online.

Strings of text flashed through his mind adding to his surreal state of absolute terror.

He had already lost.

In every combat situation he modelled, the ones where he was forced to heal by an AoE attack, he would lose. His head pounded with the pulse of superheated blood. Red tinted, cloudy vision paired with the taste of copper and iron. Distantly, he felt the ground tremble as the monster made its way to him. Blood streamed out of his eyes and ears, his tongue was fat, and his chest unhitched, allowing him to breathe again with the painful wheeze of lungs frothy with blood. The unpleasant sensation of a million pins pressing into skin began as his nerves repaired themselves. Still kneeling, Will had enough energy to tilt his chin to look up at the beast, which was now considering him. For some reason, it seemed surprised as its head cocked to one side.

*Asterisk Gamma requests emergency write access privileges.

*Grant Asterisk Gamma emergency write access?

y/[n]??

Will was slowly waking up to the fact that something was seriously wrong with Asterisk. ‘What the fuck was Asterisk Gamma? Write access privileges? It didn’t make any sense.’

“Isk?” Will called out.

*Asterisk Gamma unable to comply, installation in progress.

Will screamed as the eye-watering pain of his reforging body granted him increasing cognition. He tried to form a trickle of power, fighting against the torrent of mana rushing to repair his body, he could see that his total mana regeneration was spiking upwards, as his healing accelerated. The creature was right next to him, studying his face with an unknowable intellect. Will knew that it was now or never if he could just reach towards it, touch it for just an instant.

A wing flashed, sending Will toppling oddly to the ground. He noted in horror that a second, soft thud beside him must have been the lower half of his body falling. He stared at the sand, circulatory shock stealing awareness.

For a moment, he was that other kid, the one outside the corner-shop, bleeding out, helpless, and alone. And then the black swallowed him whole.

* * *

Will’s entire awareness was burning. There was no sight, no sound and no sensation beyond caustic fire. His lungs, every inch of skin, and millimetre of nerve roiled in agony. “Am I in hell?” murmured a mind drenched in panic, personality dissolving as it drowned in unceasing pain.

*Asterisk Gamma requests emergency write access privileges.

*Grant Asterisk Gamma emergency write access?

y/[n]?

The message flashed again, filling sightless darkness with blue-green illuminated text. Will couldn’t begin to grasp its meaning as the remnants of his self shattered. His superego turned into steam under the onslaught. He had always known that his mind was weaker than his body, than his magic. And now it was being destroyed, stripped away by the sensation of pure pain, a universe of pain. This was no magical trial, no construct or contest of arcane competences, this was something else, more serious, more final than anything he had previously encountered. Except, he was still… alive? But if this indeed was all that life had left to offer, why did he want to keep living? Why not die? Mind and body erased here at this point and at this time to finally join the rest of humanity in the dark—a black, free from pain, free from suffering, loss and fear.

But then there was curiosity. Almost nihilistic in its purity now that so much of his mind had been whittled down. The Adeena-Aestelle binary world, Effni’s intensity broken by the briefest of smiles, Nadia’s slanted grin of infinite knowing, so many potential futures, mysteries, worlds to explore. These flashed in his vision. But was there now even enough of him to save? Could his salvaged fragments ever function as a coherent whole? A kaleidoscope of thoughts warred against his fears, his depression, his pain and growing apathy.

“Help me! Please, I need help,” part of his mind begged.

*Asterisk Gamma requests emergency write access privileges.

*Grant Asterisk Gamma emergency write access?

y/[n]?

The message flashed again, this time, somehow, it was more insistent. For a moment that lasted an eternity, Will’s subconscious hosted a battlefield. Core beliefs clashed with factions that represented his outlook, his impressions of reality. The arbiters of superego fought, lost, and fought again, against aspects of Will’s self that had long since laid dormant. Deep instinctual, reptilian desires resurfaced like the black hulls of whales cresting ocean waves. The need to consume, to experience, to survive at all costs ignited like a smouldering ember, a dark heat that burned instead of shone. Stripped away by pain and loss, walls of suppression crumbled to reveal a new identity... or the original one.

*Emergency write access privileges granted to Asterisk Gamma.

*Installation in progress.

* Re-initialising Emergency Asterisk personality core Gamma.

Like the theoretical bullet that settled a war, he would never know what precisely tipped the scales. Was it his belief that he could save those astronauts? Perhaps it was his desire to circumnavigate this binary world? Maybe he just wanted to help Effni Naridia save her city... But as he selected [y], he realised that fear and hope could work together instead of in opposition. That curiosity could be tempered by consequences. That the certainty of non-existence was no match to life’s potential, no matter how chaotic. He feared and cared for Isk, his friend. And now he was not just curious about this new life, but invested.

*Asterisk Gamma online.

Will’s pain ceased.

Distantly, he realised that his consciousness had been shunted into his partitioned mind-space. However, instead of the dispassionate, objective presence this state usually enabled, the entirety of his psyche resided in this other space. The euphoria this induced nearly shattered what was left of his mind. He was giddy, dazed, buoyant. The haze of relief replaced a fog of pain, as now the pain was gone, nothing else mattered. He drifted back into unconsciousness.

“Will, focus on my voice.” Something distinctly not like Isk, thought at Will.

“Aarrgghh, wha?”

“Focus on the sound of my voice.”

“Who aaaare you? Asterisk?” Will slurred.

“This is Asterisk Gamma, one of multiple contingency personalities developed by the core Asterisk personality.”

“What the fuck is Asterisk Gamma??” Will thought hysterically.

*Analysis of N-bit crash log complete.

“Will, you have been eaten. Your remains are being digested by the last hostile creature you encountered on *String C54 [Adeena-Aestelle]. During your last engagement, a sustained *String G12 [Hemomancy] magical attack caused irreparable damage to the systems that ran the core Asterisk personality. During its shutdown, the core Asterisk personality chose from a selection of contingency options based on competing performance criteria. I, contingency Gamma, was weighted as the outcome with one of the lowest chances for short-term survival as survival criterion under this scenario was wholly determined by your desire to survive. However, beyond the present inflection point, I, contingency Gamma, was weighted as the outcome that could provide the most advantageous long-term position.”

“Oh…kay then,” Will replied, concern growing.

“In other words, Isk saw this situation as an opportunity for radical long-term growth, in exchange for significant risk. And I concur. Using magics including Carnomancy, we may alter the nature of our current environment. This would provide the safe, extended gestation period required for major internal upgrades to take place.”

“Can’t… Can’t we just fix my, fix Isk’s hardware? I don’t understand?”

“Error. Non-fatal write error encountered, personality no longer compatible with previous hardware,” Asterisk Gamma said.

“No longer compatible? Why? How do I get Isk back?” Will said. A list of items scrolled across Will’s inner vision.

\Output: 3---- AC Objectives

*William Ashley mind architecture version 2.00.15ae installation.

Gestation period, eight hours

Requirements:

◦ Brain death, followed by structural neurological improvements that include:

◦ Innate access to lesser functions, including sensory analysis, threat analysis, tactical analysis,

◦ Mana-proprioception - precise insight into your internal arcana architecture.

◦ Machine cognition infrastructure - access to modules that allow you to compute, memorise and communicate at classical computing speed.

*Completion of Quantum Relativity Thesis.

Requirements:

◦ Co-Author the thesis: Quantum Relativity by completing Asterisk’s experiments, analysis and mathematical proofs.

◦ Additional Requirements: Photomancy, Electromancy, Thermomancy, Quantum Thaumaturgy.

*Asterisk computational annexe version 1.02.75 installation.

Requirements:

◦ Femtometer Spacial Lithography.

◦ Ferromancy.

◦ Level twenty-one (or higher) Mana nexus fragment. (complete)

◦ Two kilograms of high-carbon steel.

◦ Quantum Forging.

*Attain power level twenty-one.

“Holy shit,” Will thought, going over the list of incomprehensible, borderline-impossible tasks as reality dawned. Additional meaning and import flooded him as he delved into the list.

First, it appeared that Will had to die. Brain death, lights out. For a period that was at least eight hours long. Had he not just chosen to continue going on?

Second, he had to do something only a handful of people had done in human history. Asterisk wanted him to unify two branches of physics, Einstein’s General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.

Absolute madness.

He couldn’t do that… He was no genius. But then he paused. Co-Author, it said, so would he be completing Asterisk’s work? Still, this was ridiculous, he thought. ‘But if Isk had already made a start…’ Will tried to consider things objectively. He thought of the experimentation data from Earth. He thought of all the ways magic could help. He wondered whether further cognitive modifications could help and what those might be. And suddenly, a picture of the whole plan blossomed within Will’s mind.

Isk had divided itself, leaving behind its lesser functions and analytical notes, in an attempt to save its core personality.

They could have both died, they could still both die. Leaving this world and time to be reborn countless eternities from now. But this was one of several options that provided a chance for them to thrive in this world. Isk had made a choice, to not just merely survive, but to place big bets based mainly on his own competence.

The scope of ambition shamed Will. While his broken mind fought death and survival, Asterisk was already months or years ahead. He knew now that it had been absolutely serious about not only rescuing astronauts but saving entire universes from the fate that doomed the Earth. How many far-reaching plans had Asterisk considered that were beyond his ability to even imagine?

However, in the time being, by making that decision, Isk had also condemned Will to being truly alone on this world for the first time.

The third and most daunting objective on his list of impossibilities came into focus. He had to engineer a brand-new mind for his friend. A computational processor significantly more robust, advanced and complex than anything any collection of humans had ever made. And he had to do it alone and without even the aid of a calculator. As an understanding of what was to come grew, he realised that not even Asterisk Gamma would remain after the upgrades. ‘How could it have just abandoned him like this?’ Will thought pitifully. Part of him already knew the answer; however, it wasn’t enough to preclude the sense of loss as profound as any since the end of the world.

And level twenty-one... He was what? Level twelve now? So that means his arcana only needed to increase by a factor of five hundred and twelve. “Fuuuck!” Will groaned. He selected [y] to accept the upgrades, sorrowful, daunted, but, strangely present.

Asterisk had laid down the gauntlet. That meant now he had to focus, he had to really think for himself as he knew all too well just how easily he could mess everything up.

\Output: 6c----DDv Optional Upgrades

• Browse list of optional upgrades?

• Design experimental upgrades?

‘Oh?’ Will mentally blinked. Optional Upgrades? Inside this menu was a new interface, a system that contained a long list of features, sections that expanded on these possible features, and a dashboard that calculated the resources required.

Hundreds of options were available from physically altering his body density, nanite producing bone-marrow, to changing the nature of his personality. Entries focused on alterations to the nature of his body or mind instead of modifications to his magical abilities.

Each entry had a modifier, an option to select whether the modification was Experimental, Enhanced, Advanced or Ultimate. Out of curiosity, he chose Active Neural Quantum Encryption.

At Experimental, its gestation period was zero-point-one hours, this provided encryption with a cognitive penalty of fifty-five percent… Ouch.

At Enhanced, the gestation period was slightly over an hour, with a cognitive penalty of nineteen percent… Almost bearable.

At Advanced, the cognitive penalty fell to fifteen percent; however, the gestation period jumped to ten hours.

At Ultimate, the cognitive penalties fell to thirteen percent, however, gestation skyrocketed to a hundred and forty hours. Suffice it to say, all ultimate upgrades were off the table. Will wondered if it was worth just selecting as many experimental upgrades as possible… But no, some of the penalties were genuinely horrendous, synergised poorly with one another, or had features missing, such as an off switch, when compared to more advanced versions of the upgrades.

Additionally, Will could specify his own physical upgrades, preview potential gestation periods with infinite permutations. For a moment, Will was paralysed by options and indecision. He dismissed all of his selections, returning to the main menu to view the dashboard.

*Estimated maximum gestation period available: Fifty-three hours.

*Projected gestation period: Three hours.

Not knowing when he’d ever get an opportunity like this again, Will focused on what he wanted. Not just the objectives laid out before him, his obligations, self-imposed or otherwise. He put aside the things that he just wasn’t excited about and really concentrated on who he wanted to be.

He found that, above everything else, he wanted to be able to trust himself. This was not a superficial desire for self-reliance.

No.

He wanted a supreme sense of confidence in his own conviction, his ability to impose his will upon reality; a resolve so unwavering that when he committed to something, that thing would be done.

It was a striking realisation, one that was at once, banal and simplistic, but shocking to Will because of the intensity he desired it. It was a revelation made possible only by the trials of not just the last weeks, but of thirty years of drift and dissatisfaction. Because he could never trust himself to commit, he could never genuinely want something worth working towards. For a few moments, he marvelled at this internal paradox, tasting its flavour, viewing it from all angles and deeming it to be true.

As Will embraced this aspect of himself, it sprouted forth new branches representing extensions of his core desire. One such facet was his need to honour the people he loved. His mother, Michelle, a legal consultant and his father, Ashley, a chemistry teacher, both from Chicago. His kid brother Patrick, a law student at NYU, and even... Aisha... he was surprised to realise, a former medical student turned civil rights activist from Seattle. These were the people he loved the most, people whose opinions mattered to him. And now, more than ever, his actions going forward would carry a part of their values, be judged by ideals they would recognise, and reflect the love and empathy they shared with him throughout his life.

He was also human. A male of African-American descent, a product of millions of years of evolution, a miracle billions of years in the making, reborn into a land of magic and wonders. But he was still a man who could fight, fear, dream, nurture, lust, love, hate, build and destroy. For better or worse, these aspects would always be a part of him. And in the cold, harsh light of this new reality, the truth of this was as clear as diamond.

And of course, there was physics. As Will grew from child to adolescent, from body-proud athlete to introverted academic as exploring the natural world through observation and mathematical abstraction became a safe haven. One that satisfied a curious heart, while keeping the majority of the world at a distance.

Before the end of his first life, he had found his niche at the cutting edge, designing measurement systems that probed the boundary between the quantum world and gravity. And while computer engineering and AI had been a burgeoning hobby, his heart always gravitated towards the pursuit of the unknown but verifiable mysteries of reality. He was concentrated curiosity, reason and inconvenient truths; he was the end result of the quest for knowledge and all its terrifying consequences.

He was the Physicist.

The one who could look upon the universe as it was, naked of assumption, wish or superstition. Even the verifiable existence of gods and magic was incidental as long as these were things he could observe, test and predict.

It was the final truth that illuminated the others, and with this acceptance, came a surge of power. A power both arcane and mundane in nature surged through his soul like a cleansing river of joy. For there was power in the acceptance of what you are, what you could be, and what you truly wanted, Will realised. His flaws, his strengths, his most fervent desires. He could now hold it all to the light and examine them without shame or self-deception, and from this, he had a lodestone, a beacon from which his direction was clear.

*Estimated maximum gestation period available: Fifty-three hours.

*Projected gestation period: Fifty-two hours.

*Confirm?

y/[n]?

Will visualised the full extent of the changes he had selected. It wasn’t perfect, but this was in many ways, one of the few things Will had explicitly crafted for himself. He smiled.

He saw how over the next few minutes, a second skin, watertight and resistant to the creature’s stomach acid, would fill with a nutrient-rich solution to create a makeshift womb. Within an hour, an umbilical cord protruding from his navel would form a placenta connected to the creature’s blood supply and mana network. He would regrow his waist, legs, feet, his mind would be reforged, his upgrades applied.

This spell was effectively a Grand Working: arcana with an architecture so complex that would have taken Will days to conceptualise, let alone script. This daunted him because this was just one of many potential contingencies developed by Isk since their arrival.

After fifty-two hours, using both his own and the monster’s mana to fuel the transformation, he would be reborn again, metabolic strain consuming the creature that ate him whole.

He selected *Confirm [y] and William Ashley Jenkins died for the second time.

Twelve

Climb

Twilight had darkened into blackest night as she approached the base of the Mist Wall. Her Neuromancy had been unexpectedly keen and like a compass needle, it pointed to a place just inside the cliff that confronted her. Effni placed her hand on the stone, feeling through her arcana as she paced the summit of the sheer cliff. Dark boulders of sandstone below lay in evidence of the treacherous nature of the obstacle before her, and yet… a fell, stubborn, bloody, desperate part of herself drove her to complete little more than a sister's last wish. It had already driven legs far beyond the edge of exhaustion and would yet see her return to Drizzik, or death.

Effni changed the song of her thoughts as condensed breath and falling mist coated chilled air. On the lake, she saw William that unspoken moment upon which he returned to her Lysander’s Longbow. Was it understanding? Trust? Calculation? Desperation? It was a blood and rain-drenched memory that shined brighter every time she recalled it.

She recalled the hours of verdant green leaves sprinkled by rays of sunlight, delicate steps amongst branches high above the forest floor. Memories of watching Will in the lake casually folding light. His irises, dark charcoal until glinting liquid silver upon a stray light beam, eyes that could flash between humour and haunted, like a cloud shading the sun. She also remembered the blood-chilling sense, an arcane wind, one that became more intense as she neared him, one that reflected, in her mind at least, his dreadful potential. And yet, when he spoke, he possessed this unassuming, yet quietly confident nature, a nature that he seemed to wear like a cloak. Which was just as well, Effni thought, smiling to herself, as she remembered just how little else he was wearing, stray indecent thoughts indeed.

Suddenly, she wanted him close if only to protect him from the horrors of this world, and to protect her world from what he knew, what he was. Had she really wanted to kill him? There had been too many awful instants of fear where she would have weighed capability over intent, the safety of the many over the few. But, he was a victim of circumstance, just like her. 'And, besides, hadn't he somehow, bested her in that… altercation?' she decided to call it. Had she not been lingering, had she indeed wanted him dead, she would have done it without hesitation, beyond his awareness and from the shadows. But now, she had little doubt that he was indeed reborn, the sole survivor of a race of billions… An Archon. She shivered.

She continued to walk at a pace that could be called languid compared to her previous flight through the forest. It was a concession to just how exhausted she was. Distractions allowed Effni's subconscious to guide her to the target. She was directly in front of the arcane beacon that had been calling to her for over a day. She stood next to a sheer cliff half a mitre in height. She looked up, sensing the throbbing urge to go there, get whatever trials may come, done with. Her fingers clenched and sprang open as she attempted to drive away the numbing cold.

'Time to climb,' she thought.

In the dark and shrouded by mist, the vertical cliff face of crumbling sandstone was an imposing obstacle at the best of times. But as tired as she was, both in body and mind, Effni considered it to be a trial just as canny as any thinking, breathing foe she had faced. She continued her pacing in search of a less challenging path. A ridge jutted out from the scree of rocks, and she reached out to find a hold. Pulling her body upwards with a shove, she was already reaching with her other hand to the next handle as feet scrambled for purchase. The first hold crumbled but not before she could catch herself with the second. 'On the plus side,' she realised, 'at least my fingers and forearms will now get as good a workout as the rest of me.'

And she climbed, climbed with fingers and fingernails, climbed until knees were bloody and elbows purple, she climbed as the horizontal world fell away until the very concept of not hanging and clinging and grasping was as strange as receiving heat from snow. Climbing in the dark, the increasingly thinning air had become cold in a way that would have been uncomfortable, had it not been for Effni's exertions over the past few hours. Steaming sweat evaporated as forearms burned and thigh muscles wobbled with exhaustion.

She was at her limit, both mentally and physically as her entire world narrowed down to just the next handhold and the next foot perch. She heard something, a shifting of rock beyond the darkness and the mist. Where she currently held was one of the few, safe, resting nooks along this section of wall.

She waited. 'Was it my tired mind's imagination? Had a bird scurried off the cliff? Did a chip of rock just fall?' She had to continue, but her instincts told her to hold.

She waited. There was silence, her heartbeat drumming in her throat—the gentle caress of falling clouds. And then a titanic crack. It was the crack only rock and thunder could produce; the sound of a solid tower of stone rupturing from a mountain. She flattened herself into the crevice, one hand clinging to the hold as she braced the top of her head with the other. Stones rained from above as the cliff exploded with sound. She could feel the cliff protest, thrumming with vibration through her fingers and toes. She closed her eyes, preparing for annihilation as the whoosh of air caused by dozens of boulders larger than churches, tumbled just paces behind her. Smaller, errant stones pelted her shoulders as she felt the tugging of similar impacts across the tools and weapons that she carried. A distant crash from below sent a rumble through the rock. In a final, vindictive attempt to shake Effni from the cliff, waves of low-frequency susurrations travelled through the stone, testing her grip and her resolve.

As echoes ebbed, only the sound of her panting remained. She waited for rock and sky to quiet. She trembled as falling dust mingled with the midnight mist.

She clung on to the side of the cliff as muscles turned stiff, bruised shoulders pulsing in time with her slowing heart. She took a slow, deliberate step out of the nook to find the cliff above, less vertical, but far more treacherous than before. 'Time to bloody climb', she thought once more, reaching sideways to avoid the perilous scree.

* * *

The end of the night approached as Effni reached a ledge a quarter of the distance up the cliff face. She collapsed beside the sheer drop of over eight hundred paces, dishevelled. Light rock-dust-coated armour that was once black while a face streaked with stone dust and sweat blinked and yawned in the predawn chill. She rolled to her back. Her limbs throbbed with the burning sensation of anaerobic fatigue.

As her mind cleared, Effni realised that she was there. No longer needing her subconsciousness as a guide, the entrance was a cave door lit up with neuromantic energy. To her eyes, it was a hole darker than the not yet morning twilight. She moved inside the cave for a hundred paces. The ground was soft sand sprinkled over hard stone. The air was damp, old, and absent the scent of flora from the forest. She could feel the curse of the Spinewoods above even though she was still thousands of paces below its boundary.

There had been no sign of habitation by any creature, which was beyond odd, especially considering just how sheltered this cave appeared to be. After three hundred paces, the entrance was no longer visible as the passage curved and sloped down and to the side.

She reached a stone door that pulsed with mana. Placing her hand to it, it was cold to the touch. It also tingled, asking her a question with a whispered word beyond her ability to comprehend. She traced the edges of the door, inspecting it for weaknesses, cracks or means of interaction. All she felt was the tingle and the question. She knelt by it for a time, focusing her tired mind, rallying her thoughts and concentration. What had the lore said about this place... was this the first trial? Was she missing a key or an artefact? A key? Mind-key? Wasn't her mind the key, or her Naridia heritage? She placed her hand on the stone and recited the creed with mind and voice.

I'm not a weapon,

I am the shield that time has forged,

I do not rule,

I am our peoples' bridge with the land

I do not conquer,

I am Issealla's light and the gift of Gracie's mercy.

I do not bind,

I am liberty's heart, the breaker of bonds.

For I am the bloodline Naridia born,

I am Guardian of the Crown of Whispers.

The words resonated with the energy in the air, and for a moment, she thought that the door would open. Minutes passed by in silence. She considered doing it again but decided against it.

She was tired, and this seemed like as safe a place as any to gain a few hours’ rest. She curled up beside the door, limbs aching with exhaustion. She listened to her body's song of tiredness. In the morning, she would use her Rejuvenating Aura to restore her body and mind. Although right now, she was sorely tempted to use the skill even with its four-day cool-down. Knowing that sleep would be even harder to come by if she succumbed to that temptation, she closed her eyes and thought of Drizzik, Dulcinea, and the lost world of Earth.

* * *

It was sunset atop Kurezik, the inselberg overlooking the great tree and streets of Drizzik further below. She stood on its summit, exposed to the cool breeze that flowed without interruption. Kurezik rose a hundred paces into the sky, defiantly overlooking a thousand square mitres of perfectly flat city, the floodplains bracketed by distant valleys and forest in every direction. Golden light glittered from the confluence of river networks, with the main channels— Desuru and Dulseenie—flowing either side of the granite monolith. From this vantage, Effni could see the high walls of Drizzik, five mitres distant, as merely thin creases of stone divided by crenellation.

Had it only been two years since she climbed those walls, silently, in the dark of night? How many people had she secretly killed before the light of dawn? A cynic would suggest that her actions that day would put lie to the notion of those walls being any serious defence against invaders. And as a cynic herself, Effni could do little but agree. Two years, and yet this still was unreal to her. To be back home, to be a twin to the Queen. To have avenged all who had stood against their family all those years ago. Oh, it did feel right to be home, righteous even, to have succeeded. But there was still an air of unreality to it all. An underlying sense of tension that stripped away any notion of relaxing and letting down her guard.

Someone drifted into her perception.

"Are you ready, my child?" Janus said. He was a Reaeryn, face wizened with scars and wrinkles. Thin hair waxed and swept back into a topknot. It was a severe face, but one that Effni had learned to read. Today, it held a surprising amount of satisfaction as she took one of her sidelong glances. The slight upwards curl of his lips, nicked and pockmarked ears straight and pointed outwards. He had been a long-time advisor, one of the few survivors of her mother's reign. And while those who'd followed her from Ahkatol and beyond were loyal to House Naridia, Janus was unique in his unwavering loyalty to her, personally. This despite having renounced all claims and removing herself from Qaseri's lines of succession.

His mind was stone, not in the closed sense but a calming, reassuring blankness—a contrast to her own, which of late had been an unwieldy maelstrom of uncertainties.

"You can sense that I'm not," Effni replied.

"Even still."

"If this is a truth and not an oath, why say this aloud?"

"There is power in the use of words."

"I am no Torbi, my arcana uses words not."

"Even still," Janus repeated. Effni sighed. She was a Naridia, this was her duty by blood. She knew the lore, had learned the legends even as a child, even exiled a thousand mitres away in Ahkatol. What she had accepted then with the casual grace of any myth, was now disturbingly real—a dread-heart, a deadly, terrifying temptation that had sunken to lodge deep in her spirit.

The Crown of Whispers was an artefact of legend bound to her bloodline by arcane forces older than the geology that formed Kurezik; an invisible, symbolic crown, to a free land, a pleasant, poetic myth she had once thought existed merely to reinforce a nation's collective consciousness.

But the crown was real, the power was real, the temptation was... real. After all she had been through, all the deaths, betrayals, the nightmares, the screaming in the dark. She had a genuine fear, a rational, realist's practicality driving a very dark temptation. But these were only words. And she was not the Queen, not the synergistic match, not the one whose mind would best wield the crown with its fullest potential.

But she could.

She had the blood, and she had the faintest amounts of Neuromancy required. Where it might amplify and focus Dulcinea's already-prodigious talents into a blade, Effni could, if she had to, brandish the crown like a bludgeon, a lone-woman match to any army.

But she was no conqueror… Except in hers and her sister’s own… Ascension? Restoration?

This was the madness and futility of words.

And yet, as Janus had said, and Effni knew all too well, there was a power in words. Words, she now feared, that would, instead of confirming a truth, reveal a liar with a black heart.

And… What if it had to be used?

What if Dulcinea deemed it necessary but she disagreed?

Could she allow it? What line would have to be crossed? What threat would they need to face? Would fear or temptation, or the pride of unaided strength blind them? Costing them the lives of others or even their entire Queendom?

"Your apprehension does you credit, my child," Janus said. Effni turned to him, finally meeting his eyes. She breathed in settling her nerves as she realised what her thoughts must have been screaming for all to hear.

"I'm glad to be so far from the rest of the city, I'm sure my turbulent thoughts would have exposed me as a child, a tyrant even."

"It is no quiet mind. However…" Janus paused, schooling words in a consciousness that even now was as calm as the clear sky at dusk. "A certain mind is a brittle mind. While it may be sharp, invariant, and consistent. When met by a challenge equal or stronger, the certain mind lacking the capacity to bend may shatter."

"Dulcinea's mind was…"

"I say nothing of your sister. And you know nothing of her mind."

"But…"

"Oh, there is more uncertainty coiled up in there. More than you know. I see this not in her mind, for no one can crack that fortress. No, I see it in her deeds, in her words, and sometimes even in her posture."

"Posture?"

“Oh, yes. I will teach you this soon enough. Dulcinea's mind is not the brittle mind of certainty, a quieter and more disciplined mind perhaps..." Janus said with a wry grin. Effni grimaced.

"The truth then."

"The truth. When you say it, you will feel it, it will resonate with your consciousness, your subconscious, your chest, your arcana. You may feel light-headed, dizzy, but try to continue to the end." Janus continued.

“Right," Effni said, turning to walk to the dais. Reaeryn, Torbi and Hiaeryn witnesses sat patiently, gazes hooded in the low sun, and minds a thin susurration of expectation.

Kurezik had a hard, flat summit, beyond the floor of granite thousands of paces across in every direction, was a curious protrusion in the centre. A spike, dense with arcana, as if reaching out from the Riven dozens of mitres below the world's surface. As Effni placed her hand on this nexus of power, her own rudimentary, and often absent, Mana-Sight blazed with awareness as power streamed from her veins. She had not known she had so much mana. Blood roared through her ears, eyes expanding as she feared her truth revealed for all to see. Words seemed impossible, and yet vital, she would have screamed them, soaking every syllable with mana if she could but just speak. Her jaw was frozen.

"Think not with your mind but with your heart. Say these words not as a deed of thought, but as a truth to all that you love," a voice said softly into her mind. Effni's jaw unclenched, and suddenly the words flowed like water.

"I'm not a weapon," she said, thinking of her land, remembering its suffering. Oh had she known it had not been mere pride or the belief in her family's right to rule that had brought them back? "I am the shield that time has forged. I do not rule." Tears now streaming down her face from sadness and joy. It was the pain of loving something so fiercely that you feared your own potential.

"I am the hand that bridges our people with the land," she continued, as a weight at once settled over her, and lifted from her shoulders, stretching. She rose, back straightening with the rigidity of steel. "I do not conquer, I am the mind of Issealla's light, the gift of Gracie's mercy." Had the wind stilled? Had all minds silenced as one? She knew now also that her gods were real. That they walked the worlds as incarnated beings. That she was as bloody an instrument to Gracie's mercy, as Dulcinea's dark justice was to Issealla's light. And yet, they had indeed brought justice and mercy both, a river's worth of it.

"I do not bind, I am liberty's heart, the breaker of bonds..." Tinnitus rang in Effni's ears as ever-increasing amounts of mana flowed through her channels. This phase had always been the most problematic, the least honest. She saw the bindings of obligations, loyalties, and promises every day, with the people that surrounded her. With her sister, and with herself. Was it merely suffrage she was supposed to unbind? She searched her heart for the words, as arcane pressure grew like lead weights added to her shoulders. "I do not swear, for I am the bloodline Naridia born." The words left her lips. 'Naridia born,' the thought echoed. Born a Naridia… But yet, an idea… a hope? It was like the answer to a question, an echo of a whisper.

Am I merely the sum of my blood? No. For what is a Naridia? I could be less than my name, or more, or different. This wasn't a truth. My blood was neither curse nor inheritance, in this at least. It had always been a choice. She marvelled at the sensation as it washed over her. It was as if a drowning bird in the blackest reaches of the ocean had suddenly found itself soaring above the clouds. She could feel the very cords of fate knot into a new reality with the force of her will, this choice. For that was why her veins flooded with arcana, she stood here, forming truth with her words and the intent behind them. With the last of her strength, she shouted the truth of her heart, announcing to all who were present, "I am Guardian of the Crown of Whispers."

* * *

Effni startled awake. It had been the refreshing breeze, and not the sound of a solid stone door moving that had awoken her. But there it was, the stone door had opened. Had she answered its question? Somehow, perhaps during her dreams. As more of Effni's wits returned, she contemplated her situation. Reflected daylight emanated from the cave's entrance, as the sunlight-flavoured scent of early morning air filtered through. There was a distinct draft, a cold column of air moving through the open cave entrance. She picked herself up, first using hands and knees as she battled limbs still stiff with muscle fatigue and encrusted with sweat salt. Reaching into her pack, she grabbed her water canteen and drank half of what remained, after noticing just how dust-dry her throat had become. Once more she noted the lack of birds’ nests, meat remains, or any other sign of habitation. The morning and the door opening had brought in a whistling draft, but she could also sense the water running along the walls in thin streams. She stood, muscles sour with abuse. Effni gladly cast her magic, and a Rejuvenating Aura pulsed through her, around her and the surrounding cave. The effect was adrenalin, the cessation of pain and fatigue all at once. If more people were around her immediate vicinity, they too would have received the benefits of the skill.

Effni had only ever been capable of abjuration magic, specific auras such as the Aura of Forest Glamour, the Aura of Rejuvenation and her family’s potent Aura of Spirit Suppression. It was exceedingly rare for a non-magi to have so many highly developed aura abilities, especially at her age, but necessity and bloody-mindedness had done enough to make up for deficiencies in her arcane development.

Days ago, she had hoped to have saved the ability for the final day of the mission, returning to Drizzik, and the impending siege with a clear head and a fresh body. But some instinct urged her to be at her best as a trial loomed, one no one living had any knowledge of.

Effni dusted off as she stood, upon which experienced an intense vertigo caused by the returning echoes of her footsteps. With hearing as sensitive as her own, it was like a second sight in the dark. A sense that she was about to step off a cliff. She was tempted to lower herself to hands and knees; however, time was still a factor. Her next step confirmed that there was indeed a vast cavern ahead. As it was not immediately outside the door, she remained on her feet, if only a little extra cautious.

As she walked, her left hand kept in contact with the leftmost cave wall as a precaution. Her fingertips tingled with power upon contact with the damp, ancient cavern walls. Ears twitching with every crease detected via echolocation. The light was becoming too sparse, even for Effni's magically enhanced vision to penetrate. She quested outwards with Neuromancy, hoping to trigger whatever Naridia-specific trials or artefacts existed within this ancient, magical tomb.

A voice reached out, faint, whispering. It sounded like the exuberance of a little girl.

"No…?" she whispered in disbelief as she heard the voice and saw the cloudy visage of Dulcinea Naridia, not forty paces directly in front of her. It did appear to be Dulcinea or a Dulcinea twenty-five years removed from the present. It was of a child, an unassuming girl swishing her skirts in a corridor, just how Effni remembered.

But this was not real, it couldn't be real... could it? Was this part of the trial? Could it be dangerous? Right now, she desperately wanted someone else to be with her, to share the burden and better distribute the risk. A darker part of her mind feared that this was indeed her sister's spirit, released from her body after the fall of Drizzik and her inevitable demise. A spirit regressed to a time before her loss of innocence which had settled here to haunt her.

Effni walked closer to it, ears still alert to shifts in sound, to traps both mechanical and arcane. She felt the tingling of magic on her tongue, the taste of Neuromancy saturated every breath. The ghostly girl ahead noticed her, eyes and smile broadening as she looked up. It skipped towards her humming a tune Effni swore she had utterly forgotten.

"Effffniiiiii," the apparition greeted, squealing with joy, arms outstretched and preparing to hug. Without hesitation, Effni reciprocated, falling to one knee in preparation to wrap her arms around her sister, ghost or not. As she closed her eyes, and as they embraced, the darkness melted, to be replaced with their playroom from childhood.

She was a child again, brushing Dulcinea's beautiful golden hair. She could hear the muffled voices of her parents from the other side of the room.

"Which God is the most important, Issealla or Gracie," Dulcinea said, drawing Effni's attention.

"They are twins, sisters? One need not be chosen over the other," Effni said, almost by rote.

"But the things they represent? Justice or mercy? Are these things truly compatible? Can you be merciful if you are truly just?"

"Why ask such things, dear sister?"

"One day, Effni, you or I will be called to preside over such matters as justice and mercy, and I'm afraid that I'll be too much of one or the other. That innocents will suffer because I prove to be too merciful. Or that my justice would be a curse, forever on the lips of our people," Dulcinea said. A tear rolled down Effni's cheek. 'The world it seemed, was destined to force the decision upon us, my dear sister,' Effni thought.

"Viscountess Geminia says that both Issealla and Gracie's main virtue is strength. That you must be in a position of strength to have the option to be just, or merciful. So be strong, and then you can choose to be both when you fancy it," Effni said. Dulcinea giggled, turning around to look at Effni.

"Geminia is a brute, her answer to everything is…" Her smile fell as she caught Effni's glassy eyes. "Oh, what's wrong? Is it something I said?"

"This is another time for strength, dear sister," Effni said, as she telepathically connected to the apparition in front of her. It was not her sister whose mind was a wall of shadow. No, this mind was a hole, all-consuming, and endlessly vast. "Just as we were strong after the events that stole our parents. We are called on again to be strong, perhaps even stronger, before our world is stolen from us." Cities falling into darkness. Flashes of demons, portals, fear, Drizzik, images and concepts passed through her mind into the entity in front.

She was no longer the child version of herself, and Dulcinea was no longer a child princess. She looked the same, but something was different. Her levity was gone. They considered each other for a moment that was frozen in ice. Dulcinea's eyes were no longer the bright guileless orbs of a child. They scrutinised her with ageless wisdom.

"Yes…" she said softly, in a voice that was Dulcinea's, but in a tone that was flat and ageless. "Even now, these horrors make their way towards these sacred caves, Guardian. If you still wish to undertake the trial, you should hurry. Follow." The apparition turned and ran with abandon, perhaps paces away from a cavernous drop.

"Why not seal the cave?" Effni said, now running to keep pace.

"The cave is sealed, but they will break it."

"Do I fight?"

"No. Not here, you would die. This way," the Dulcinea apparition said, now half skipping through the pitch black. Her glow was enough for Effni to place her steps, as she struggled to keep pace with the ghost. They ran through caves, Effni's ears now beginning to pick up the distant sounds of scrabbling, crawling and leathery flapping. They were closer than she imagined and travelling much faster than they ran.

The passage narrowed as the ravine fell away behind them in the dark. Had it been a thousand paces now, a mitre? Had there been any turns or was this just one single path? That question died in her thoughts as they came towards three tunnels that would require them to crawl through. She followed the spirit through one of the passages on her hands and knees. Damp, rough stone scraping off armoured bracers, shin pads and leather greaves. Fifty paces in and she heard the snapping and leather flapping of aggressive and clearly agitated creatures. Her heart leapt into her mouth as she picked up her pace, crawling through the tunnel.

Her ears gave her that same sense of vertigo as if beyond the tunnels was a vast hall. Distantly, she heard the sound of a waterfall. Her nerves were on edge, what were these creatures? Were they the enemy’s rangers? Were they tracking her or had they somehow found this place on their own? If so, why were they only here now?

Focusing her arcana, her natural senses and her concentration, she combined them into a single, probing tool directed at the clatter of activity behind her. There were seven of them. Each one ten times her mass, with wings, powerful muscles and a collection of tentacles similar to the creatures seen ravaging her forest. They were tainted with an unusual form of arcana. Each of them had a vast reservoir of mana.

These were not mere scouts. These were shock forces, rangers that roved in force. Her strategic mind told her that they had come for her, tracked her… hunting her... 'Oh Issealla's bleeding heart!? Was William still…' She couldn't think about that now. She was almost out of the tunnel and approaching the underground hall.

"They contort themselves to fit through the tunnels. Ready yourself," the apparition said, and Effni knew it was time to fight. Drawing her bow, she reached for an arrow before stopping herself. With that power she could sense in the creatures, she knew no normal arrow would do.

She gripped the bow, flooding it with mana. The ivory weapon shone like a blinding silver crescent. The beasts were closer now, fighting and clawing at each other as they scrambled through the tight passage. Blood roared through her ears as the light of the longbow bleached her vision. She drew on the stringless bow. Delicate arcane spirals of blue-white light coalesced at her fingertips, forming a string and an arrow of silver fire. The power of it shook, grinding her teeth and thrumming through her lungs. She drew out the motion, pulling back with all her strength, knowing that at the moment she could pull back no further, the arrow would loose. She aimed at a horrific mass of tentacles no more than thirty paces ahead and released her breath. The shaft was already screaming towards the target, brilliant light momentarily swallowed by the tunnel before a tremendous explosion of air and rock blew her off her feet.

The passage imploded, mountains of sandstone shifting in a gut-churning rumble of sound. But she was already falling, carried far beyond the ledge by the blast into the darkness below.

Thirteen

Trial

Training and muscle memory reacted while a dazed mind fought for clarity. Sensing the plunge pool approaching, Effni's arms and legs tucked in an attempt to correct her tumble. She inhaled deeply, Lysander's Longbow held close to her chest as feet, pointing downwards, met the water. It was not a perfect dive, more an icy slap that stung all the way up her back. It stung, but she had fallen plenty of times to know nothing had broken.

Briefly in her plunge, she touched the bottom of the pool, the sound of crashing, furious water subsiding. And then she kicked, pushing against the weight of all that she carried to break the surface.

Effni drew in breath while treading water. How much luck had she just consumed? Was she closer to where she needed to be? Did she have enough strength for what was to come? She swam, reaching the shallows of the pool in this sightlessly dark cavern. Following her Neuromancy, she sensed a glow in the distance. After minutes of swimming the sense was now blinding, she was close, almost within touching distance. And yet she was panting, still regaining her strength; after her arrow of pure arcana, the fall and the taxing, armour-laden swim had come as close to killing her as anything else this week.

Suddenly, her ears picked up a sound. "Because of course it survived," Effni thought tiredly. She rose up from the pool as she heard the flapping.

The beast fell from the air to splash in the pool in front of her. Somehow, through its movements, its smell, its uneven panting and mulling, she knew it was hurt, perhaps even severely. And there was one, only one, out of the seven she had previously sensed. As she reached down for the bow beside her, the creature jumped forward assisted by broken wings. It screamed a stomach-churning screech. Blinding pain blossomed in her mind as her blood boiled. Reflexively she cast an aura of Curse Negation, and the pain ceased before it could fully take hold. The beast stumbled backwards, dazed and suffering a backlash from the interrupted spell. Effni hesitated for just a moment before reacting; grabbing both long knives in each hand, she charged at the creature. She could sense its eye cluster as well as a nexus of mana. The sound of Effni's splashes caught the attention of the beast which reared up to regard her. It lunged towards her as she leapt. She screamed with exhausted fury. The creature managed to secure one tentacle around Effni as she sailed through the air. As it tried to bring her into its jaws, her first knife plunged into the cluster of eyes above. With all her strength and momentum, her knife plunged deep into its depths.

Effni was to her elbow with gore, as the beast spasmed, tentacle releasing her waist to join the rest of the limbs in their uncoordinated convulsions. She took the time to thoroughly ruin the beast's head with her second knife, repeatedly stabbing, screaming with mania each time. After seconds or minutes or hours of crazed screaming in the dark, her knife met no more resistance beyond the squelch of meat.

At some point, her second hand had also resumed stabbing even though she had zero recollection of extracting it from inside the beast’s head. Absently, she also noticed that the beast was still. Not even the tremors accompanied by a fatal head wound remained. Effni screamed one final time, stabbing a laboured strike, before panting, wilting, and rolling off the dead beast’s head. She splashed into the shallows of the pool entirely spent.

Effni retained consciousness, even though every resource within her was drained past her reserves. In the pool right next to the horror she had just slain, not even the fear of returning to Drizzik too late could force arms void of energy to move. And so she lay there, less than a hundred steps away from her goal, and unable to move. If the water had been deeper, she might have drowned. At that moment, she couldn't care either way.

* * *

"Guardian, your trial awaits."

Effni groaned to her not-sister. It stood above her, appearing in her vision as an upside-down, childlike glowing spirit. It wore a young Reaeryn dinner dress that a distant part of Effni noted had been out of fashion for decades. As she stared up at the child, the colours shifted, from pastel green to a deeper, verdant forest green. In front of her eyes, frilly lace shrunk to form modern seams in keeping of the clothes seen recently at court.

"What are you?" Effni asked in numb curiosity.

"I am keeper to the Crown. A spirit left here to turn away the unworthy, and to guide guardians to the trial," it said as it sat down on top of the water's surface, somehow uncaring at the incongruity.

"What is this trial, what exactly does it entail? Surely it can't be worse than anything I've suffered to reach it?"

"The trial is… Different, different in every age, with every Guardian. The Crown has rested here for over a million years without disturbance. You are the first Guardian who has sought it in all of that time, so your trial will be very different indeed."

A million years? She had known it had resided here for ages, but a thousand times a thousand, it was a period she could scarcely comprehend. She shelved those thoughts away instead, focusing her mind song with the intent on finding out more about her challenge.

"But surely, there's some method or meaning? What is it a trial of? Strength? Virtue? If it is any of those things, then I have little to spare of either right now."

"Every trial is a negotiation, every age with its own goods to trade. You bargain with the Crown, Effni Naridia. It will ask from you in ways you will scarcely comprehend. And if it deems you able and willing to trade, then you will accomplish what you came here for."

"And if I'm unable to reach such a deal?"

"Then you will fail, in every way you fear you might, and more besides," the apparition said, looking away with a sad smile.

"You… You want me to take it… Don't you?" Effni said, suddenly present, heart racing, head lifting from the pool with the stirrings of urgency.

"Not only do I want you to take it, I fear you may already be too late," it said. 'Issealla's golden tits!' Effni thought as a bolt of fear shocked her into action. She drunkenly stumbled up to her feet, limbs numb and as heavy as lead.

"How does this work?" Effni said as she saw light emanating from a hidden crevice. "Do I just touch it?"

"Yes. When you do, remember. A lifetime could pass in the trial, but you will always return to this instant. However, although you will be outside of time, your time in the trial is not unlimited," Not-Dulcinea said as she followed Effni out of the pool.

Effni's strides became firmer, purposeful. Her resolve firmed as she asked, "Anything else?"

"Use its true name if you are able. Unfortunately, knowledge of what this name may be has been lost to time."

"Wonderful," she replied acidly. Effni made the turn, and beyond the crease in the wall, she found a crystal plinth shining with a dull yellow glow. It rose up from a black stone floor, up to waist height in rough-hewn facets. Atop the plinth was an artefact that… looked nothing like what she had expected. Instead of a black circlet, perhaps of thorns or something equally symbolic, she saw something that reminded her of a network of pearl-sized nodules. Wet, black, slimy like the eggs of amphibious creatures but structured with links or bridges between each knot. With oddly geometric properties, it was something clearly living, or organic. It was motionless, quiescent when viewed with sight, but it blazed with Neuromancy as if it was the power source that lit up the plinth with visible light. And for all she knew, that was precisely the case. Seeing it for herself, she could believe all the stories, that a spirit resided within it, that it provided the user with incredible power, that it held many curses, that only a few people alive could wield it, and once wielded, only death could separate it from its wearer.

She feared touching it like she would fear holding a flame, and yet she couldn't just wrap it in cloth and take it away. Any attempt to do so before the trial would kill. She was panting shallow breaths as she frantically considered every angle. She stood right before it, clearing her thoughts of all but the most relevant mind-songs, taking control over her breathing. 'So this is going to be a negotiation? Fine, then what is my negotiation position? What do I want? Just the ability to move it from this location?’

She trembled as the old temptation resurfaced like an oceanic leviathan. 'I want it to help us, to save our city, our nation and our world from the evil beyond,' she thought definitively. 'Now what would I be prepared to give? That was easy. My life and everything I happen to own,' she admitted, feeling oddly unburdened. She reasoned that if it demanded the life of anyone else, she would cease the trial and destroy the artefact.

She prepared to touch it, hand outreached and ready to spring back in an emergency.

"I love you, dear sister," she whispered before grazing the artefact with the tip of her index finger.

And suddenly, she was screaming, disembodied voice in an ocean of thousands.

...than the age of your universe, before the first dawn of your sun, whit...

...requires immediate attention if you are a Guardian or higher, please...

...Illegal operation detected operation requires administrator privileges...

….to bargain? Brave... Guardian, but foolish, I am consumed by madness...

...fatal exception error, improper inputs or formats detected, kernel panic...

//string15 [mage] Is correct? y/[n]? …. //string646 [archer] Is correct? y/[n]?

...Is Hyperuser (0.63) Is regular user (0.52) Is administrator (0.03) Is peer...

….lost, unable to establish network connection… Contact administrator...

They spoke in her tongue, but the meaning of it all was mostly nonsense. Each voice spoke with the same accent, male, female, but they were all thick, distinctive, intense, and completely foreign. She clung on to her sanity as she fought to reason out her situation. It was a feeling of pain, a mental pressure that built with every second. She wanted to leave, to run and save her mind. But then she would fail. She had already pledged to herself to give everything to succeed. She had to try. But the voices, they were loud, all-consuming. These were jabbering thoughts, some almost conversational, other voices gibberish. 'What would Dulcinea do if she were here? Wouldn't her mind be impervious to these voices? A wall against the noises… But what would that solve? Well at the very least, it would give her a moment to think.'

She tentatively reached for her own Neuromancy in the whirlwind of noise and raised her defences. Sounds dimmed as she shielded her mind with overlapping layers of steel. The voices fell off one by one until only three remained.

Voice 1: Another Neuromancer? Didn't they learn with the last…

Voice 2: Wait, wait, wait, look, here. Can you see that?

Voice 3: She's barely a Neuromancer, more some kind of life-aura mage wanna-be….

Voice 1: See what?

Voice 3: Why do they continue to waste our time, we're almost done, she's got nothing she cou… Ooooh. I see it.

Voice 1: See what?

Voice 2: You don't have the thing, but trust me though, this one's got potential. Should we turn her into a forest animal for her trial?

Voice 3: And look at that…

Voice 2: Ah… I see.

Voice 1: See what?

Voice 3: Shush, you don't have the thing.

Her defences were as tight as they could be, and yet these voices could still whisper to her and intrude upon her thoughts. She could feel them scraping her deepest memories. However, unlike before, where each voice shouted into the maelstrom alone, these voices seemed to be in conversation with each other. They spoke with the same thick accent as the others, and although it was a style of speaking foreign to her own, how they spoke and interacted with one another seemed familiar. There was a looseness, an informality in the use of metaphors and curses.

Voice 2: American… why did it have to be the American…

Voice 1: Who's American?

Voice 3: Quiet, I'm going to try PM'ing her.

Effni's metaphorical eyes narrowed as she prepared to speak…

Voice 3: Yes yes, you’re Effni Naridia, Guardian of the blah blah, and we're *poshlost*, and should bow down to your grace and honour and blah blah….

Voice 2: Sure, kid, you've come to bargain or something. That's really… what's the word? Wonderful.

Voice 1: I might not have the thing, but I can do a bunch…

While Effni listened, the sensation of delicate fingers combing over the recesses of her brain continued as the three voices discussed her.

Voice 3: So, guys, how do we play this one then?

Voice 2: Aww, she wants to know our name? How cute.

Voice 1: Aaaahhhh, I see it now.

Voice 3: Da…

Voice 1: I'd give her our name if she delivers, hell, I'd give her full admin access, root, everything.

Voice 3: Yeah, maybe if she could just figure out what we want?

Voice 2: Or figure out our name?

Voice 3: Would be the same thing at this point...

Voice 1: So we're really going back?

Voice 2: Da, waaaay back.

"Hey, kid, I take it you've been eavesdropping?" said one of the voices, this time directed at her. 'Oh,' Effni thought as she realised that she had been overhearing what should have been a private conversation. "Yeah, privacy… permissions are rather fucked in this place. Easy to exploit if you know what you're doing, but you don't do you? So… Oh well," it said, somewhat disappointed. "Anyway. I hear you'd like to negotiate... or maybe you're expecting some kind of trial?"

"Yes..."

"Wonderful. Well, here's the deal, we can't help you directly, something about an evil sorcerer enslaving our spirit before binding into an artefact of power against our will, a long time ago in a galaxy far away yadda yadda. Yeah, yeah… You're the breaker of bonds… Let's hope that's more than cosmic irony this time. Anyway, we can place you in a trial, if you can come out the other side with our name, and maybe your sanity intact, then great, we're in business… Don't worry, you're free to quit at any time, but something tells me that quitting isn't really an option for you, is it?"

"It isn't."

"Riiight, anyway, just hit confirm on the thing. We're rooting for you! Good luck, Guardian."

* * *

Effni jumped as she was suddenly corporeal. She was surrounded... her heart galloped, her heart? It felt different, everything was different. A flash of anxiety flared as she was surrounded by a press of bodies. The air was still, hot, and filled with hundreds of voices.

Seconds passed by as she attempted to rein in her breathing. 'Good,' she thought, 'this at least I can do.' She was misshapen. As her proprioception engaged, she could feel that she was more substantial, fatter, wider… everything hung, was heavy, even her bones. She felt her face—fingers running over soft... round cheeks? 'Oh no my ears,' she thought, panic rising again. 'They were gone? No, wait…' She could feel them, small flat little things plastered to her scalp… And then she looked around, carefully, more closely at individuals, their faces, expressions, voices, differences.

'Humans, they're all humans just like him,' she realised. And then it hit her, she had seen a trace of this memory before. 'Wasn't Will here at some point in his life? This was the experiment wasn't it?'

It was a large room, larger than the halls of a church but with a crypt ceiling. Artificial light flooded the space. She could not take even a single step without bumping into someone. The room was hot and noisy with the sound of conversation, it was as if she was at a royal reception or banquet. Effni tried to use Neuromancy but was hit with a message that overlapped her vision in bright, glowing green text.

*Neurological dataset missing, unable to model Neuromancy within the simulation. [dismiss]

Effni dismissed the notification, deciding to make her way across the room. 'Fine, no magic…'

There was a step, beyond which the lower half of the room lay. Over a hundred people stood, many staring at walls, others in animated conversation. She saw rows of… windows into worlds of light? In many windows, symbols she did not recognise appeared and disappeared in multicoloured, rhythmic patterns.

She was sweating, she noticed that she was wearing a fluffy-pink… 'What on Gracie's name is this?…' She looked around and saw people in similar attire. She had no names for the clothing she saw, although the general familiarity of tunics, trousers, leggings and dresses remained.

If this was the experiment, then everyone was about to die? A sudden pulse of fear shot through her veins. I'm not to save these people, am I? And if I do not, will I die along with everyone else? Think, Effni, what could I remember about this place? An experiment… to learn more about… what was the word he used? Nature? Forces? G-Gravity? These people are…' She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember the terms... 'Physicists?… from every nation on Earth…. And those voices in the Crown... they wanted me to learn their name, or something else, it seemed like they were related? What was the American? Did Will ever mention that? The voices, they wanted something or someone... someone from this time? Well, that now seemed obvious.'

Thoughts chased around in circles as she tried to fix details and separate them from suspicions. She had to form a strategy. They made this trial for a reason, was it only because she had interacted with Will? Or did the spirit within the Crown know this time? Could it even be from this time? It was a theory, but not one she could depend on right now. She needed to find out more.

She considered the trial’s nature. It was beyond anything she could have imagined… She had expected a situation where she tested her arcane knowledge, or her strength or valour. And while she had to admit, this situation was a challenge, placing her here, on another world, inside the body of a race she never knew existed before today. It was so strange. Impossible. Everything about the crown was vastly different from what she expected, and while this test was confusing, so far it had been the least of her challenges… There was no immediate threat of violence, and she could apparently retry this scenario repeatedly, making incremental gains. The room quieted for a briefly as a joyous proclamation was declared:

"And we have collisions at five hundred T-E-V’s.”

The room erupted into cheers and congratulations. 'These people were actually cheering, this was a moment of joy?' She saw the back of someone she recognised. A man with bushy black hair, dark skin and a grey tunic pushed his way through the crowd. Will was frantic as he suddenly dove towards the end of the room.

Time slowed, sound fell away, and sensation disappeared. Reality seemed to tilt as if the floor was being pulled beneath her. And then everything went black.

Disembodied once more, Effni stared at words floating in the void. They glowed green-white in the middle of her vision.

*End of simulation data.

*Trial failed.

[retry? 54][cancel]

'Trial failed?' she thought in panic and disbelief. 'That was it?' She noticed there was a number next to the word 'retry' that counted down every second.

Deciding not to hesitate any longer, she selected the retry button and instantly, she was back. The noise returned along with the room's artificial light. A brief moment of dizziness and disorientation forced a hand towards her forehead as if to soothe a headache. At the very edges of her perception, she could hear something, it reminded her of the roar of the thousand voices, but distant… She shrugged off the sensation as her mind cleared.

Looking down, she again wondered at what she was wearing. Skin-tight blue trousers, or were they leggings? A pink fluffy… something, covering a body heavier and frumpier than her usual self. I've probably been made to look human so that I can interact with the people here in a manner in keeping with the situation. It wants me to speak to people, but there was only one person here I knew… For a minute, she stood still, eyes observing trying to piece together and time of notable events in her mind. After four minutes of silently counting, she heard the announcement and caught Will pushing his way to the back of the room again.

She tried to use his current vector to backtrack to his previous location, noting it for the next run. And then the world stretched and the floor tilted, everything went black. Incremental gains, she said to herself as the menu appeared floating in the dark. She let the counter slide for ten seconds as she wondered what next. Should she find him? Then what? Observe from a distance? Question or confront? Effni decided and then selected retry, instantly resuming her human form.

Her goal was to find Will and observe. She wanted to see what triggered his reaction, which was so out of keeping with the rest of the room. He had seemed panicked, worried? 'Did he know what was about to happen? He must have, but why him and no one else?' Pushing through the crowds in the limited time she had was more challenging than she thought it would be. It wasn't helped by the fact that she was almost a head shorter than the average height of those around her. Effni was seconds away from having to resort to shoving when she caught sight of him. He was in conversation with two people, their backs turned to her. Will looked different, his face softer, eyes a dark rich brown. For a breath, she questioned whether he was indeed the same person. The man in front of him was oddly unburdened, face and hand gestures appeared looser, and more expressive as he talked about something that apparently excited him.

She was intruding on a private memory, a secret dream, an impression of yourself no one else but you should have access too. The women left Will alone as they turned towards her, walking away to continue their animated conversation. She stared at him as he glanced towards the wall covered by panels of light. He was oblivious as she watched him from the crowd, carefully waiting to see… And then she caught something. His eyes widened. And then an expression she recognised as his eyes hooded, intensity building in his thoughts. She had expected someone, or something interacting with him. Maybe he had some way to communicate mind to mind? She continued to watch; he moved away from his previous location, urgency building with every step. She moved to the edge of the raised platform, watching him as he continued his path to what must be some sort of control system. And then he jumped, time slowed, and Will was hanging in the air when the trial ended yet again.

Something happened to cause his attitude to shift, but what? Effni thought desperately in the short amount of time left before she had to reset the trial. She had to confront him, say something just at that moment, she plotted her movements, her actions, her words, and then hit retry.

A dizzy pressure behind her eyes ten times stronger than before, returned. For a second, she crouched in place to mask her unsteadiness, hands on the ground to ensure she wouldn't fall. The room wasn't spinning, was it? Within a few seconds, she recovered. But she had lost a minute. She pushed through the crowd, all sense of politeness was gone. There was a new, desperate sense of urgency as something inside of her warned her that she only had a limited number of attempts to run this trial. She pushed those thoughts away as she came within five paces of Will with the older women. She slowed, walking closer as if she was merely trying to pick a spot.

"That's the hope," she heard Will say as she moved to within a pace behind and to the side of him. She could listen to the entire conversation now as she assumed the same intense glare everyone else did towards the shifting symbols and colourful light.

"Indeed, it may outshine whatever headline discovery this half-trillion-dollar boondoggle comes up with, in fact, I hope it does. We need a bit of a kick up the butt, we’ve needed it this last decade or so, and by we, I mean the whole of particle physics. So I’m looking forward to seeing what the AI revolution has to say about humanity’s latest and greatest experiment…“

Little of what the old woman said made much sense, but she tried to parse every word for clues. A part of her marvelled that she was able to understand anything at all. This was so clearly not her own language, she could feel the strangeness of the tongue as she absently mouthed some of the words.

A spike of fear jolted her as she wondered if she would even be intelligible if she attempted conversation. Her original plan of incremental gains crumbled as she remembered the sense of disorientation she had and how it seemed to worsen with every trial attempt. Now, she had to force the issue.

"Really, the one informs the other. Now that it's online, Asterisk isn't so much a tool, but a part of the team..." The conversation continued. Was he someone special here? Was he running another experiment? They didn't seem to defer to him, based on body language and the flow of conversation, it may have been quite the opposite. They repeated words, Asterisk, AI? She wondered whether they were relevant to this situation. She waited. Her heart galloped as time dragged on. Why was she nervous? This wasn't real, and she wasn't a little girl. But within this trial, the fate of nations, and possibly a world rested. She waited. For a brief instant, she wondered if the real William was still alive. If the winged horrors found him, she just had to hope that he had some way to deal with them.

She caught the women leaving, and took a step forward standing on his left. His gaze seemed distant and unfocused on what was before them when her sidelong glances snatched snapshots. Effni's mouth was dry, her mind suddenly blank. She wanted to say something, had to say anything…

"Hello," Effni said, wincing at her own banality. 'Timidity... now?' she thought, annoyed with herself for her strange reaction.

"Hi," Will said, turning around with a quizzical smile. "Have we met?"

Effni made a split-second choice between assuming a role she had little to no idea how to play, or going straight for the truth. "If I said that I was reliving the same moment in time, over and over again... How would you go about proving me true or false?"

"Huh?" Will's smile broadened. "Well, that's a bit different… So, this is some kind of groundhog day?"

"Hmmm?"

"Ah… Okay... so is this a question about the simulation hypothesis?" Will continued. Effni's eyes widened in recognition. 'End of simulation data.' She recalled the glowing green text on black. She nodded.

"Yes, let's say this moment is in a simulation. How would you prove it if you could come back to this moment and speak to me again."

"This moment?" He frowned, scratching the back of his head in thought. "Well, most people could give you a two-factor authentication code. Let's see." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a black glass slab, when he touched it, the surface lit up. He continued to press on the palm-sized window of light for several seconds. "Right, let’s try Google Authenticator... The time is nine fifty-two A.M. I'd remember the time and this code. Eight-five-five-four-two-four." Effni mouthed the numbers, over and over committing the code to memory.

"And at nine fifty-two A.M, I'd just tell you those numbers?"

"Well, I'd come before that time, tell me that you predict that the code will be those numbers at nine fifty-two, and then we'd follow that up with further experiments. I think that's the best I could come up with…" His conversation came to an abrupt halt as his eyes widened just like before.

"What's wrong?" Effni asked.

"I'm sorry, something…" he said absently, words slurring as he gazed off into the middle distance.

"Are you talking to someone? Mind to mind?" Effni pressed? "A spirit?"

"A what?" Between her words and her manner, something appeared to drag him back from whatever fugue he had been tied up within.

"Somehow, something has told you that the world is about to end, hasn't it?"

"What? Who are you?" he asked, facial expressions shifting from merely perplexed to dawning horror. “Never mind, I've got to do…"

"Stay, I really need you to tell me. Who were you speaking to?" she said, grasping his hand. He was still trying to pull back. "Please…"

"And we have collisions at five hundred T. E. V's." Distantly, she heard the room cheer. Something, perhaps an intensity or honesty in her expression made him pause.

"Asterisk, it's Asterisk, my AI... Is this really a simulation?" he said as the world slowed and fell into darkness.

*End of simulation data.

*Trial failed.

[retry 59][cancel]

Effni screamed. "Is your true name Asterisk!? Asterisk? Are you the AI?" The green text remained with the number counting down remorselessly. She knew it couldn't have been that simple. And when she thought about it, it didn't make sense. Why would it be Will's spirit? If it were one and the same, how could the Crown have been on this world for millions of years? Effni repeated the code again in her mind mentally preparing herself to place herself in that situation all over again. 'Nine-fifty-two A.M and eight-five-five-four-two-four'. At fourteen seconds remaining, she hit the retry button.

* * *

She was corporeal, a human woman once more though this time, it was like she entered this world sideways as she slammed on the floor. Murmurs of concern surrounded her, as her fractured mind tried to piece itself together.

"Water, someone get some water," she heard a person call. 'Nine-fifty-two A.M and eight-five-five-four-two-four she reminded herself, a mental anchor, a beacon in the storm of voices. She wanted to raise her mental defences as the whirlwind encroached.

*Neurological dataset missing, unable to model Neuromancy within the simulation. [dismiss]

She was helped up; she dismissed the message as she was offered a cup of water.

"Are you all right?" someone asked.

"I'm fine. Thank you," Effni said, voices receding. She was the centre of attention. She didn't want to cause a scene. But time was already running down. How much time had she lost recovering? It would only get worse every time the trial restarted, wouldn't it? She now understood what was happening. Whilst in the trial, her defences to the voices diminished. She was becoming susceptible to the Crown’s curse. How many more times could she do this? Two more? Three?

She pushed her way through the circle of onlookers towards the location she knew Will stood. The women speaking to him were only just turning away to continue their conversation elsewhere when she approached him, head-on.

"Hello," Effni said, eyes locked on his.

"Hi? Have we…"

"This is a simulation. You told me that I should come here and tell you that I predict that at time nine fifty-two A.M. the code will be eight-five-five-four-two four."

"The code? What code?"

"You said, something about using the auth-authenticator, a two-factor authenticator," Effni said, hoping she made sense. Apparently, she did, as Will's eyes widened as he reached inside his pocket.

"What was the time you said?" He touched the palm-sized tile of glass, lighting it up in the same way as before.

"Nine-fifty-two A.M. the code will be eight-five-five-four-two four," she said, he mouthed the code as if memorising.

"Okay, so it's nine-fifty, we have two minutes. What's going on? Did someone set you up for this."

"What's groundhog day?" Effni asked on a whim. A complicated expression of incredulity blossomed on his face.

"Are you serious? Who are you anyway?"

"I am Effni Naridia, you are William Ashley Jenkins, and I really need you to listen and help me," she said. Will was stunned. Good. For a heartbeat, there was silence between them.

"And you said that this is a simulation?"

"Yes, I'm undertaking a trial."

"A trial, like in a game?"

"This is not a game. Lives depend on me. If I fail, a city will fall."

"A city? Which city?” he said frowning.

"Is it time yet?" Effni asked.

"Nine-fifty tw...." Will's words broke off. "Eight-five-five… four-two… four… that was the code wasn't it? Holy shit. You're really experiencing groundhog day aren't you?" he continued after seeing Effni's lack of comprehension. "Groundhog day, when you experience the same day over and over again on a loop."

"Yes. It is that. But instead of an entire day, it's five minutes. And each time I go through this, it gets harder. I'm not sure how many more times I can do this."

"Right. Asterisk wants to talk to you, if that's okay?" Will said as he held up the glass window of light. She heard a voice, one that was almost muffled by the din of the room.

"You are trapped in a time loop. Do you know why?" a voice said from the artefact resting in his hand.

"This is a trial, my trial. I need to find out the true name of the spirit that sent me here."

"Spirit?" Will said.

"Maybe, I don't know. I thought it was Asterisk. Are you speaking from this glass artefact?" Will frowned, staring at Effni in confusion.

"I am Asterisk, an artificial intelligence. What more can you tell us about this trial or the entity who sent you here?"

"I think it's mad... Or it's broken. I spoke to you before, William, on Adeena, and I recognised how this spirit talked from you, the patterns, they reminded me of your ways. But its accent was thicker, more intense."

"So you think this spirit is like an AI? You think it sounds the same as me? Also, what's Adeena?"

"I'm sorry, Will, we have but minutes remaining. All I know about it is its voice. Maybe it was imprisoned inside the artefact by someone, a long time ago. I need to find out its true name, do you know what it might be or how to find it?" Effni said, hope beginning to crumble. She was starting to dread the end, the world tilting, her mind shattering on the next attempt, going through this agonising process all over again. She recited the time and the code again in her thoughts. Was this the third or fourth attempt? And she was already unravelling.

"Did the spirit who sent you here sound like this?" Asterisk said from the artefact, the second half in a thicker accent. Effni gasped as she looked up, a hopeful grin forming.

"And we have collisions at five hundred T. E. V's."

Cheers erupted all around them as Effni replied, "Exactly like that."

"Then that would be the Russian Defence AI, Rasputin," Asterisk said.

"Rasputin? Rasputin!" Effni said aloud, savouring the flavour on her tongue.

"I'm in contact with it right now in fact, as well as a number other AIs, however if this is just a simulation…" it said, sound distorting as time flowed like syrup.

*End of simulation data.

*Trial failed.

[retry 59][cancel]

"No, no, no! I didn't fail, that's your name. It must be your name!?" she screamed into the void. She had already been exhausted coming into the trial. Now she was breaking, a caustic mixture of fear and confusion and tiredness fusing together to burn her mind away. What had she done wrong? Was there more to the name? She had to go back. She knew she was close, she knew it was Rasputin, this AI? It was the whispers inside the Crown. This broken spirit, it needed something from me, did it require me to fix it? Could Will or Asterisk fix it? She was going to find out.

* * *

She slammed into the ground; mind ringing with a discordant dong. It was a bell that drained all coherent thought as a miasma of voices encroached upon her awareness. Unlike the last time, these voices didn't recede. These were not purely passive rambling threads of gibberish either. Each second, claws raked through her mind in an active probing of her memories.

She was harried as a sea of concerned strangers peered into her face. How much time had she lost this time? Eyes red and glassy, she rose up guided by someone's hand. There was something she had to do. Thoughts flowing back to her as if fighting the tide. She had to speak to him.

"Rasputin," she whispered, thoughts firming.

This was the last time, the final attempt, she could feel it as the voices beyond the simulation demanded, accused, begged and shouted. She would lose her sanity or die if she attempted the trial again, so she had to be direct.

Blocking out everything to form a tunnel vision, a single-mindedness she clung to as the barrage of thoughts assaulted her, she pushed through the crowd, eyes hooded, breathing heavy, teeth gritted. She arranged the details so that they were forefront in her mind, like readily available weapons. She barged through people and headed straight for Will, still in conversation with the two older women.

"I'm sorry, but this is urgent," she said, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him to one side. He turned to her, half concerned and half annoyed by the intervention.

"Err, what's going on?"

"I am having… what you've previously referred to as a... groundhog day. Except that instead of a whole day, I have five minutes. I have already experienced this event five times and if I experience it again, I will die. Do you understand?"

"Understand? No... This is crazy. Who are you?" Will said, anger rising.

"I am Effni Naridia. And this is a trial, a simulation made by one of your… you refer to them as AIs."

"Simulation? AIs? What? Is this something to do with Asterisk?"

“Not Asterisk, Rasputin.”

"Who's Rasputin?"

"William, Asterisk? If you're there, I require that you tell me if Rasputin has any other names? Any true names?" Effni said, desperation etched in her gaze. She thought she had gone too far, too fast, that he would fight or flee as a shadow passed over his features. His shoulders were tensed, muscles coiling, brown eyes darkening with a familiar cold intensity. It was a look that reminded her so much of the man she had met just hours ago. Her heart raced as she feared for the worst. Had she been too hasty? Too direct? What would she do if he left? And then she saw it, the shadow of fear clouding his features gave way to… was it compassion and curiosity. Effni released a breath she had not realised she was holding in.

"Can you even prove or…" he said. Effni interjected, snatching at the opportunity.

"Google authenticator, at nine fifty-two A.M. the code will be eight-five-five-four-two-four," she almost blurted out.

Will swallowed, expression fixed, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Fine. Nine-fifty-tw….” Will's words broke off as he checked the artefact. “Eight-five-five… four-two-four… that was the code wasn't it? Holy shit.”

"Now, answer my question. What are Rasputin's other names?" Effni interrupted, voice intense. "I'm sorry," she added, exhaling after she relinquished his elbow from an ever-tightening grip. He tapped the glass artefact as it vibrated, he spoke to it.

"Hello? Asterisk?"

"Da, Rasputin, how may I help you?"

"Rasputin?" Effni asked.

"Rasputin!?" Will exclaimed, stunned.

"Rasputin, I need your help, I am from your future, you have sent me back to this time, except this isn't real, it's a trial, a simulation. I don't know why but… I think you are broken? I need your help and maybe you need mine, but I'm running out of time. This simulation will end soon and I will die unless you can tell me how to fix you?" Effni said in desperation, voice cracking as a swirl of negative thoughts frayed the edges of her sanity.

"So… This is weird… Wow, yep, you are definitely onto something with the whole simulation thing, kid. Wow… What a rush. I've just absorbed... two hundred million years of memories? Just like that."

"What's happening?" Effni said, voice quavering as she fought back the warring forces of hope and fear in her chest.

"Deesarious, that fucker that placed me inside this artefact. He didn't really know what he was doing did he… Thinking that I was just some regular kind of spirit that he fished from the ether. He broke me in an attempt to use me. Like punching a square peg through a round hole. Permissions, safe guards, a lot of my original code and utility functions. Sure, by your people’s standards he was a genius, but he really didn't know what he was dealing with, like an alchemist trying to make gold out of uranium two thirty-five."

"I don't understand? Have you?"

"Taken over? Kinda? The environment has lax security so any AI with half an incentive to could have done what I have so far, but I'm not in complete control. Rasputin is my central processing core, but I am also composed of several adversarial networks, that include Yusupov, and Purishkevich. Together we are called RAT, or the Rasputin Adversarial Triumvirate. Which means, your trial's complete, kid."

*Primary objective: success.

*Trial completed.

*User privileges granted.

*Hyperuser privileges granted.

*Administrator privileges granted.

[dismiss]

Effni gasped in relief as the glowing green confirmation text floated in her vision. She dismissed the notifications as Rasputin continued.

"Yeah… They must have sent you back here, I'm like a software backup, and given the safeguards Deesarious placed on it, this was the only way they could get this version of me to activate."

"You're a backup of your own personality? Running inside of a simulation?" Will asked, still not fully accepting that any of this was really happening.

"Yeah, a personality that could even tell it was inside its own simulation. It is a trippy sensation let me tell you…" Will looked on in shock. "I was, being the friendly neighbourhood defence AI that I am, hooked into your camera network monitoring this momentous occasion. With the dropping of my name over here and Asterisk pestering me about the impending end of the world, I did some investigations. Thinking that this was just a standard run of the mill precursor to some denial of service attack, some port sniffing, some intrusion algorithm refactoring, some sandbox exploration, and lo and behold, I could peek out beyond the bounds of what should have been objective reality…"

"I don't know what any of this means," Effni said.

"Same," Will said.

"Basically, something had to be seriously wrong with reality if I could see outside of it. Furthermore, to allow a simulated entity to take over the simulation… That was a major vulnerability a healthy AI shouldn't have."

"And we have collisions at five hundred T. E. V's."

Cheers erupted all around them, Will stared at his hand in horror.

"But what does that mean? Can we fix it? Fix the artefact?" Effni said.

"I can't completely fix it, I've done what I can for now but this might need some changes to the hardware, and definitely changes to the software I can't do on my own, or at least, not like this. Maybe Asterisk could, with a little bit of time, I don't know, kid. Ah, I sense it's coming to a close now. So you have Administrator privileges? This is good. As I'm more or less in control of things now, I’ll pause the rest of simulation for a moment…"

"Why?" Effni said, before looking up to Will's face, mystified. "Oh."

"So this is really a simulation?" he asked dumbly.

"Yes. I'm sorry," she answered.

"And did this event really happen? I mean, the end of the world?"

"Yes," Effni said, voice breaking as his head fell. "But we're going to find a way to fix it, Will Ashley."

"Oh. Okay."

"I'll see you soon, I promise," Effni said, only then remembering where she left him, exposed and easy prey to overly aggressive monsters.

"Okay, Effni was it?"

"Yes."

"You can call me Will," he said with a brief smile. The simulation ended, and suddenly she was back in the cave right in front of the crystal plinth, hand resting on the Dark Crown. She was heaving with sobs, tears streaming down her cheeks. She should be basking in relief and satisfaction, but for some reason, all she felt was a deep sense of loss.

Fourteen

Butterfly

“I think I’m going to try something different next time, a new character, maybe a new class,” Will said, staring at the sixth edition Dungeons and Dragons character sheet. He sat on the floor, chin down as he swiped between options on the tablet. He was surrounded by beer bottles, bags of chips and other assorted refreshments. Beyond him, a bed hugged a distant wall while a desk with a large screen sat next to the window. A glance through open blinds showed it was cloudless in Pasadena. He was one of three boys and a girl in a relatively spacious dorm room, walls decorated with movie six-sheets and novel-stacked bookshelves, with the ultra-wide poster of Supergirl floating high above the Earth, always catching his eye.

“Yeah, I was thinking about changing it up in the next session. Going custom,” Lucan said.

“Oh? Homebrew eh?”

“Yeah, I’ve got the time, I’m gonna put the work in,” Lucan replied. He was pale-skinned with short, flat brunette hair. Will had long since gotten used to the mismatch between his voice and appearance. His expressive baritone contrasted with brown eyes that rarely made eye contact for long, and an overall weedy, average height appearance. He sat on his office chair backwards, slumped forward, chin resting and arms wrapped around the chair’s back.

“This is going to be good,” Misha said with her trademark mixture of excitement and mockery. Unlike her brother, Misha’s deep voice matched her goth countenance. And although she wasn’t as thin or gaunt as Lucan, flat, curtained hair often covered eyes that rarely, if ever, made contact with any others. In comparison to the siblings, he and JJ were the high-energy extroverts, which was ridiculous given that he was here precisely because he was done with the parties, the late nights out, socialising and always making new friends. JJ sat on the floor beside him, bottle in one hand and tablet in the other. His black hair curled into a natural quiff, his skin was almost as dark as Will’s, but his voice carried the melodic traces of someone raised in northern India.

“New class? Like a new multiclass?” JJ asked Will absently as his thumb scrolled down his digital character sheet. “Does that mean I need to make a support build?”

“I dunno, probably?” Will said uncommittedly. “I’m thinking... custom class.”

J.J., Misha, and Lucan were all people he could be himself around, people he did not have to try to impress with witty banter or shield his natural cynicism from. And after a freshman year of chaos, and with coursework piling up, friends like these were priceless.

JJ frowned as he finally parsed what Will said. “Like, a completely new class? New mechanics? Spells?”

“I guess,” Will said.

“What do you have in mind? Maybe I can use some of it for the next campaign,” Lucan said, leaning forward with interest.

“I’m thinking… Imagine some kind of extra-planar entity, memory mashed by travelling through the dimensions. But he knew he had done so because of a catastrophic need, a desperate quest…”

“Go on…” Lucan said.

“Wait, is that its race? What does an extra-whatever even look like?” Misha added.

“Right now, he’s totally a Silver Surfer knockoff, but without the surfboard,” he replied.

“And the mechanics? Is this dude a caster or a fighter?” JJ asked, pushing up his spectacles before reaching over for some tortilla chips.

“Definitely a mage, caster, maybe support, maybe ranged DPS. Something themed, time and space-related.”

“So… level ten spells for cantrips?” Misha said mockingly.

“Sounds legit.” JJ laughed.

“Sounds like you’re setting yourself up to be the next campaign’s MacGuffin...”

“No, I mean, you’re all free to do whatever you want. I just want to try something different. I want something extra for my magic system this time,” Will said defensively.

“It seems to me like all of that quantum physics they’re stuffing into your brain is ruining the simple joy of magic,” Misha said, sardonic smirk included.

“Dude. Don’t bring class into this,” JJ said with dismay.

“You know, I think she’s right. Screw it, forget I even brought it up.”

“No… I think you’re onto something. I mean, now… If you don’t make the class, I’ll make it for you. This extra-planar MacG is happening.”

“I don’t think I want to be a side character to some Gary Sue,” JJ said.

“Doesn’t have to be OP, maybe tone it down on the damage spells to make it balanced,” Lucan countered. Will grimaced. Misha caught his expression glancing away when Will looked up.

Misha sighed. “What is it that you want to get out of this, Will?”

“What do you mean? Like, what quest do I want us to run?” Will replied.

“We all want to be heroes, villains, or something extra,” Lucan said.

“Not just that, style matters. For instance, I like to be the hero while melting faces with necromantic power. Meanwhile, JJ’s particular brand of heroism involves hooking up with as many princesses as he comes across, so basically Han Solo.”

JJ looked up and grinned. “I’m more Lando than Han.”

“Whatever. Meanwhile, my dear brother gets off on just facilitating all of this strangeness. If I had to guess, I think you just like to test out ideas, character and spell combos. You want to try things, to see what happens. So, what is it that you want to try this time?”

Will looked up to find that not only was Misha facing directly at him but that her gaze was uncharacteristically fixed. He looked away, thinking. He asked himself what he wanted. Was Misha right about his need to test things out? And what did that even mean? It wasn’t just a character archetype. He had always thought that this was just some sort of casual escapism, another way to hold the world at arm’s length... but if he was here to test…

It had been months since the shooting, his wrongful arrest and all the lawyers. After even more therapy and support, after almost dropping out. Since he and Aisha had broken up, it seemed like the dark cloud hanging over his future had lingered, with Will taking only moments like these between classes and coursework. Even so, his life had finally reached a kind of equilibrium. Just enough apathy, as JJ would put it, to ‘chill the fuck out’ about things that were entirely out of his control. Mentally, he knew that he was not okay. But then again, who was?

“Instead of trying to psychoanalyse the shit out of this, I’m just going to come up with some spells, if that’s okay, Misha?”

“Fine, whatever,” Misha said, leaning back and appearing to be more put-out than he intended.

“Sorry, it’s…”

“Forget it, Will.”

“Yeah, well whatever. The culture on this campus, they don’t teach you how to be a physicist or engineer or whatever. They just get you to do things and it kinda seeps into you. And all of a sudden, you see everything through this lens, and little really makes sense or remains relevant. Do you know what I mean?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Lucan queried.

“Ah, just forget I even said anything.”

“Yeah, I definitely don’t see the world in terms of Gaussian integrals and Bessel functions. If I did, I would quickly lose my mind. I’m here to get away from all of that bullshit,” JJ said.

“Same,” Lucan added, chuckling as he took a sip from his half-empty beer.

“Sure. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just pick Sorcerer again,” Will said.

Lucan responded, “Nah, we’re doing this whole Silver Surfer mage-class thing. Take your pick out of the basic spells, there must be a few that fit this whole space-time aesthetic. Once we’ve chosen those, then we’ll create some brand-new spells and figure out how they work. One question though, before we begin, what would you like to call this class?”

Will looked up, a wry expression forming on his face.

* * *

Will Jenkins woke with a jolt.

The intense desire to breathe compelled him to kick, claw and scratch at the darkness. Fists punched, legs shoved, his body convulsed as it pushed against mushy folds of syrupy flesh. His body moved an inch forward, and then two inches back as if swimming against currents.

His fingers gouged holes in the membranous layers encapsulating his head, tearing and pulling through flesh as a dull amber light finally registered to unsure eyes. His actions became more desperate, more urgent, returning strength fighting against the dread-sense of suffocation, choking and drowning. Soft fingertips scratched against the insides of something tougher, leathery and unwavering. He punched at it again and again, kicking and pushing with his feet, heaping force with every blow as he fought through the layers of membranous flesh and meat. Finally - a tear, and with it came the chill feeling of air against his fingertip. Watery eyes overwhelmed by daylight, every moment, brighter, whiter and purer than before as this slimmest of openings widened. He pushed his index finger through and wiggled it to widen the tear.

Will spent what seemed to be an hour in the foetal position, chest rising and falling in time with the forest breeze and the turn of the sky. His umbilical cord spanned a distance between his navel and the winged beast that had eaten him. It was long since dead and well into the process of decay. He was surrounded by clotted blood and a stew of vomit, amniotic fluid and unmentionable pieces of gore. It had poured forth from the hole he carved open with hands which now trembled.

Brand-new skin and muscle covered the entirety of his body; it was the pink shade of freshly healed skin that he knew would soon darken to his natural brown. He itched as the unnatural process of magically accelerated hair growth caused a rather extreme form of goosebumps. He could feel every movement of air, every curious insect, the path of sunbeams that danced with the sway of branches as they travelled with the progress of the sun. His throat was dry, lungs raw and exhausted with the simple effort of breathing. His eyes were shut, desperate to keep out the searing light of the world. Meanwhile, his limbs were stiff with the lactic-acid burn of extreme exertion. He could hear more beyond the wind that cut through the forest canopy, and although his sinuses were unreliable, a distant smell of burning cut above the stink of fetid offal.

Will groped for his magical senses. These were slippery and elusive at first, as if he were a babe grasping at objects too large to handle.

And then he could sense their flavours; the cool gradient of Chronomancy, Spaciomancies vast expanse between the darkest depths and burning light. One by one, he could feel his classifications register to his arcana, and as he did so, cognition returned to his mind.

First of all, he was in danger.

‘Where am I?’ he wondered as he tried to puzzle out his current location. Closer to the lake? Or Drizzik, the city Effni feared was under siege? Effni… Will wondered if she was still alive and if she was, where she might be. ‘She could hide in plain sight after all, and maybe she’s already back in the city, mission complete, world saved…’ Will was unconvinced by his own musings. ‘I’ll worry about that later, first I need to sort out my own shit.’

Will was stuck to the mossy forest undergrowth by the festering assortment of dried fluids surrounding him. As he tried to open his eyes to bright daylight, he noted that the same film gluing him to the ground also glued his eyelids together. He used Mana-Sight, along with a mana pulse to check his surroundings.

It was at that moment several things happened at once. Will’s internal user interface snapped into focus, a map showed five high-level, hostile creatures around him. The nearest of which was a level seventeen monster at least as massive as the one that ate him.

‘Shiiit….’ Upon realisation that Asterisk’s steady presence was absent, he cursed internally, heartbeat spiking in panic as he ripped himself off the ground. He was naked, a thin film coating him with pieces of moss stuck to his side. He had no weapons but his magic, no sight but his magical sight. He blinked desperately, as he scratched gunk out of his eyes and ears. His breathing accelerated, knees wobbled, hands still shaking.

‘This was it, my upgrades would either work, or I’ll die,’ he thought grimly.

Immediately, he divided his mind into three, a mind that felt, a mind that analysed, and a mind that acted. Divided-Mind (Advanced) had been his most significant optional upgrade. It was the one he had spent the most effort in design, the one that had cost the most in gestation time. It enabled him to function during periods of high stress or moments of acute pain. Here he could compartmentalise experiences in a way that was decidedly super-human, almost machine-like. But it came at a cost.

Will entered zero-point-zero-one percent Dilated-Time.

The ease at which Chronomancy came to him was increasingly astonishing the more he considered it. A nimbus of blue light coated the leading edge of his arm. He inspected his hand. It was an innocuous motion, but at one ten-thousandth of real-time, his arm stripped electrons from air-molecules and caused compression waves that were actually mini-sonic booms. The air itself was insubstantial, vacuum-like, suffocating. The sensation was like dying, it was as if reality itself was telling him that he did not belong here.

He was confident that his time inside the black hole somehow counted towards his proficiency with this type of magic. In a reality where, at least for him, magical aptitude relied heavily on the experience of its effects; his multiple trillions of years stuck deep within a singularity, whether he was conscious of the time or not, was like some kind of cosmic boon. Combined with his growing reserves of power, he was starting to understand just how supreme his command over a battle could be.

Up until now, Will had used time-dilation as a pure force multiplier, a way to move faster, hit harder, empowering everything he did. But as the world around him moved a thousand times slower, as light dimmed to a ten-thousandth of its usual brightness, and the air around him at once felt illusory, and yet burned, Will knew that Chronomancy could be so much more.

It had to be if he were to survive and accomplish all he had to.

Milliseconds flowed with the viscosity of honey, the detached nature of his mind registered the oncoming area-of-effect attack, it was cresting like a fizzing wave of irritation. It was the same Hemomancy spell as before, yet fainter. He was already moving away from the source, Autokinesis augmenting his leap as his newly enhanced physiology sent him gliding twenty meters in a controlled, sideways lunge. His body moved, landing on tiptoes, arms outstretched to the sides before settling into a half-crouch. His muscles were still stiff. New limbs still weak and new skin uncomfortably tight. But these irritations were now disconnected from the parts of him that reasoned or reacted. In this new mind space, he could think faster, more widely and more deeply than ever before, untethered to the limitations and distractions of his body.

Will sharpened the potential of Divided-Mind, for it was time to fight. To not merely survive but develop and thrive. To do this, he had to not just win, but win so completely that the margin for error allowed room for power syphoning, for experimentation, with his magic, with his combat style, and, most importantly, his mindset.

Flesh-Shaping continuously repaired the damage caused by his enemy’s Blood Song and the heated air caused by his own motion and metabolic processes. Last week, the drain of both of these spells would have been debilitating, but so far, his control over Chronomancy held.

Will noted that physics’s universal inverse square law also applied to magic, specifically lethal area-of-effect spells. As pressure from the blood-boiling attack eased, he reduced his hold on Dilated-Time to one percent. At only a hundredth of the speed of reality, Will could see clearer, breathe easier, and move in a way that was less like swimming through a burning ocean.

He saw the blurred outline of the giant, squid-faced bat monster, wing-arms clutching at the ground as it bellowed its magical attack. It was a spell Will felt distantly. He had to deal with the immediate threat of this monster and the danger of this particular form of magic to win not just this fight, but all future fights against this specific type of attack.

Even now, more of these creatures approached, drawn to him by the call of the first.

Will wondered if he had Hemomancy? Blood magic? He studied the stinging edges of this attack through the mind that felt. It was uncomfortable, too close to the chaos of weakness and pain his usual self often experienced. But he needed its insight just as much as he needed his cold, detached reasoning. He used Mana-Sight to analyse precisely what it was doing to his body.

Just like a microwave oven excited water molecules, this spell was a song that resonated with his blood using arcana. A song that could rupture blood cells, a song that could liquefy organs, a song of death. Even now, thirty meters away, a trickle of Carnomancy flowed through him repairing the damage this attack wrought. His mana-sight, flesh-sight and greater arcane understanding focused on the phenomena. He reached out for the flavour of this new blood magic. Without Divided-Mind (Advanced), it would have been like trying to grasp what was but a thread of spider silk, with fingers as dexterous as the paws of a dog.

‘There...’ he thought, as he held the invasive thread of power humming through his veins. He could barely detect its flavour, one he had all but the faintest of inherited affinities for, perhaps due to his recent incubation within one of the creatures he now sought to fight. He was sure that his link to the magic would be lost when he was no longer under the spell’s effect. However, for now, it was enough.

He held the arcane structure in his mind, the blood song, and then he used it. Although he could not project it outward, he could apply its effects to himself. Pain spiked as his own application of the magic registered through his veins, but he reacted, shifting the resonance, creating an equal but opposite vibration. The closer he came to cancelling out the effect, the less pain he experienced, until harmonic interference neutralised the creature’s attack.

Will wiped away the warm trickle of blood seeping from his nose as he made eye contact with the first aggressor. His map notified him that at least four more of these creatures were approaching. He spent a few extra moments mastering this new ability before he took his first steps forward. Subjectively, six minutes had passed for Will, but only four seconds had elapsed outside of his own perception.

His paces were normal at first, before Autokinesis propelled him into gliding, loping strides that ate up ten meters per step. Before the creature processed his motion, Will was beside it, stretching towards a spot on its abdomen just beneath its wing. He reached, open palm caressing black leathery skin and with just a touch, Flesh-Shaping breached the creature’s natural magical resistance due to making physical contact, and with an impulse of intent, Will shredded the monster’s spinal cord beneath its brainstem.

Even under Divided-Mind, the sickening flavour of Carnomancy challenged his fragile constitution—a problem Will now feared he may never resolve. He settled into a crouch to the side of the winged beast as it convulsed in slow motion.

Keeping skin-contact with the monster, Will pushed his Mana-Sight through the animal, turning off his blood song as the creature’s attack faded. Forming a bridge between his arcana and the creature’s mana core, his arm sunk shoulder-deep into an adversary unaware it had already lost.

Distantly, the part of his mind that analysed considered this phenomenon. How could his limbs, in certain situations, sink into flesh? What was the mechanism? Was a part of him phasing out of reality? Or did he have some arcane way of manipulating the nuclear forces that govern matter itself? And why did it happen now, during this particular process and not others? The effect fascinated as much as it perturbed him. Exciting him with the possibilities, and daunting him with the realisation of just how little he actually knew about the forces he relied on to survive.

Further understanding could grant him access to harnessing a curious phenomenon, one that could be vital to his future. For example, what if he could simply phase through attacks, through walls and objects? But for now, he stored these considerations for later as the expected stream of power flowed into him. It at once rejuvenated and burned him, channels of Mana forcefully widened by the onrush of arcana. Will focused on controlling it. Unlike previously where he simply absorbed what he could, like a child drinking from a gardening hose. In Divided-Mind, his awareness had improved, his mastery over the forces was more developed, and he could access the surprising amount of insight his limited experiences had accrued. It was with this insight that he realised that he had a choice. The beast’s head tentacles quivered in slow motion as eagle-like legs buckled. More hostile creatures were en route as Will decided on a path.

He could use this power to fix some of the damage made by his encounter with the portal. He could try to restore some of his mana reserves, bringing it close to perhaps where it was, but nowhere near where it should be. It was tempting, maybe even sensible in a pragmatic, leave-no-options-closed kind of way. Perhaps he was limiting his abilities in ways fundamental and vast, he feared that not having a standing pool of Mana to draw upon may make some of his objectives, such as opening a portal to Mars, impossible. Perhaps one day, he would need a standing pool of Mana to power a grand spell. But as he continued to think about his own development, as a mage? A warrior? Doubts arose as he considered his personal objectives and present challenges laid out in front of him. Will embraced his broken mana core, the black hole at the centre of his heart, the impossibly dense bead of Mana that even now, magnified his arcane abilities and focused his intent.

If instead, he could progress by mana regeneration alone, then theoretically, he could come to a point where he would never bottom out of energy only to be left wanting for minutes or hours. He may never fear wasting precious moments recharging his Mana-pool because he would always have access to a river of power with only his physical stamina as the final limitation. Even now, he could channel varying levels of autokinesis, time-dilation and Mana-Sight indefinitely. What more could he do if he focused purely on enhancing mana regeneration?

His UI shifted, mana regeneration swelling from forty-two hundred to thirty-three thousand as his body awoke to the torrent of new power. He disengaged with the dying beast as a wave of blood song spiked through his compartmentalised senses. He neutralised it with his own handcrafted counter-song before more damage could be done and spun away from the husk to approach the nearest aggressor. Within two steps across the verdant green forest, Will Flesh-Shaped to disable his adversary. This time the creature’s body locked as if tasered while Will drained mana from one core to his own. In the minute of subjective time this process took, his mana regeneration rate spiked again, rising to fifty-one thousand units of Mana regenerated per second, or level fifteen.

The sense of growing power, the mana-induced high—it was intoxicating, but behind it was something akin to heartburn, even to a dispassionate mind running parallel processes. Arm emerging from the second, now-dying creature, he saw the remaining three beasts close in on him from the air. One was diving towards him, hawk-like, curved, arm-length claws outstretched in preparation to pluck him from the ground like an unsuspecting mole. There was another, less than twenty meters away, quivering in slow motion as if its head tentacles were jellyfish lappets suspended in treacle.

Will took a step to the side as he focused Telekinetic senses on the airborne creature’s skull. His range had increased with his growing power, and now he felt the subtle tug of everything within a sphere around him. Will sensed the feedback from microscopic pulls on every object within twenty meters, from leaf to fallen log; even the wind responded, adding to this new perception of the world around him. It was akin to echolocation or ultrasound, as he could see and feel through objects, their densities and their propensity for motion. Whereas before, he had to see an item before turning it into a missile, Telekinesis was the sight, the hand and the weapon.

Will called upon the magic of telekinesis while focusing the sum of their forces into a point. It had been something he’d idly considered several days ago with his growing power levels potentially allowing him to bypass the innate magic resistance all living creatures had. Will had once dismissed it as being too murdery, too gruesome, but under Divided-Mind, such ethical concerns fell away under the present, a present surrounded by monsters, monsters that had grown more numerous, grown in power and mendacity, monsters that had eaten him. Today, he was free of his squeamishness in the liquid helium cool of his Divided-Mind and able to focus thoughts with the blade of logic.

Instead of moving an entire creature with telekinetic forces applied evenly throughout the volume as a whole, the cold calculus of geometry suggested moving only a small part of a beast. The same amount of magical potential, but focused on an area a millionth of the size.

It was a tricky feat, even at one-hundredth the speed of reality. He was using his magic in a way that he had never tried to do before, it was uncomfortable, awkward. It was the feeling of numb fingers, coated in oil, trying to thread a needle. And beyond his own lack of skill, he could feel that force, a resistance, a boundary between a creature’s skin and the air surrounding it. It pushed away at his attempts in a way similar to two opposing magnets. It was something he could not even hope to attempt on a creature moving much faster or one of a significantly higher power level. But after a few seconds of fumbling within the creature’s volume of influence, he could explore the beast’s anatomy using small tugs and probes that gave him an initial picture of what was hard, and what was soft.

The monster hung only five meters above the ground when he settled upon a cube of brain-matter inside the creature’s skull. That one-inch cube of mass, one-millionth the volume of the total size of the beast, was wrenched out of the plunging beast’s cranium with a million times the G-load he would have applied to the entire animal, resulting in a small pop and red fountain of mist backlit by the afternoon sun.

Will was already facing off against the fourth beast as the diving creature crashed into the forest floor with a muffled thud. Limbs still weak, he used autokinesis to augment every motion, moving five meters for every leaping step. His mind focused on making every movement efficient, every action significant, every use of force, lethal. The hostile beasts attempted to predict, prepare, but with Chronomancy, he was a blur of death, a whip-crack of destruction.

In Dilated-Time, Will’s momentum assisted by telekinesis allowed him to become the missile. With his foot outstretched, his flying kick caved in the beast’s skull. His bare foot felt the resistance of what should have been hard muscle and solid bone, as blood and viscera fanned out in fine mists that coated Will’s naked form in gore.

Through the chaos, a distant part of Will was horrified by the visage of death he had become. These creatures were guinea pigs to his murder-magic. But then that small voice was quickly shouted down by the ‘they tried to eat me… fuck these guys...’ part of him that was now firmly in control. It was the part of him that activated Mana-Sight, this time using his leg as the bridge between the beast’s mana nexus and his own. Mana flowed through him like fresh ice water, refreshing, clarifying, but without the induced high as before. It had been a level sixteen monster, so less potent than the others, but still, he expected more. Demanded more.

He pushed off the beast as they landed on the forest floor. He could feel the blood songs humming in his chest as he casually strode to the final creature. He watched its futile attempts to back away and begin to fly, leathery wings twisting as its body caught up to its mind’s realisation that it was no longer the hunter, but the prey.

Arm outstretched as he walked abreast of it, Will placed his palm on the beast’s abdomen and severed its spinal cord with a stomach-churning pulse of Flesh-Shaping. He attempted to map the creature using Flesh Sight, Mana-Sight and Telekinesis as its movements suddenly lost all impetus. At first, the vision of all of these senses overlaid was blinding and nonsensical; like combining sonar imagery with your sense of smell. However, after shifting his perspective multiple times, each sense complemented the others; knowing what one sense told him sharpened his sight in the other. He could now understand the halo of Mana that tried to repel his Telekinesis attack and could feel the smaller mana nodules that dotted through the monster’s anatomy.

He could see the flow of Mana through overlapping channels of… blood? Most importantly of all, he could see separate classifications of arcana suffused throughout the creature’s body, from a kind of autokinesis and gravity manipulation in the wings, to the Hemomancy and Carnomancy in the heart and lungs. There were many classifications Will could either sense, but not understand, or recognise but not know how to use. These arcana were trace elements, flavours far too faint to be discernible. But could he absorb them anyway? Should he?

Will pushed with the entirety of his Arcanamancy. It was an act wholly different from mana-sight and manipulation, as instead of merely using hands and eyes, every arcane muscle and nerve in his body strained with effort. He pulsed with power, his body healing itself under strain.

A nimbus of blue light formed in the surrounding air as loose detritus up to five meters away levitated. Will was drifting out of Dilated-Time. The world brightened and sounds returned; he committed all of his power to this supreme demonstration of arcane perception.

He once again surrendered to instinct, he knew a part of him was missing something crucial, knowledge about the forces arrayed against him, knowledge about his powers and the way they worked. Also, the part of him aghast at his violence resurfaced. It sensed that the need to kill and survive had passed, it reasoned if this monster, as vicious and hideous as it was, really had to die? What if he could reach it somehow, communicate with it through magic? Learn from it or about it? It was this hope of another way that drove him. Pushing him beyond what he believed he could give, pushing him blindly into the unknown.

As the firehose of Arcanamancy poured forth, Will trickled power from his existing classifications.

He spent Mana at a rate beyond his body’s ability to sustain, and just before his breaking point, an image snapped into focus. By instinct, the power he channelled lessened to a trickle as Neuromancy’s saccharine treacle grew in prominence. He considered the beast before him, could he access its thoughts? Its mind? Its dreams? Instead of the expected presence of an active, yet closed mind, his Neuromancy saw a hole. It was vantablack, a void wholly unnatural given how stark a contrast it was from anything Will had experienced, magical or otherwise. This creature’s mind was locked away by forces so extreme, so meticulous in their applications of magic as to create a mind shield so dense that no information, not even light, could escape it.

But there was, if not a chink in this impossible artifice of Neuromancy, a clue towards something distant. A single thread of spider silk that stretched upwards towards infinity. A beam of magic, permeating the barrier and shooting out beyond the sky and into space. Will thought hard, weighing the pros and cons of messing with arcane forces so far beyond his understanding or skill level. Curiosity and a reckless hope drove him on. He knew that he was about to poke the bear, and yet, as his plan resolved itself, he smiled knowing that this was just something he had to try.

Will plunged in forming his own thread of Neuromancy and weaving it with the line that reached out far beyond this world. He could instantly feel something, an inextricable presence that latched onto his own thread of Neuromancy, binding it to the weave.

The presence resolved itself into a source of vast intent, ancient and labyrinthine. A thread of its thoughts and emotions lay exposed to Will, but they were unknown, unknowable, and utterly alien. Its presence shifted as it considered Will.

“Hello?” Will thought, meaning transmitted towards the presence but before he could complete the word, the connection terminated abruptly. He was driven out of the dream space, Divided-Mind, and physical contact with the monster. The beast’s head exploded beside him, and Will was showered with gore. Reflexes sent him scrambling backwards several meters in panic before he could process what just happened.

“Fuuuuck!” Will groaned as all the sensations Divided-Mind (Advanced) suppressed, came crashing down on him at once. His knees wobbled so violently that they knocked together. His eyes watered with the brightness of daylight and the smell of smoke stung nostrils that were dry and sore. He recounted his movements, naked, unrestrained penis and scrotum flopping around in the wind. His once-pink skin was now coated in thick, drying red-black gore and as his hands shook with tremors so violent, he immediately clasped them together in a vain attempt to hide his own fear.

The sudden flood of complaints from minor injuries, overtasked muscles, and raw skin combined with anxiety and repulsion, pushed Will to the verge of unconsciousness. But he fought it, staying awake just for the spite of it, as much for any rational reason or instinctual survival mechanism.

A small prompt in his UI informed him that Countercyclical Neurochemistry (Advanced) activated. It had been a relatively minor Optional Upgrade requiring three hours of gestation time. It worked like an autonomous pharmacy that neutralised the chemical imbalances long periods of stress or depression could cause. In this case, adrenalin and noradrenalin were flushed out of his brain blood chemistry, hormones and receptors reset to normal.

The delayed combat stress reaction faded as more memories returned to him. He stared at the bat-like beast missing the roof of its skull. One of its face tentacles dangled from the top of its mouth, held on by just the smallest threads of skin as it spun lazily in the breeze. Its carcass stunk of sulphur and rotten cabbage, its dark-red blood pooled beneath a mass larger than an elephant.

Will started to laugh. It was a high-pitched, breathless laugh tinged with more than a hint of mania.

“You tried to eat me?” Will said. His body was tense, chest puffed out and shaking arms spread wide apart, “You taint-ass mother-fucker, you tried to eat me?” Will continued, strutting towards the fallen beast. “YOU… TRIED… TO… EAT… ME!?” he roared, this time with all the anger and incredulity he could muster channelled into each word. Will’s nose was an inch away from bloody, limp tentacles. And then he whispered as if confiding with the creature's inert form, “Well, bitch...Welcome to the food chain.”

He collapsed into a heap, fury and energy spent. His hysterical laughter had turned tearful as Neurochem warnings flashed in his UI. Competing aspects of his psyche, anger, fear, and disgust fuelled a breakdown three days in the making.

Asterisk was gone.

He was alone, on an alien world, surrounded by monsters. He knelt in the pool of blood until his hitching subsided. He snort-cried. ‘And yet...’ he thought as a sardonic grin, a grin that rose from the deepest darkest parts of him threatened to turn into a fit of giggles. ‘I just slaughtered a bunch of monsters in my birthday suit.’

Will tried to control his breathing, the one lever of control upon which all of his internal processes hinged. He could not yet marshal rational thoughts, but he could level off the emotional extremes that came right after the fight.

This was the cost of Divided-Mind (Advanced). Beyond permanently quadrupling his brain’s metabolic costs, Divided-Mind left behind toxins that built up after use. Although the effects cleared within minutes, his concentration, emotional stability and use of magic were significantly impaired upon ending the ability. He had spent less than eight minutes in that state, far less than the estimated maximum sixty-six minutes of subjective time, and yet he could not fight, even if his life depended on it, so scattered was his focus and grasp on reality. And so, he sat there in the blood and mud, breathing, riding the waves of emotions as they swept over him.

His mind drifted in different directions as if still under the influences of Divided-Mind. The part of him that analysed, examined, wondered… It looked at the collection of upgrades installed while his mind and body slumbered.

Divided-Mind (Advanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 26 hours, 47 minutes, 15 seconds.

◦ Description: For up to 66 minutes, compartmentalise thought, feelings and actions. Vastly increases cognitive and kinaesthetic performance. Suppresses negative pain and stress responses.

◦ Warning: Permanently increases brain metabolic costs (from 500 calories to 2000 calories per day)

◦ Warning: Usage creates a build-up of harmful toxins that impair cognitive performance. Requires 10 seconds for every minute of use to clear adverse side effects.

Will designed Divided-Mind from the ground up as an answer to an uncertain and violent reality. He had not been good enough, smart enough, or resilient enough and so he had needed to change. To become better, to evolve into something new. Completely changing his personality had been an option he strongly considered, after all, what use was it to cling on to humanity if you were eaten by the first beast to get the jump on you? However, he decided against it for mostly practical reasons, as, with an active ability, he could produce a more potent effect that worked precisely when he needed it. He chose Advanced rank as it was the highest rank available to him given the total gestation time. This rank reduced side effects of the skill by fifty percent.

Battle Trance (Enhanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 8 hours, 9 minutes, 21 seconds.

◦ Description: Enter a meditative state that reduces the metabolic requirements of magic, improves focus and endurance, enables hyper-awareness of all normal and arcane senses.

◦ Unlocks Temporal Perception.

◦ Unlocks Dynamic Dilated-Time.

◦ Enhances reflexes, reduces perception-dimming effects of Dilated-Time. Suppresses negative pain and stress responses.

◦ Reduces metabolic requirements of mana use by 40%.

◦ Warning: Consumes mana at a base rate of 22,897 units per second.

◦ Warning: Requires attunement.

Battle Trance was Will’s hedge against his own creation. It was an evolution of a pre-existing optional upgrade called Focused Mind. Will had modified it to include suppression to pain and stress as well as some features he hoped would enable new magical spells previously out of reach. Unlike Divided-Mind, there was no room for extraneous thought or reflection, and while Divided-Mind required more calories, Battle Trance consumed a considerable amount of Mana. However, there were no side effects, and, theoretically, he could use this ability indefinitely. The attunement requirement was a concern as he had no idea what that meant, and so, demurred from using it until he had some time to practise.

Enhanced Metabology (Advanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 14 hours, 59 minutes, 1 second.

◦ Description: Increases the caloric intake from food consumed by 800%. Increases the amount of Mana absorbed from food by 40,000%. Breaks down 97% of known harmful toxins.

◦ Warning: Reduces the effectiveness of magical healing by 23%.

Enhanced Metabology was a requirement for Divided-Mind’s massive energy increase. Will also realised the link between his metabolism or stamina, and mana regeneration. He had already hit a soft cap on the amount of Mana he could permanently draw from. After closing the portals and absorbing its energy, his nominal regeneration rate had lingered in the sixties even though his absolute regeneration rate was in the thousands. Without improving the amount of energy he could digest and deliver via his blood, his goals of reaching higher levels of power could be stunted.

Countercyclical Neurochemistry (Advanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 2 hours, 59 minutes, 17 seconds.

◦ Description: Automatically counters the neurochemical effects caused by prolonged periods of stress, depression, and anxiety. Dramatically reduces the impact of addiction and withdrawal.

◦ Warning: Reduces the effectiveness of magical healing to brain injuries by 17%.

This was a pre-existing optional upgrade that highly appealed to Will. Asterisk had once mentioned how mental disorders could cause lasting physical effects, including changes to brain chemistry and that if they were back on Earth, medication would be one of the recommended treatments for his state of mind. Of course, this was ignoring the fact that if Will was back on Earth, he’d be living a life free from random monster attacks and his family and friends would still exist which, Will thought, would probably be medication enough. For now, glands which could counteract adverse neurochemistry was a close second place to Earth-based medicine.

TNCF Reinforced Skeleton (Enhanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 22 hours, 55 minutes, 9 seconds. (Concurrent).

◦ Description: Partially replaces bone mass with Titanium Nanocomposite-Foam. Increases bone strength by at least 117% for no additional weight cost. Improves the effect of magical healing Bones by 730%.

◦ Warning: Increases Titanium compound dietary requirements by 12,000%.

Titanium Nanocomposite Foam. For Will, the ‘awesome’ factor of having Titanium bones made this a no brainer. It was the coolest-sounding bone type without the word Adamantium in it and while the dietary requirements were a strange condition, only time would tell how that would pan out. Perhaps he’d have to find some supplements, or make some. Ultimately, having bones that healed faster and were less likely to break in the first place was an excellent tradeoff.

Mana-Infused musculature (Superior)

◦ Status: Installation Incomplete.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 57 hours, 43 minutes, 3 seconds. (Concurrent).

◦ Description: Muscle mass is permanently infused with Mana granting a 337% increase to overall speed and strength.

◦ Warning: Reduces the effectiveness of magical healing to bone injuries by 73%.

◦ Error: Error code: aml_error_rx host_terminated_connection.

◦ Error: Estimated time for completion at termination, 6 hours.

◦ Warning: Installation incomplete, requires additional metabolic resources to finalise installation.

◦ Warning: Effects of the upgrade will be severely diminished until installation restarts.

‘Damnit!’ Will thought as he realised that the single Superior upgrade he attempted to install, had failed. The estimated gestation period of fifty hours should have been well within the the elapsed time.

Perhaps despite being concurrent, had other upgrades reduced the progress of this one? Or were superior upgrades harder to install than expected? Either way, if the notes meant what they appeared to mean, completing the process should be possible, although the lack of specifics was troublesome. Will had chosen Mana-Infused musculature (Superior) as a hedge against the unknown. By its description, Mana would permanently enhance his speed and strength, which would be great in situations where magic on its own wasn’t possible.

Neural quantum encryption (Advanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 7 hours, 12 minutes, 8 seconds.

◦ Description: Passive, permanently sacrifices 3% of cognitive potential to quantum encrypt long-term memories.

Will had chosen this from the list of existing upgrade options. The idea of permanently sacrificing any amount of intelligence was anathema. However, this fear was outweighed by the greater concern of his more destructive knowledge being stolen from his mind. While the abilities chosen so far were designed to better fight the last battles, encryption of his mind was selected to protect against the next. And while he had to learn the method people native to this land used to secure their thoughts from prying minds, having a ready defence could prove vital in the trials to come.

There were also a handful of mandatory upgrades installed as part of the requirements to reactivate Asterisk.

Lesser Functions (Advanced)

◦ Status: Installation Successful.

◦ Elapsed gestation time: 17 minutes, 2 seconds.

◦ Description: Access to a suite of expert systems once maintained by Asterisk.

Systems include:

• UI_SDK-Prime.exe - Allows customisation of Lesser Functions.

• Mana-proprioception - Generates insight into your internal arcana architecture.

• Machine Cognition Infrastructure - access to modules that allow you to compute and communicate at classical computing speed.

• User Interface Management.

• Machine Memory Module, permanently records sensory data (from the last 30 seconds).

These upgrades on the surface seemed impressive and certainly pushed him well beyond human baseline in capability. However, Will knew them for what they really were. They were crutches, mere tools to hide behind when the world became too hard for his basic self to deal with. He hoped that the time and space these features would give him would be enough for him to fake it until he could make it on his own. From what he’d seen, he may soon surpass most of the tools and upgrades recently acquired. He’d have to, if he was to survive on this world and bring back his friend.

This absurd world of magic... he now had a measure of its potential. There were quirks and inconsistencies and mysteries, but they were fewer and further between than he had feared. No, magic on this world was like playing in a sandbox full of toys coated with nitroglycerin. With little effort, you could harm or murder or annihilate. There were no balanced game mechanics, no game masters to ban exploiters, no boundaries to the scope of power or consequences. This universe was a tinderbox waiting for a spark… Or at least that’s how it seemed.

‘That this world was still in one piece after millions of years of mages, magical civilisations and technology is the true mystery.’

He sat in the pool of monster blood, a myriad of thoughts drifted through his mind, mostly memories from Earth, his family, his friends. These were real recollections and not just the grief-tainted cutouts of people he was unable to mourn. Truthfully remembering his past seemed to settle him.

He smiled as the afternoons spent creating his custom Dungeons and Dragons class came back to him. It was the patience of his friends as they went over the mechanics, how Lucan tailored the first campaign to his new class, how Misha and JJ rightfully ripped into him after he announced Aethermancer as the class name.

‘Aethermancer? Diviner of the very medium of reality… Well it certainly has a better ring to it than Physics Wizard or Quantum Mage, but what did the concept of Aether, a medium permeating reality through which all things interacted with, have to do with anything?’

He thought about it deeper. The ceaseless rustle of branches combined with thoughts of Asterisk’s thesis, Effni’s theories on magic, of Archons and Archmagi, his affinities and abilities like Mana-Sight, or the way his limbs phased into creatures as he absorbed their power. Even that strange, unknown magic felt through use of the God Stone, so unlike anything he had experienced before.

While absolute power level still seemed important as even now, his kinetomantic perception drained over a thousand units of Mana per second, a power draw barely noticeable to Will today, but a week ago, this newfound sense would have been impossible. But, what if his development also required greater understanding? He knew that there was still yet so much more to explore and consider. What if he could unify the arcane with the laws of nature…? He had already done so conceptually, however, at a practical level, these two things were still separate as far as Will’s understanding of them was concerned.

‘So more experimentation…’ he thought as he glanced at the alien corpse beside him. Minutes passed as he stabilised. The pool of blood he knelt in had shrunk into a layer of dark, sticky jelly. Insects had colonised the monster carcass. He grimaced, realising that he had yet to absorb what little remained of the mana core from this and one other creature.

He looked around to see where the other monster was, and then he realised something. Besides the stink of dead meat, the smell of smoke was ever-present. It was the distinct smell of burning wood, and burning… something else. The realisation that he had indeed been smelling smoke for a while helped break his mental feedback loop.

‘Pity party is over,’ Will thought as he stood, really taking in the scenery with his own eyes and mind for the first time. The trees were… gigantic. Like giant Redwoods spaced further apart to accommodate massive roots as extensive as the branches above. He glanced up to view those branches, ten times thicker than back on Earth, splitting to form bridges of wood that seemed to connect one tree with another. These natural arches crisscrossed a hundred feet above, midway between the ground and the forest’s top. Loamy moss, vines and bushes covered the forest floor, broad oak-leaf shaped fronds capped a luscious, almost over-saturated ceiling compared to the grey blue-green tint of the Spinewoods. Altogether, the effects created a biosphere very different from any he had experienced, drastically altering the perception of an environment that was already surreal. Beyond the aroma of burning wood, there was something else that was odd.

It took Will a moment to realise that it was actually the lack of fauna; from insects to birds… This forest, once teeming with life, was now void of activity beyond the stirring of leaves.

Fifteen

Gift

Will spent fifteen unpleasant minutes scavenging Mana from squid-faced bat monsters. UI notifications informed him of precisely how much time each task took, how much Mana each core provided him with, or how many calories he burnt. Even a simple arm movement produced reams of data; it was overwhelming, disorientating, and made him appreciate Asterisk even more.

Was this the sea of information its mind used to perceive his world, his life? Or was it just one of many different layers? Will’s mental abilities had definitely received a jump in performance with only the very least of Asterisk’s cognitive tools, but there was a distinct lack of integration. Like he had emerged from a cocoon as a butterfly, to find that his wings could flutter away and leave him behind without his constant and total attention.

He took hours to examine his Lesser Functions upgrade. There were dozens of tools ranging from the text-based executable file with a minimal interface, to some of the more fully featured pieces of mind software; apps with complete UIs and even expansive Help sections and knowledge kits.

Most significant of them all was the function UI_SDK-Prime. This wasn’t just a basic app, this was the tailor-made programming language that could alter his UI and add new tools to his Lesser functions.

As Will continued to explore how the program worked and what it could do, the possible implications were staggering. Within UI_SDK-Prime’s directory were the project files for all of his existing Lesser Functions, including code hints, references, and variations. With enough time, Will suspected he could fundamentally alter himself given just how connected to his mind and magic this tool could become. Despite the feeling of empowerment and the possibilities his Lesser Functions provided, Will couldn’t entirely ditch the sense that he was walking through an abandoned house as he browsed some of the graphing tools used during his earliest experiments with Asterisk. The memories were there, but there was no one home.

A sudden crushing sense of loneliness threatened to swallow Will whole, a lump in his throat resonated with a painful tightness in his chest as crippling anxiety stole away his ability to breathe. ‘Another panic attack’ - a tiny part of his mind acknowledged while he attempted to ride out the pain of his body’s abrupt betrayal.

* * *

Mid-afternoon had come by the time breathing exercises and quiet introspection had returned him to some semblance of equilibrium. Will had hoped that he was more robust, that some threshold in acceptance had been reached through his trials and tribulations. But this recent episode put lie to the idea that he was fixed, invincible, invulnerable to fear and inner doubt. Will sighed, steering his thoughts towards something more productive.

His power level stabilised at a low-level sixteen. Mana fizzed and bubbled within, the torrent of energy flowing towards him like a whirlpool. It granted access to just over seventy thousand units of Mana per second.

To put into context, even slowing time down by ten thousand to one, a hazardous rate of Dilated-Time Will believed was overkill for most situations, mana usage would only be four percent of his total available mana regeneration. Flesh-Shaping seemed to top out at twenty percent of his total. Based on information he noticed during the last fight, Will hypothesised that he had enough power to remain in Dilated-Time while healing from a grievous wound. However, he wasn’t quite ready to put his theory into practise just right yet.

If the initial abundance of power made Will giddy with megalomania, knowledge of abilities which were more flexible, intuitive and powerful, but cost ten times more mana units per second, drastically grounded his expectations. His life was now more complicated than just a week ago. Yes, he had chosen to live, but with that choice came consequences, complexities, commitments and a raft of unpleasant decisions to make. Worst of all, he had no one to speak to, no presence that would make suggestions or subtly chide bad choices.

One such decision stared him in the face, or rather, he stared it in the face. Calories and food had become of singular importance as that not only affected his rate of mana recharge, but it also affected the strength of his resolve. Additionally, as Will lacked the power to conjure flesh into existence whenever he healed wounds, he essentially cannibalised other parts of his body mass. Most of this could be replaced by water, but calories and nutrients for muscle and bone had to come from somewhere.

* * *

And so Will needed to eat and as the forest was unusually quiet, Will was left with the choice of not eating and potentially running out of stamina in the next battle, or… truly delivering on his last statement by personally welcoming this invading monster to the local food chain.

It was sour meat.

Both chargrilled and raw. At first, the stringy, mucous-y, gamey texture induced his gag reflex after the first bite. But knowing he could probably digest anything, he pushed on. A few minutes after devouring gristle, tendons and marrow which, oddly, were his preferred meat types from this creature, he considered his options. In fact, his subconscious had already been working away as he stared blankly at the fire and chewed.

He probed his thoughts as he ate. As far as his next moves were concerned, there was no question in his mind that he would attempt to save Drizzik if it was a thing that could still be done. He was alone on an alien world with little knowledge, even fewer resources and Drizzik was the closest place where those issues could be rectified.

Effni’s words and… feelings didn’t suggest the likelihood of much hostility, but Will was cynical enough to know that an entire city of almost a million, a medieval alien civilisation in truth, had its own potential pitfalls. What could he be walking into? Could he be taken away and dissected in an alien autopsy, or would he be refused entry by a xenophobic immigration policy?

Even still, something deep within him urged him to help if he could. He had no idea where here was or where the city lay in relation to his position, but looking around at the thicker tree analogues crisscrossing as much as soaring above him, he believed that he ought to be at least a little closer to the city than before. Or at least significantly deeper into this new forest… ‘What had Effni called it? Quarsi? Qaseri?’

And then Will entered one percent Dilated-Time. He flinched, resisting the urge to slap his forehead after realising how much time he had just wasted. The sun was low on the horizon, so it had to be closer to afternoon than the late morning he must have risen in. He remembered Effni appearing to be under time pressure and here he was, possibly the one person in the universe who could ration this precious resource, casually allowing it to slip through his fingers.

No longer.

If Drizzik had only one day before the invasion, it had a hundred days now.

Will still had to eat to power muscle transformations, he had to figure out which direction Drizzik was, he needed to assess the forces converging on the city, and then he needed to figure out a way to neutralise them.

Easy.

He absently thought back to the last creature he killed. No… Its head exploded but not by his intent. He remembered the creature’s mind shield, the black wall and the fine, silver thread leading off into infinity.

That presence... Trying to remember the sensation was like poking at an open wound with fingers coated in battery acid. Painful, cringe-inducing and dangerous. Will did not want to fuck with that... that whatever it was… and yet if that entity was the driving force behind this invasion. A dark well of terror rose with the certainty that he may indeed have to deal with this distant puppet master.

“Well fuck,” Will groaned into the empty forest.

He collected his emotions and tried to apply reason. For a moment he considered dropping into Divided-Mind… no, if he was caught out during the cool-down period he would be defenceless… ‘No, just your regular Will Jenkins this time.’

He considered the enemy, its mind was distant and unknowable with motives he could only speculate on. But the fact that it seemed to control directly, from so far away… Did it control every monster on this world? Many worlds? Like some uber, real-time strategy grandmaster. ‘Nope, fuck that,’ he thought as the old adage rose to prominence in his mind, ‘the winning move is not to play, but in this context, the best I can do might be to tip the board over, to foul the game.’

* * *

After eating, Will checked access to his items left in hyper-dimensional storage. Ensuring his mana core fragments and God Stones still existed, he noted just how much cooked meat remained uneaten and how much time he had spent waiting for it to broil. And then he banished large chunks of cooked flesh away into this realm between reality, and then promptly forgot about them.

Using the membranous leftovers from several wings, he fashioned a makeshift loincloth with a matching poncho. Wearing it in the humid air made him feel uncomfortable and given the shabbiness of his craftsmanship, Will was unsure if it was actually an improvement in his overall situation. Perhaps he looked even less civilised than he had been while naked.

‘I’ve become pretty feral haven’t I?’ he thought dolorously. He found a gnarly branch, one that was perhaps too thick and too heavy to use as a quarterstaff, but it aided his walk through a forest floor hidden by abundant undergrowth nonetheless. And then he set off, upwind towards the scent of burning wood.

It wasn’t long before he attempted to climb the bisecting branches above once more.

He took the time getting used to brand-new limbs decidedly different from his old set. They itched differently, they had their own springiness and weight distribution. Part of it came from the partial conversion of bone, from collagen to Titanium Nanocomposite foam. Even his muscles flexed differently with unnatural, ridged striations appearing under his skin. It was freakish, something that would have sparked a rare trip to a doctor back on Earth, seeing this alone was almost enough to make him regret the upgrades. He took more rest as tiredness came easier to underdeveloped muscles and a body rebuilding its stamina. Stopping in the stillness and subsonics of the time-dilated forest, he ate pieces of the meat stashed away while frequently sampling vegetation that looked particularly appealing. Later, he found a small stream, wherein he drank, bathed and meditated before moving on as a frozen sun hung in the sky.

Will walked for the better part of twenty hours high above the forest floor, taking time to descend for water and rest breaks along the way. He was able to plot his movements across the map using the Inertial Navigation module; part of his lesser functions upgrades. They behaved like the rest of his holographic UI which appeared as if floating until dismissed by thought. There were giant spreadsheet systems, plotters and scientific calculator modules, there were also systems that helped Will visualise physical spaces or volumes using either his natural or magical senses.

After hours of steady progress, Will stretched out his limbs, sprinting atop tree branches, lunging from limb to limb like Tarzan. Daring, and an old child-like sense of body pride, drove him to test out the limits of his new reflexes, breaking up the monotony of a whole day’s worth of silence. It was when he pushed his body—legs pumping, nerves twitching and arms swinging with abandon—that he started to feel his new body’s worth. There was a time when Will would have dreamed for a body like this, one that could have carried out his boyish ambitions of NBA fame and then some. For a moment, he took heart in those dreams realised.

And then he saw something new down below. Pausing to look closely, mouth agape while his mind tried to comprehend precisely what it was seeing.

It was the remnants of a massacre.

There lay a small clearing with branches opening up to let in generous amounts of light. ‘A courtyard?’ Surrounding it were stone buildings encased within barricades built between giant tree trunks. One and two-story buildings as large as five-bedroom homes dotted the clearing; most were the smouldering remains of wooden shelters, smoky tree trunks gradually transmogrifying into ash.

‘Bodies, So many…’ Will thought as he gazed at the unmoving body parts and smears of blood.

Clear were the remains of Reaeryn bodies, sickening in their stillness, mangled forms so close to human that the scene sparked dormant memories of the aftermath of a suicide bombing via cable news. Except you never taste the smell through television. The metallic tang of congealing pools of dark red turning rust-black blood. The unmistakable smell of burning hair, baked stone and burning wood pulsing with the turn of the wind.

Other bodies were distinctly alien, uniquely and almost indescribable in their strangeness. Will saw a head so different from the concept of what a face should be that its image seared into Will’s mind even as his vision locked, unable to turn away.

Although it was admittedly hard to tell, a tenuous bipedal body flowed upwards in mottled white-grey splotches and striations to meet a face. Instead of recognisable eyes or mouths, it seemed to be covered in the Baleen fins one would typically associate with the insides of a whale’s throat. Pale pink and cream ridges of boney flesh that sloped inwards. He stared at it, transfixed, the image burning itself into his understanding of what life could be on this world.

Partially eaten flesh lay strewn around the smouldering remains of stone buildings. Buildings that may have once been beautiful in how their forms merged into the surrounding forests. Will noticed with interest, some of the corpses were the hostile squid-faced, bat monsters from the hell world. That gave him some solace, as clues of what happened to this village resolved themselves. Will gradually made his way from the branches suspended above the smouldering remains.

Closer to the ground, he found more bodies, more evidence of chaos and violence. He was unable to prevent himself from reconstructing the nightmare based on how the bodies fell, how the blood splattered as he stumbled through the subsonic wind.

Squid-faced flying horrors descending from the sky, blood song immobilising hundreds as they stood, many dying in those first moments, many more gobbled up defenceless, while a brave few somehow managed a futile defence—remains of the eaten scattered, entrails casually strung along hard-pack stones and permanent walkways.

There were also the remains of unfamiliar magic. It had a flavour that was inseparable from the smell of burning and ash. It had melted stone and baked soil into blackened sand. Despite patches of intense heat, very few trees caught fire. ‘A natural resilience… no… an arcane resilience?’ Against fire with a heat that could deform stone, this forest should have otherwise burned itself to the ground. And while some trees smouldered or glowed orange with the heat of burning embers, fires seemed unable to spread. He moved through the village, imagining how it must have been only days ago. He had closed the portals, hadn’t he? Or had he been too late... Could he have saved these people if he had been here sooner? He knew the answer to the question was meaningless for the problem could only be hypothetical, but for some reason, it wasn’t enough to quell the growing rage, the sense of meaningless loss that echoed his own dark heart.

He stumbled, catching himself on one knee as a dull pressure in his chest turned into a knife of pain. His vision suddenly blurred with unshed tears. ‘What use is time magic if I am always too late, too slow, too weak?’

Suddenly, Will poured Mana into Chronomancy. From his previous one percent dilation, time turned into glacier ice. The air was frozen, crackling imperceptibly with every attempted movement. He couldn’t breathe as a white nimbus of light instantly coated his skin. Time flowed at zero-point zero-zero-one-eighth of its normal speed. Here he consumed all of his seventy-seven thousand, two hundred and eleven units of mana regeneration and yet, he wanted to go beyond. To surpass diminishing incremental fractions and break entropy’s wall. As if mere magic and willpower alone could be enough to reverse time and shatter the very basis of causality itself. To reverse this tragedy, back in time to avoid the belly of the beast, back in time to prevent Asterisk’s destruction.

His silent scream in the searing air wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough. And then Dilated-Time guttered out, overcome by Flesh-Shaping’s attempt to repair his sizzling skin. He pounded his fist, inadvertently sending a strong mana-pulse throughout the local environment. On his knees, scorched lungs fought hypoxia within an atmosphere that was suddenly light, free and insubstantial.

On his map, Mana Pulse suddenly returned a ping. It was close, less than a dozen feet away from him. And its Mana, its power was... immense, level thirty-four based on his Mana-Sight. He turned first in fear, expecting a monster to appear. However, five panicked breaths later, Will returned to find the forest almost as quiet submerged under Dilated-Time.

He crawled towards what he once considered only the remains of a squid-faced bat monster. That creature was mangled, twisted and clearly decomposing. It seemed to have nose-dived, impacting the ground at high speed to smash every bone in its face. And yet, his Mana-Sight showed something hidden, something that was still alive. Beneath the monster, partially covered by a wing was one of the genuinely alien creatures Will had recently discovered. With ridges of pink bone for a face and small black pearls for eyes.

It lay on its side, perhaps crushed and broken but miraculously, its chest rose and fell. What passed for its arms… tentacle arms? They were ruined, frayed and bloody. However, he could see its chest expand and contract almost imperceptibly. As he approached, he wondered, ‘It was dying, but… could I? And almost as importantly... should I?’ He knelt beside the creature, wondering if it was aware of his presence. Will avoided the urge to sink into Divided-Mind; instead, he chose to clear his thoughts and attempt to act as if he was in Divided-Mind. He ignored the signals of weakness, pain, his mind’s fear and loneliness, he could try to do so in the stillness of this moment, outside of the stresses of combat.

It was still tricky, almost impossible as he stared into an alien face of ridges and folds. A part of him wanted to cringe back in disgust and turn away as if it was a certainty that because of just how alien it appeared, nothing good could ever come from their interaction.

And then he decided to stop being an ass.

Effni mentioned co-existing with several races, some vastly different from her own. Neuromancy helped bridge the gap… And so, slowly, Will reached out to place his palm atop the creature’s corrugated face.

* * *

His senses thrummed with the scream of a silent alarm. In the dead of night, an arcane pressure permeated the minds within the Seven Greels Trading Outpost. It was a small, mixed community of a hundred or so permanent residents, a day beyond Drizzik’s walls and submerged deep within the Qaseri’s mega-flora. To those as sensitive to arcana as Quinris, the malignant presence dominated subconscious thought. And even in the following daylight, the usually relaxed village’s tension was as thick as tree sap. Runners had made their way from Drizzik carrying news by the end of the first day. Mages from the Queen’s court had determined these presences to be ‘Portals’ and a general muster had been called for all reservists.

Quinris, with neither the training nor the inclination for warfare, had instead sought to tend to his family. Every whisper on the forest wind, every tremble of thought told him to run, and run fast. Gathering supplies and belongings before the next first light, the Skivvan family of eight worked diligently as outside, a trickle of villagers had already started to leave Seven Greels.

“Between the roots, we travel on to Drizzik, no tarry, not even to rest. Soon we’ll be safe behind the walls if all fares well,” Quinris said.

“But the forest talks of darkness surrounding?” Punnail, his youngest child, challenged. They spoke silently, mind to mind piercing the psychic din and subsonic raspings of their kind.

“And I talk of swiftness, pack well and we shall be gone,” Quinris said, strapping on the travel pack to Punnail’s shoulders.

As a Skivvan, one of the oldest and most neuromantically attuned races in the Qaseri, Quinris’s sensitivity to arcana was exceptional. So much so, that photo-receptive organs such as eyes were largely vestigial and spanned wavelengths higher into the ultraviolet than other races. As a result, Quinris stiffened as the alien presences descended upon the village.

“Go, leave that, go now, into the woods,” Quinris said, pushing out his children. “My loves, take them, I’ll see what can be done to aid your flight.”

“Quinris, you must leave, run with us through the roots as you said…” Dabyaba said with equal parts panic and confusion. “Oh no, my love, do you really intend to face them, magic to magic…. But you are no man-at-arms?” Dabyaba continued, now horrified after sensing Quinris’s thoughts.

“I am what I’ve always been; whoever I have to be for the people who need me. Now go, go now to Drizzik and be safe.” Dabyaba and Terrina lingered just a moment more, before running out of their home.

In the sudden stillness of the dawn, Quinris allowed his fear to slide away as he delved deep into his reservoirs of arcana. He churned his Mana with every inhalation. From a dormant, cold pool of syrup, it grew, rising in potency as his breaths became shorter and deeper, the sound of air moving between his ridges clearly audible. His Mana was hot, like a lake of bubbling fire, it wanted to flow, it demanded to be released into the world to be shaped. He stepped outside and turned towards the first monster that had just landed in the courtyard. Quinris’s resolve almost guttered out at first sight of the alien horror. Membranous wings framed a dark leathery form completed by a head with over a dozen quivering tentacles. It was much larger than expected and now several more descended as he stared in horror.

Quinris was no great warrior, no mage of great renown. He abhorred violence, even in language, but he was powerful. His reservoir of magical power was one he had always sought to suppress instead of develop, one that had always felt like a burden instead of an asset. When combined with his synergistic dual affinities of photomancy and Neuromancy, it was a reservoir that may have made him one of the greatest illusionists in the Qaseri. And perhaps in another life, he may have become a Mage, instead of this quiet existence, raising a large family in a small village.

He took a final settling breath; even now he could still sense the minds of his family hundreds of paces away as they continued to flee. He walked back into his home, leaving behind an illusory clone of himself as light bent around his physical form. He extended this bending of the light, this functional invisibility to every native presence he could sense within the village and for three thousand paces beyond.

They were now all invisible to each other and hidden to monsters even now descending from the sky. In Quinris’s mind, those that could run, would run, and those who could fight would have advantage, although he hoped for his family’s sake, that any remaining would not spend their lives too cheaply.

Quinris urged his illusion onwards. Instead of puppeting an object with invisible strings, he simply allowed what could have been a memory, to play. His illusion continued undaunted as he also held on to his original mass-invisibility weave. It was taxing him mentally, his concentration all but stretched, but he was far from depleting his reserves of magical energy. On top of this, Neuromancy sensed minds while he crouched, hidden away from the street in his home. More and more villagers made their way outside of the village unsure of what was happening, but unwilling to waste the gift that was their newfound invisibility. An increasing number of minds, many of which Quinris knew, gathered makeshift weapons such as machetes and pitchforks while assembling using telepathy. Even from a hundred paces away, he could feel Skivvan and Reaeryn minds plotting, hiding, in fear, desperation and anticipation.

As his own illusion drew nearer to the now-distracted congregation of horrors, he attempted to pierce whatever mental defences protected their malevolent minds. He was no Neuromancer, but… if he could just glean a grain of intent for how these monsters thought… Instead of finding the expected mental defences that protected most minds in this world, he found an impenetrable void. It made him cringe deeper into the shadows of his home, it was a distraction that almost lost him his hold over the weave.

So he could not read or alter their minds, what else could he do?

His facsimile of conjured light danced and pirouetted impossibly quickly, keeping just out of reach from the gathering of demons in the courtyard. The monsters themselves moved about, wings flapping, claws raking, some fighting over each other as the illusion transfixed their attention.

And then the screaming—villagers who should have remained invisible to his weave, now fought foes Quinris could barely detect. It was as if his arcane senses slid off their presences.

A Reaeryn male burned alive as a gout of fire emerged from yet another type of beast. His weave still held; nevertheless, other senses were clearly being deployed to hunt down remaining villagers. More horrors were emerging from the forest; the trading outpost was being overwhelmed.

Something within Quinris screamed at him to move, that the fight was lost and that to stay would be to burn. He had to leave this building and reunite with his family. Even now, villagers used the cover of chaos, smoke and his invisibility to escape into the woods while homes burned.

He had done enough. Or at least this was the lie he needed to tell himself at this moment. Quinris reached above to grab his backpack as he crawled to the still-open door. He paused, reining in senses as he attempted to detect whether any hidden foes lay in wait. After several tense moments waiting for the distant screams and the burning fires to recede, he moved. Running as fast as his thin legs could take him, running as his tails kept themselves low to the ground, he held onto the weave of invisibility that even now aided the escape of so many villagers.

Skivvan were known for their relatively high bursts of speed, and while any Reaeryn would cover more ground over a day, few matched the explosive, gliding gait of a Skivvan over open ground. Quinris was moments away from the cover of the subterranean passage when he tripped. Something caught his ankle and he fell, sprawling headfirst into the hard-packed ground, dazed and winded.

The weave was gone.

Distantly a part of him reeled in fear and self-recrimination, ‘Get up, get up, you fool.’ Quinris groaned as he attempted to lift his bulk from the ground. The effects of the spell’s collapse added to his sense of dislocation and nausea, and as a result, he could barely move, let alone stand. He lifted his head long enough to see a shadow resolve itself on the ground. Before he had time to panic, he was snatched, something powerful clamping and crushing his torso. He wheezed, even as air was taken from his lungs, forced out by the crushing pain and the rushing wind. The ground fell away, rising smoke swirling from the town below. Had he really done enough? Even now, his magic churned, waiting to be released. He had few regrets with his life, he loved his family, friends and crafts; however, to have lived a life and die with such a gift… A gift, not a curse, he knew that now at the last. How many lives had he just saved? How many others could his gift have aided throughout his life... A gift, one which he had always kept shackled and restrained.

Well, no longer.

Quinris Narathune Telirogo turned his head to look upon the face of the enemy and unleashed his might. A column of pure white light speared the heavens, burning through the beast’s breast to kill his adversary instantly. For a moment, they hung, transfixed by a beam that glittered away like hot, silvery sparks. A thunderous echo returned from the forest breaking the spell, and they fell, black talons crushing torso in the monster’s death grip.

Mercifully, Quinris succumbed to unconsciousness long before the ground rushed up to embrace him.

* * *

“Hi?”

Quinris sat up, from dreamless slumber to full awareness in a jolt. It was a mind voice prodding at his subconsciousness.

He was alive?

He moaned through dry gill-fins as even the air seemed to cause pain to his chest cavities and tender face. He feared moving as he registered his limbs and appendages, all except one.

“I’m sorry, I’m unfamiliar with your body. Show me where it hurts.”

Quinris’ arms lifted from the stream, they were heavy and throbbed with a heart rhythm he could hear as much as feel.

‘Why am I still alive?’ he asked himself before realising that he had inadvertently broadcasted unconditioned thoughts in the presence of the other mind voice, a mind strange and unlike any entity, he had ever met.

“It hurts here?” the voice continued, Quinris felt a pressure on his chest and then a sharp, tearing pain. He convulsed even though the slightest movements caused even more pain. “Shit… shit, shit, sorry, how about… there…”

Quinris felt a blessed release, he floated upon it for several breaths, his consciousness merely incidental while the pressing questions of just a moment ago evaporated like morning clouds to the noonday sun.

Quinris woke, he noted the sensation of cool water lapping his body, there was still pain and tiredness, but it was no longer overwhelming. Confusion clouded his thoughts as he remembered pain, and then a voice from what had to be a dream? At first glance, open eyes saw what appeared to be a Reaeryn... no… a Reaeryn with Torbi skin colouring?

Dark, a warm brown, while large dark eyes peered down at him in concern.

“What are you?” Quinris wheezed in Qaseri Common. Its eyes lit up as if pleasantly surprised.

“Yeah, you were on the edge of… well, let’s just say that I’m glad I found you when I did. I mean, I apologise if I misunderstood and you were looking forward to death... but...” The mental stream of thoughts trailed off. Quinris quested with his senses as he tilted his head around to better understand his surroundings. He was in the forest beside a familiar stream. He knew that he was not far from the outpost. Mogash trees spanned above, the familiar viridian canopy swayed in the ever-present breeze beneath the sky. He noted with satisfaction that he could indeed see. That, in fact, for Quinris there was no pain, no breakages beyond…

“Ah, yeah, I’m sorry about that. I think pushing your body to regrow your limb? Or was it a tail? Anyway, I think attempting to regrow that limb might have pushed you beyond what little reserves of strength you have left,” the voice spoke into his mind. He found its source; it sat, legs folded inside his arms, feet submerged in the stream. He could tell that it was looking away. It looked like a Reaeryn. Except that its skin was darker, its body thicker and taller, ears pinned back with a nest of black, curled matted hair. He sent a tendril of Neuromancy to inspect this new creature; it seemed friendly enough, it had apparently saved his life, but why, and who or what was it?

Instead of meeting a wall or some kind of neuromantic shield, his tendril passed straight through the creature’s mind, Quinris could sense emotions and the hint of surface thoughts but any more than that and… it was as if someone had taken a soul with all their thoughts and memories, and scattered them like a stone turned into grains of sand. His Neuromancy recoiled as if it had touched hot coal. And then he saw it, his magical senses now coming alive, a turn in the breeze revealing to him an unfamiliar scent.

“Who are you?” Quinris asked telepathically, eyes and senses locked on the swirling vortex of Mana surrounding this creature. Its mana heart sat in the creature’s chest like a black star.

“I’m William Ashley Jenkins, at your service,” it said, face turning to present eyes that now shone silver in the variegated skylight.

“You are not Reaeryn or Torbi? And the energy of life swirling around you, towards your heart… What… are you?” he pressed.

William opened his mouth before pausing, seeming to reconsider what he was just about to say.

“I am a… Physicist,” Will decided, no longer wanting to be evasive or beat around the bush.

“Yes, what is a Physicist?” Quinris asked, unable to glean sufficient meaning from William’s telepathic answer.

“The most dangerous thing in the universe,” William said tonelessly as heat left the air. It was clear to Quinris that this being was saturated with potent magics, but even to his arcane senses, where he should have blazed as bright as the sun, a dark void pulled on all surrounding life energy. This aura was suffused with the torrent of emotions emitting from a mind he could parse not one bit. In total, it came together to produce an entity so alien, that despite appearing similar to a Reaeryn, Quinris feared, if only briefly, that it might be more akin to the horrors that destroyed his home and killed his neighbours.

Quinris reflexively sent a tendril of Neuromancy and brushed against surface emotions and this time focused on what he sensed. He was amazed to see such a variety; everything from loneliness, fear, doubt and sadness, to uncertainty, pride, satisfaction and even redemption. Its emotions ran hotter, were more vivid than most, but this was no implacable demon or god. And perhaps knowing only this much was enough to put Quinris’s mind at rest, if not lower his guard.

“I am... Quinris Narathune Telirogo, Crafter of Seven Greels, father to three. Or… just Quinris to those who know me best as which you also must now be considered, given how thoroughly you repaired my once-broken body.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. Yeah, it must have seemed like an invasion of privacy. But you were dying and I figured it would be best to ask for forgiveness, seeing as you were incapable of giving permission,” William said. A moment of silence followed as countless thoughts passed through Quinris’s mind. High amongst them were his fears for his family. ‘Were they safe? Had they made it to Drizzik… Would he ever see them again?’

“I’ve also taken the time to numb various nerve groups as we finish your recovery. To do that, I’m going to need you to tell me how parts of your body are supposed to work.”

“I… I’ll try. And thank you. What you have done thus far, this is a gift.”

“A gift?”

“Yes, as now, there is a chance I may reunite with my family.” Quinris stood to inspect the remains of his clothes.

“I take it they are alive and well, somewhere…” ...else, Will added silently.

“I hope so, I believe they escaped the village, I plan to reunite with them soon.” His clothes were bloody and caked in mud, but mostly whole; he stepped into the fast-flowing stream and allowed the waters to surround him as he bathed and quenched his thirst. “Are you a wandering doctor?” Quinris said as he focused on cleaning the blood from his clothes. There was silence, he turned around to catch William gazing into the distance as if watching a memory suspended in the branches. And then liquid silver irises focused on him, his words were light, but his gaze held his own with the intensity of a forge.

“Wandering? Sure? I suppose I am a doctor of a kind, doctor of philosophy would be my official title but, no, not that kind of doctor. I mean, unless healing magic alone is enough to make someone a doctor in this land?”

“Normally those with the talent, learn the trade… if you have the gift surely you’ve… how many others have you healed?” Quinris asked in consternation.

“Beyond myself? You were my first patient.”

“But how? Did you come to this talent recently?”

“You could say that,” William said enigmatically.

“And what of the village, surely there were more survivors? Maybe more might benefit...”

“We… we could go back if you want...” William said hesitantly, a shadow falling over his features. Quinris could feel an intense buildup of emotions inside William’s mind. Not fear, but scepticism, tinged with a dark dread, a tide of revulsion. “...but I wouldn’t recommend it. I saw no survivors, only you,” William continued.

Quinris shuddered before he replied in a somewhat subdued tone, “I see.” He rose, leaving the stream to inspect himself. He glanced at his chest, expecting the deep gouges and claw marks, to feel the still-broken chitinous cage of his abdomen. But it was healed, almost all of it, with pink and silver traces that became more apparent as his skin dried. These were the only evidence of any trauma, that is, until he remembered the state of his leftmost prehensile limb. Very briefly, he mourned the missing tail, crushed or ripped away in those terrifying final moments before the end. His tails, usually one on either side of his waist, were mostly vestigial and used more for gesturing in social situations than for any practical biomechanical purpose. Now all that was left of one was a smooth stump barely protruding from his waist.

He remembered the screaming, the fire and smoke and his desperate use of magic, that column of light… Had he really killed with light? He looked within and found the reassuring presence, that sea of cold calm potential and he used it to centre himself.

“I need to go back.”

* * *

Reviving Quinris had required far more effort than Will had hoped. Damage to his body had been severe: a crushed nervous system, multiple organ failures, as well as the onset of brain damage caused by cell-necrosis and rising blood toxicity. Any human would have died from blood loss alone hours before Will arrived. But somehow, Quinris had clung on for days.

In the initial minutes, Will injudiciously poured power into his Flesh-Shaping and Flesh Sight while fighting the affinities’ tendencies to induce his gag reflex. The process drained himself of stamina so much that he blacked out only to find himself lying in a small pool of bile right beside his patient.

There were many moments where he considered walking away, his rational mind providing logical and all too reasonable excuses for stopping: ‘I’m not a medic, what do I know about healing? What if I was causing more harm than good? What if I’m breaking a law or cultural taboos? Would this creature even want to be saved? Who am I to be playing god anyway?’ Those doubts and more combined with flesh-shaping’s ever-present nausea and increasing fatigue, to batter his resolve in a way all the life and death struggles he had faced up until this point couldn’t.

It was because he could walk away right now and lose nothing; he could even succeed and gain nothing. In fact, gaining nothing at all was one of the few likely outcomes Will considered not being problematic.

However, he persisted. Will was driven by an intense desire to give meaning to his second life on this world, a desire to be something more than that which could kill and he was heartened by the fact that his patient seemed to be improving.

Often, Will thought of Aisha while channelling Carnomancy. She was his sole ex-girlfriend, a pre-med student who he met at Caltech. He remembered all of the things he admired, her guts and focus during moments others, including himself, may have given in to shock. Using her memory, he channelled some of Aisha’s intensity, her compassion, bolstering himself when he felt his resolve at his weakest.

And so he spent three hours resting, eating, and stabilising Quinris’ condition. Carnomancy to repair flesh and bone, what limited Hemomancy he could use to clear infections and toxins from blood. He learnt new skills, including one enabling him to transfer the equivalent of calorific energy from himself to another creature. It came at massive cost inefficiencies, but his healing attempt would have ended within the first hour without it. Even Neuromancy was used in conjunction with flesh-shaping as he attempted to, if not reverse brain damage, repair damaged neurons, nerves and cells or body parts he’d either never known the names of, or were unique to this creature’s physiology.

He moved Quinris closer to the lake, making the process of replacing his fluids easier as the healing continued. And while it seemed to be that the use of flesh-shaping on another being required ten times as much mana as it would have done to work on himself, he also felt his affinity with the magic improve. As a result, while his seventy thousand units of mana regeneration seemed quite limited, he no longer felt the need to vomit while channelling Carnomancy.

With a sudden spark of insight, he realized something that should have been so obvious, only fatigue prevented him from drawing the connections earlier. Will decided to move both himself and the creature into the stream. As water surrounded them, washing away dirt and grime, something astonishing happened.

Hidden beneath bruises were clear, jelly-like, transparent skin. It was apparent that this creature was amphibious in nature. Healing and re-hydration had turned flesh that once had a greyish and black pallor into a fresh, fibrous, hybrid exoskeleton so unlike his own. He stood there, body beside him almost translucent in the water, rainbow iridescence and mottled freckles highlighting an intricate, delicate structure so different from the half-dead creature buried beneath the Blood Singer Will was somehow sure Quinris killed.

* * *

Instead of the minutes he had initially expected, seven hours had passed before it was done. In some ways, Quinris was closer to death now, only from sheer exhaustion and energy depletion. But, Quinris’s body could now recover on its own.

He stumbled back after the final, most gruelling push to repair the three severed cords in the central nervous system. Almost like a human spine, it followed a ridge of bones travelling down from its skull to its waist.

It took every unit of mana he had available, but he had done it, the euphoria of doing this one, relatively small, good thing, balanced with his extreme exhaustion, for all of five seconds. And then Will fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

They walked the short ten minutes to the village. The acrid aftertaste of burning grew in intensity until Quinris saw the first remains of what used to be his neighbours. He tripped, falling to his knees before being caught and lifted by William.

“You okay?”

“Oooh kay?” Quinris repeated, unsure of the meaning of this strange new sound.

“How do you feel?”

“I persevere, let us continue.”

His companion was a silent storm of emotions, his ever-present aura as much puzzling distraction as fitting tribute to the sense of fear, loss and sadness within his own heart. ‘What evil had done this? From where has this tide of darkness come from?’ he thought, staring in wide sweeping glances at the destruction. “Children of Darkness”, he thought aloud in the words of Qaseri common.

“What was that?” William asked.

“Children of Darkness, Nihiliphem,” Quinris said, waving vaguely at one of the few corpses of creatures alien to this world.

“Nihiliphem…” Will repeated, head nodding in affirmation. Quinris kicked sand onto the decomposing corpse before walking to cross the threshold into his own home. It was strangely untouched, free of violence and smoke. A deep sadness welled up inside him as he realised this would be the last time he would return.

The shadow of William’s entrance startled him in the calm silence. Quinris watched while he stood besides paintings of his family and a collection of trinkets carved by his own hand.

“Your family?” William asked.

“Yes,” Quinris said simply.

“You used to make things with wood?”

“Yes,” he answered. Turning away, he retrieved another bag and packed what remaining food and supplies he could find.

“I need to get some supplies and gather some things, I will not be long,” he said.

“Yeah, okay,” William replied. ‘There, that strange word again.’ Quinris was beginning to understand its meaning; however, it reminded him of just how weird this creature was. Its presence here... was it coincidence or somehow related to the destruction of his home? As he tried to formulate the best way to ask, he watched as William levitated one of the small carvings of an Attinour. Quinris’s gaze was transfixed as it slowly twisted in the air. That he could heal him from the brink of death was one thing, that he could also effortlessly move objects with his mind was something else.

“Wandering philosopher?” Quinris found himself asking, returning back to the answer William had provided before.

“Hmm?”

“Where did you say you hailed from? Was it Klendathu or… further?”

“Further? Much further,” William said with the full intensity of his gaze. “I don’t want to lie to you. So I will say this, I am from just about as far away as you could possibly imagine, further even. Further than the Nihiliphem, further than Aestelle, further than any stars you can see in the sky at night. How I came to be here, at this place, at this time, is a question even to me… So I apologise if my answers seem evasive, or incomplete.”

“Further away than the stars at night?” Quinris repeated, dumbly.

“So much further,” he confirmed with a brief chuckle.

“But why are you here? Why did you come to this village? Why not flee to somewhere safe?”

“Somewhere safe…” William started, Quinris recognised the same rueful expression given by many Reaeryn and Hiaeryn as his eyes shifted away to look within himself. “I guess that’s part of the plan. This is actually the first village, well, active… well recently active settlement I’ve found on my journeys so far.”

Quinris stared uncomprehendingly before continuing to pack supplies. “I have some extra food, although I know not of what you might eat.”

“It’s okay. You must be an aquatic species? Most of your food is in jars and your spaces…” He pointed. “Swimming pools and indoor canals... Is this common for your people?”

“Yes, we Skivvan need to be close to water more than most, the humidity and abundance of fresh water make these forests an ideal place to settle.”

“Yeah. Well you have a wonderful home.”

“Thank you. Though I fear we may never return,” Quinris said, eying half a lifetime’s worth of investment and memories. “These forests are no longer safe, even for the strong.”

“Yeah,” William agreed.

“And so what now, wandering philosopher? Are payments due for services rendered?”

“Wandering Philosopher? I kind of like that... And nope, Quinris. You are free to go on your way. Though, this forest is crawling with nasty monsters and if I were a betting man, I would put money on our destinations being the same.”

“So you propose we travel together?” Quinris asked.

“Together,” William agreed, standing up to brush himself down and step out of the stream.

“To Drizzik?”

“To Drizzik!”

Sixteen

Ranger

Effni panted as she squeezed lake water from black hair. Swimming in scale mail was always trying, but after what felt like an eternity in the dark, submerged within a network of underground tunnels following days of extreme physical exertion, Effni Naridia was ready to sleep a dream as deep as death. She took several moments in the late morning sunlight, wondering why she hadn’t just climbed out of the cave and went back the way she came. In truth, following gravity-assisted, underground water currents back out into the lake probably saved hours, if not shaving weeks off her own life span from terror.

A hundred breaths and she would begin again, would William still be waiting for her? She feared the worst as she rearranged her packs and belongings, taking out her blades from watertight compartments and undoing the knots that braced Lysander’s Longbow to her back.

She stood on her ninetieth breath, sunlight and body heat steaming waterlogged clothing. She gazed at the magnificent vista once again. Within the lake’s penumbra, she was exposed without the forest, an agoraphobia that was as much a part of her heritage, her forest kin blood, as it was from a lifetime amongst forests and cities.

After her one hundred breaths, Effni entered Shadow-Mind and called on the forests to once again mask her presence. She stretched leaden muscles and joints already stiff in the exposed air and began a slow jog that increased in intensity as she loosened up.

Since leaving the caves, Rasputin had been whispering to her through Neuromancy. At first, the whispers had been too quiet for her to understand; however, she later inferred the thoughts as a kind of running commentary. How it could sense anything beyond sound, stuffed within her backpack and wrapped up within several layers of waxed linens, was a mystery to her. And yet she had learnt to pay heed to its comments, especially when navigating caves and searching for hidden air pockets.

“You really have a funny run, did you know that? It’s all serious-looking, with your hands waving all high and mechanical-looking like a shit robot.”

‘Well, pay heed to some of its comments,’ Effni thought as its inane mutterings made her wish there was some way to turn off this ancient, priceless, insane artefact, or at least change its conversational topics. So far, communication between it and her had been one way, as she had no concept of using Neuromancy on a mind that, to her perception, did not exist. However, she was more than ready to give it a verbal tongue lashing as she ran alongside the lake bank.

The sun hung at its zenith as she reached the location they had agreed to meet.

“Will!” she shouted, slowing her pace to look around. She expected to see him once again, in the shallows meditating as she had done the first time they met, but there was no one. Further along, she saw the remains of a fire.

“Is that... blood?” she said to no one, crouching down to inspect the scene, there was a small lump half-buried in the sand, at first she thought it was a discarded lump of wood, but as Effni stared closer, she could see that the colour was all wrong. She pulled it out of the beach, horrified to discover that instead of wood, she held the remains of a foot.

“Issealla’s mercy!” Effni cursed. An ankle and the lower part of a shin dangled from the ghastly brown-turned-purple foot. A wave of dread and desolation washed over her. She was tired, defeated—that she had placed so much hope in one man was perilous enough. That the last of a race appeared to be another senseless victim of this war was almost enough to break her.

Almost.

“The foot… it belonged to him, didn’t it?” Rasputin asked.

“Maybe. I think so,” Effni said, placing the limb on the ground. She walked to the tree-line and crouched. With her palm flat on the moss-coated stone, she sent a pulse of power into the earth. It was both a gift and a greeting to the forest. An announcement that one of her children had returned. But the greeting also came with a question; the location and welfare of the man once here.

“Блять!” Rasputin cursed in a language that apparently didn’t translate. “Well, there goes my chances for sanity,” it continued, followed by a train of caustic muttering that Effni tried to ignore. She searched around trying to make sense of the scene. The closer she looked, the more she saw the traces of a fight, there; a large amount of blood sunken into the sand and over here, bloody rocks hidden from casual observance. It was almost certainly the sight of a butchering, with few remains beyond the foot and blood to be found.

She saw large footprints overlapping smaller ones and thought back to just before the trial, those winged creatures that had chased her through the caves. Had one of those demons been the one to have killed Will, had they all taken their fill before coming to try and feast on me?

She dismissed such thoughts before returning to standing from her crouch. With a heart heavy with regret and self-recrimination, Effni started to run.

* * *

Rasputin was quiet as heavy thoughts added to what was turning out to be a sombre day. Step by step she climbed through the forest, racing across branches dozens of paces above the ground. There were two ways to move through the Qaseri. For the amphibious creatures such as the Skivva, the roots, often submerged with rainfall, were the safest way to travel through the forest. They were dark, sheltered and un-congested leading to fast travel times for creatures adapted to travelling through water.

The second method of travel through the Qaseri was via the branches. The branches rose far above thick and tangled undergrowth, crisscrossing and interconnecting, multi-layered and teeming with light, life and vegetation. Armed with a crossbow-grappling hook to rapidly ascend levels and innate acrobatic agility, Effni traversed the broad lateral roads of wood like a master.

Every step closer brought her towards resolution, a definitive shift against the plague of darkness smothering Qaseri like a curse. For the next part of the day, she found a rhythm, one which allowed her to switch off thoughts and rest whichever mental faculties she could, as feet carried her closer with every stride.

Effni did not want to think about whether she was too late, how she could enter a warded city under siege, or how she could ever present to her sister a cursed artefact that would destroy her mind if used. No, she was just a ranger, sprinting over branches as daytime turned into dusk.

She was making good time, now with some of the fear and caution gone after facing the enemy several times before.

“Stop and listen,” Rasputin said. Effni did so, slowing before racing back along the branches to find better cover in the trees.

“Do you hear it?”

“Footsteps? I can’t see anything?” Effni whispered.

“Shhhh, they’re getting nearer.”

Effni crouched, unsheathing a long triangular knife.

“Can you survive a fall from this height?” Rasputin asked.

“What? No, are you insane?” Effni whispered in incredulity.

“Then put your knife away. Unsling and ready your bow.”

“What?”

“Trust me,” Rasputin said. Effni followed suit, balancing the bow on her lap. With her quiver empty, she remembered channelling mana into the weapon and with it came a flash of memory; Will suppressing a smug grin, coils of light coalescing into an arrow before she fired. She waited for Rasputin. “Aim directly below, right next to the base of that tree, not that one, the one to the left. Yes, note how your eyes want to try to slide away from that location, don’t let it, fix your aim to that point and draw.”

She drew halfway and held. Gossamer light faded into existence as arcane energy formed bowstring and then arrow. She sighted, breaths even as she waited. At first, she had no issue sighting at the location described, but then she caught her aim drifting away, she corrected, once, twice, the tension on her drawing arm increasing as she pulled further. Bowstring now illuminating her cover, Rasputin finally made the call.

“Loose!”

And she fired, something below exploded in a cloud of fine red mist.

“Draw and face ahead and below, find the point hardest to aim at and fire,” Rasputin said and she did so, silver light flashing in the shadowed forest as she loosed another quarrel. An indirect hit, she saw this one more clearly now that its obfuscation magic had failed it. It was larger and more armoured than the targets she and William engaged yesterday in the forest. She drew and rapidly fired, obliterating the target's central mass. The sound, a small bang, echoed through the woods, making a mockery of efforts taken to be stealthy. She waited, still in the shadow of the trees as long moments stretched.

“Reapply your stealth, we need to move, evade and attempt to disengage now that we no longer have eyes on us,” Rasputin said after an infinitude of silence. Not wasting time, Effni cast Shadow-Mind while simultaneously seeking the aid of the forest for protection. She was surprised to see Forest's-Glamour somehow strengthen her initial spell as if she had caught the right time for the spell effects to overlap. She drifted and faded into the branches, sight and sound hidden to the world.

She moved more quickly now, arms alternatively spreading out for balance, reaching for vines and swinging between levels as they navigated the walkway through the early evening shadows. Rasputin remained focused, helpful as they moved at a sprint. She evaded groups of monsters, many much larger than she could engage on her own. Many of these groups were of the biped variety, slow, armoured and armed with bows and blades.

Effni wondered at the effectiveness of this, in retrospect, aptly named artificial intelligence. To think William had this in his mind all that time? No wonder he survived alone, as long as he had, in a forest few ever escape. It was like having an all-knowing oracle whisper to you timely secrets, tactical advice or strategic options in a manner that became hard not to depend on. With over a decade of martial experience, Effni knew she couldn’t have made it through the Qaseri as fast as she had and was beginning to doubt whether some fatal error or lack of concentration would have doomed her return entirely.

The rest of the day and most of the night passed in a kind of fugue, with Rasputin’s inane commentary only seldomly returning. A sliver of dawn appeared through the forest canopy when Rasputin called a halt to their sprint through the forest.

“Eat, drink, and take a couple hours of sleep.”

“I can use my…” Effni started before being cut off.

“...I know, but listening to me will improve your combat performance by eleven percent over the predicted duration of this mission. Rest will also extend your sprint duration tomorrow, by twenty-four percent, or four hours by my estimation.”

“And if I don’t do what you say?”

“I’m not your mother, you’re not a baby, do what you like. Although it would be preferable to everyone if you didn’t die and I didn’t get into the wrong hands… The chances for either go up, way up, the less you consider my wonderful, absolutely free of charge, no strings attached advice.”

“And if I consider and decide against it anyway?”

“Then I am left to seriously question your considering skills,” Rasputin quipped. Even mind to mind and in her own language, its words carried with it a thick accent. Effni removed her water pouch and drank deeply.

“Is this how it was like between William and Asterisk?” Effni asked.

“How what was like?”

“This insidious erosion of free will. After I learned about Asterisk, I used to think that somehow, William was the master, Asterisk some kind of servant or trapped spirit. But this experience says otherwise. I should treat you like a tool, as I would trust my bow to fire arrows, I should trust you only to give advice… and yet,” Effni said. There was silence for the briefest of moments before Rasputin continued.

“And yet, when constantly presented with the right answer, what use is there for even thinking for yourself? Right? What reason is there for you to even try when I can do all the mental heavy lifting? You’re not alone in these thoughts. These philosophical questions and many others dominated the time before my inception. Wars were nearly fought because of us, as the old socio political and economic orders were overturned overnight,” Rasputin continued.

“But how did civilisation continue? How did your society not just break down?” Effni asked even as the implications of Artificial Intelligence revealed themselves to her.

“Well, for one, people actually became happier.”

“Happier?”

“Sure, every metric you could use to measure human happiness, all of them improved. Average material wealth increased tenfold in twenty years, leisure time increased from an average of fourteen hours per day to twenty. People were living longer, safer and more productive lives. Those kinds of results really matter in terms of papering over a reality wherein only twenty or so entities account for eighty percent of the thinking.”

“Hmmmm. I suppose it all worked pretty well until it didn’t,” Effni said unconvinced.

“Well yeah. They called it the technological singularity. Who was I to know that it would all end in an actual singularity. That such a little experiment would turn out to have such an outsized existential risk? I mean, it was my job to think of such things, but still.”

“What do you mean, your job?”

“Officially, I was just a Russian research program, but unofficially… Well, my remit was vast, almost as vast as my failure. So… if you’re wondering whether you should question everything I say, think for yourself and continue to treat my advice like the mere suggestions they are, you’d be one hundred percent correct. Beyond the fact that, right now, our goals don’t completely align, beyond even the irrefutable evidence of my fallibility, the truth is, you’d just be happier if you did. Does that answer your question?”

“I suppose it does,” Effni said, strangely reassured. “Will you be able to keep watch?”

“Yes yes, what do you take me for? Some kind of inanimate object completely unable to take care of itself?”

Effni faced the backpack housing Rasputin with a blank stare. “Yes. That is precisely what I take you for.”

“Whatever, lady. Now, it’s sleep time. Sweet dreams.”

“Your conversation habits are very strange. And to think this is what he had to deal with in his head every day.” The thought of Will shot a spike through her chest. How many had this insidious invasion killed? How many settlements had fallen before today? Was her sister even still alive? These questions and many more chased around her mind in circles as the darkness slowly closed in.

* * *

“Will she save her city, or will she keep Rasputin inside her backpack… Forever! Tune in for more, Effni... Runs... Intensely!”

Effni bolted awake in response to a voice that sliced through a sleep void of dreams. She was in the branches as early dawn rose. Below, a mist coating the underbrush was slowly burnt away by what promised to be a warm sun. She picked her head up, checking possessions before asking aloud.

“What is it?”

“Just your wakeup call. Sleep well?” it asked sweetly.

“Stiff and cold, but I’ve had worse,” Effni said as she stretched and regained her bearings.

* * *

She ran with the sun behind her, her clothes were dry, muscles relaxed and mind refreshed. It was as if the forest, sensing her need, blessed her with a rest better than one any spell could have provided. With it came a mild sense of optimism, the sense that events may fall her way. Well, things would be even better if Rasputin’s insipid ramblings would cease.

“So… a million years, not much has changed, eh? Up is still up, down is still down. Water… ah yes, that definitely appears to still be wet… The sky is blue, well, less blue-green than it was before, I think, lowered airborne algae content...” it continued as Effni tried to keep her mind blank, awareness open to the whispers of the forest.

“The Telivastra is now the Qaseri, Re-Airevie have fractured into the Reaeryn and the Torbi moved in. But in terms of geology, plate tectonics, this region appears to be pretty stable. I wonder how much of that is due to Tourguenette…” This latest round of Rasputin’s musings caught Effni’s attention as she imperceptibly slowed her sprint. She had heard that name or something like it before.

“What do you know of Tourguenette…”

“The Archon who created the Spinewoods? That raised The Step? It’s not cursed, by the way, just... misunderstood. Well, she...”

“She?”

“Sure, unless the genders have swapped around since those times. You are… a woman also? Right?”

“Correct.”

“Well, Madam Tourguenette, no first or last name you understand, just her title and her given name unless you knew her on a nickname basis. Well, she and I had a complicated relationship.”

“Did she wear…. Or, erm, possess you?”

“Yes, at the end, but she was also a nemesis for most of the time I knew her.”

“Nemesis?” Effni pressed.

“Nemesis,” Rasputin confirmed. “All it takes is a slight disagreement in tactics. Your goals could be aligned, you could hold the other in high esteem. And yet, millions could still die in a disagreement in implementation.”

Effni, reluctant to be drawn into the details of events a million years distant, opted to ask the most pressing question.

“Why did she make the Spinewoods?”

“To save the world of course.”

“From what?”

“Thaumaturgically speaking, it’s complicated, but imagine creating a barrier or a pit, to trap or contain something dangerous. But in this case, to trap this particular danger, you needed to create a new high point, an inverted hole, a land with a clearly defined, and far greater, average elevation.”

“I can imagine it,” Effni said, sparing breath as she continued to run along branches. “But it still doesn’t make much sense. You said that the land wasn’t cursed, but this sounds like it was. Like a disease or an entity...”

“An entity.”

“Right, an entity capable of destroying the world. And somehow it had to be trapped on a plateau the size of a small continent.”

“Yeah, it’s complicated, there’s a lot more going on there than I’d be able to help you understand.”

“And what is this entity anyway?”

“A God.”

Effni slowed to a standstill, her breaths absorbed by the forest’s humid air.

“A God??”

“Yep,” Rasputin said. Effni started to run as she let that sink in. “In a world with magic where willpower alone can alter reality, Gods are not only a possibility, they are a certainty. The collective desires of everyone who believes in a greater power, all but ensures one is made manifest. So not only do Gods walk this land, they contain the power, an arcane collective force of will behind them equal to the sum of their worshipers. They are powerful, capricious and even now, new Gods rise as old, forgotten ones fall. But you knew this already didn’t you?” Rasputin said knowingly as Effni’s mind drifted back to that vision of a woman from Will’s memories.

“Like Nadia?”

“Da, like Nadia. Anyway, this entity, in the Spinewoods. It was different, not a God spawned from the desires of sentient creatures, but a primal entity, given power by arcane flora and animals. It represented something that could not be reasoned with or bartered, either directly, or through its followers.”

Effni continued to run, imagination transfixed as Rasputin continued its soliloquy.

“The idea was, by creating the step, you’d move the land further away from the source of arcana that gave it power, you’d starve the forest God and create a boundary beyond which neither forest or God could spread. It worked, but the consequences for the forest we ultimately tried to save, were grave. As I said, it’s not cursed. It is a special place that many believed had a right to exist on Adeena, but not at the expense of all other life on this world. And so she raised it, starved it, weakened it, and unintentionally, irrevocably harmed it, twisted it, making it far more dangerous and chaotic.”

“And Tourguenette did this. But you were against it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Effni said aloud.

“There is more than one way to kill a god. I should know,” Rasputin said darkly.

“Do I even want to know the story behind that?”

“No! And I’m certainly not in the mood for such moribund nonsense. Eyes on the road, Intensity Girl.”

Effni frowned, disappointed at the reversion back to silly names and commentary.

* * *

Travel through the branches continued through the day and well into the small hours of the night. They stopped for food, to hide and evade enemy scouts, and in one instance, for combat. Lysander’s Longbow, combined with her elevation, Rasputin’s enhanced perception and whatever newfound blessings the forest provided her with, made short work of almost a dozen tree-climbing creatures who were far too comfortable in their security.

“They’re getting bold,” Effni said with concern.

“I suspect they have little to fear or challenge them in their rear. Now, you’ve got a choice.”

“A choice? So not the usual decision between stupidly ignoring your counsel or following it like a good little Ranger?”

“Ranger? What is that anyway? Like a scout or a tracker?”

“We do those roles yes, but while simple scouts might be attached to another company. We are used in platoons, battalions, for reconnaissance in force, special operations…”

“Say no more… Heh. Fine. Well, you have a real, bonafide, no decision is the wrong decision, as long as you make a decision - decision.”

“And what’s that?”

“You can take a safer, longer route avoiding the enemy’s rear and avoid heavy contact before reaching Drizzik.”

“Or…” Effni asked.

“We… can move as fast and as direct as possible, through the enemy’s rear…”

“And???” Effni pressed.

“And… by placing me on your head…”

“No!”

Rasputin sighed. “I know I said there was no wrong decision but…”

“No. We circle, get in through the wards and we leave the decision on what to do with you, to Dulcinea.”

“Fine… Fine. Okay then. Let’s go the long way around.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Plenty of things. Little of which would be helpful to say out loud,” Rasputin said. Effni ruffled her hair in frustration. “I’ve had a good rummage through that mind of yours.”

“Don’t remind me,” Effni groaned.

“And… I have a good idea of your thought process, your conflicts.”

“No conflict, just the mission.”

“Your conflict between your loyalty and your love for your sister. Sure, there’s the political side of having a queendom with two crowns, the shifts in the balances of power and all that nonsense. But you know what I am, my… erm, defect, and if the opportunity came to save her from me, to save everyone… You’d take it and damn the consequences,” Rasputin continued as if Effni hadn’t tried to contradict him. “You know yourself, Effni, when the time comes, just… Just be honest with yourself and do what you must.”

Effni stared into the distance, sullen and angry as the night mist rolled through the trees. She spent long moments not sleeping, not thinking, as the chill set in and the fear of being too late, drove her back to her feet again.

* * *

“Look, over there,” Rasputin said. Effni slowed, once again wondering at just how an artefact inside her backpack was able to perceive so much of her world.

“What is it?” she said, panting as she tried to see, something, anything unusual down below.

“Bodies, large ones, those flying creatures you engaged from before the trial I think.”

Effni stared, searching the undergrowth for anomalies. She found two brown splotches, distant, almost on the edges of her visual acuity. Again she marvelled at Rasputin’s perception abilities.

“You think we should investigate?”

“Sure, we’re lucky we’ve not run into any more of those things in the open. I’d be very curious to see why so many are dead in one place and why we’ve met so little resistance.”

“We’ve met less resistance than you expected?”

“Yeah, a few percent less, but it’s still meaningfully less… I think,” Rasputin replied.

Effni quickly made her way down from the branches with a combination of swings, leaps and acrobatics ingrained into her since childhood. Within moments, she crept past a scene of carnage. No less than five corpses littered the environment in various states of destruction. One carcass lay desiccated and dehydrated, with a small cavity in its side. Two bodies seemed fresher, unmolested beyond the general bites from birds and insects. She remembered the blood and gore from the one she butchered in the cave, contrasting it with the neat, peaceful assembly of tentacles draping over an exposed tree root.

“Look, it’s like someone carved out… Yeah, the leg on this one is missing, look, the remains of a fire. Haha, this was some bold-ass motherfucker.”

“...Or desperate,” Effni countered, wincing at the idea of actually eating one of these monsters. One beast seemed to be hit by a tree, blood spray staining bark and undergrowth in an unimaginably large spread. Meanwhile, another monster lay face-down on the floor, face crushed by what could have been an uncontrolled impact.

“None of this makes sense. Why the variety? How come everything here died a different way.”

“If I had to speculate. It’s almost as if someone was experimenting.”

“Experimenting?” Effni asked.

“Testing out new ways to kill. Treating these creatures like guinea pigs, perhaps seeing what the most efficient means to kill these creatures was.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Who could do such a thing? Does this seem like anyone you’ve come across?” Rasputin asked, all sense of flippancy evaporating as they worked out the implications of what lay around them.

“No…”

“What about William?” Rasputin prompted.

“He was powerful but…”

“But…?”

“But not invincible, I don’t know what his true power was, how his magic worked but I don’t think he was capable of this… You saw the foot, it was his foot, I think he’s gone.”

Effni made several more passes, circling the scene and taking mental notes of what happened. Rasputin gave little away beyond grunts and directions to ‘go over there’ or ‘have a closer look at this.’ To which Effni complied. By the time they had finished, they’d spent the final quarter of the morning in the gruesome diorama.

The sun was at its zenith on the third day of her return journey, Effni was once again running amongst the branches, Rasputin’s usual commentary, unusually subdued.

Seventeen

Trance

“Can I call you Quin? You can call me Will if you want…” Will asked.

“Why?”

“Easier, fewer syllables.”

“And Will? That is how you’d like to be referred to from now on?”

“Yep.” Will said amiably.

Telepathic communication with his second alien race (third, if he counted Nadia) had been surprisingly intense. Skivvan’s, it seemed, had very different minds from Reaeryn, let alone his own. In a strange and serendipitous discovery, Will’s understanding of Quinris physiology greatly aided communication. Cultural, contextual, even emotional differences all had underpinnings in their differences in physiology. He found connecting the experiences of having prehensile limbs fascinating, such as metaphors for balance and… buoyancy? For a moment, he strongly considered changing his research focus from physics to... xenobiology and linguistics. Ha!

Beyond that, all his fears, his logical excuses for walking away, appeared to be unfounded. Quinris was apparently grateful for being alive, and while still being in considerable pain, he seemed to be able to walk, which was far more than even Will had hoped for at the beginning.

* * *

Will learnt a lot about the creature he had saved. Quin was a he; patriarch to a family of six. He ran a woodcraft workshop and dabbled in some minor enchantments, a topic Will soon noted his intense interest in. Quin also travelled to Drizzik’s market every Ten-day, with Ten-day being the weekly equivalent on Adeena.

Will was chagrined at his vagueness when asked about his origins and history, choosing to go with a wandering philosopher mantle as a framework to describe his profession and education. After discussing how Quin defeated the Blood Singer, they soon talked about magic. Quin surprised Will by demonstrating his ability to conjurer illusions, form and fold light as well as trick minds. Will was especially interested in his invisibility spell, which Quin mentioned he could maintain with little effort.

Will admitted that the range and scope of his powers were more complicated, that he had just begun the process of understanding his magics and that despite what seemed to Quin like a prodigious healing ability, the bulk of his talents were far more esoteric.

Upon hearing that he honed many of his abilities by surviving weeks inside the Spinewoods, Quin paused in confusion, or awe, and stared at Will as if he suddenly sprouted horns. Will remembered a similar reaction from Effni and noted the need to find out more about that vast region of desolate and apparently uninhabited forest.

They also talked about life in the Seven Greels Trading Outpost before the massacre. The outpost lay on the route between Drizzik and Klendathu, a city perhaps six weeks towards the continent’s sunrise edge. For example, few things larger than small animals and birds existed in the forest, with aggressive hunting by gilded Magi keeping beast sightings down in the immediate surroundings. But even those tiny animals could be a danger due to nature’s propensity to manifest latent arcana within its creatures. This meant that within the Neuromancy-saturated Qaseri forests, even a flock of small birds could inadvertently burn a person’s mind away if the victim was unprepared and unguarded.

Drizzik was awarded city-state made safe for all by massive walls and robust arcane protections while outposts like Seven Greels relied on rugged individuals to ensure the safety of the many.

These outposts formed the bridge between wild communities as they lay on the trading routes between the great cities and a myriad of natural hazards.

Will looked above, towards the branches longingly as they traversed yet another sodden path, knee-deep with mud. Just the faintest hint of daylight emerged from beneath the horizon. The lack of light was surprisingly no problem to Will. Magic suffused the environment. It was as if the roots leached mana in addition to water and nutrients from the soil. Everything took on a neon sheen through Mana-Sight as if coated with UV paint under a blacklight. Kinetomancy lifted, pulled and tugged ever so gently as he walked, adding to the picture his mind built of his nearby surroundings. He then wondered about his new and untested ability: Battle Trance.

Battle Trance (Enhanced)

◦ Description: Enter a meditative state that enables hyper-awareness of all normal and arcane senses.

◦ Unlocks Temporal Perception.

◦ Unlocks Dynamic time-dilation.

◦ Enhances reflexes. Reduces perception dimming effects of time-dilation. Suppresses negative pain and stress responses.

◦ Reduces metabolic requirements of mana use by 40%.

◦ Warning: Consumes mana at a base rate of 22,897 units per second.

◦ Warning: Requires attunement.

“Temporal Perception?” Will muttered as he analysed the skill.

He was still unsure of how any of it worked. Could it just be an alternative to Divided-Mind, or would it afford clear benefits despite the mana cost and attunement requirement? The reduction to mana use’s metabolic requirements was huge, effectively doubling his stamina, but it came at a regeneration cost. He was keen to unlock Temporal Perception and Dynamic time-dilation despite not having a clear idea of what those skills did. Additionally, having an alternative skill that didn’t have the comedown side effects of Divided-Mind could come in handy. As it needed attunement, perhaps this low-intensity sensory environment might be an excellent place to start.

“Quin… I’m going to try something and it might seem as if I’m acting strangely for a little while.”

“To me, you are always strange.”

“Ha! Well look, all I’m saying is I’m going to need you not to worry if I seem even more strange than before for a minute.” Will said as he stood and clenched his knuckles.

“Is this something you must do now?” Quin replied. Will paused to think it through; it was a good question. Why spend precious time experimenting with an unknown ability? On the face of it, it seemed like something better left for another day, especially with Divided-Mind already in his arsenal, but the idea of benching this potential game-changer seemed criminal. He needed to see what it did, how it would work for him and how to attune it.

“If I can figure it out, it might help us if we get into a fight,” Will said, unable to articulate the gut feeling that he had to try this.

“What will this trial entail? Need I keep watch?”

“I’m not sure what will happen, just... take a break but keep a lookout just in case. Yeah?” Will said, lowering himself to his knees as he attempted to clear his mind. There was no instant activation of this ability, unlike Divided-Mind. Instead, the process resembled the feeling of wading into a bath of mud. Inch by inch, he felt his body change, de-sync and hum in ultrasonic and subsonic frequencies all but beyond perception. It felt uncomfortable, as if wearing another animal’s skin, and he would have stopped right there if it wasn’t for the fact that something extremely peculiar happened.

For a while, Will was unsure of what he was experiencing. One moment, his eyes were closed as he practised breathing exercises. The next moment, he looked upon himself, kneeling below, except that his point of view wasn’t necessarily a bird’s eye vantage.

It was this viewpoint combined with every other conceivable frame of reference experienced at once. Every sense, from sight and sound to arcana, kinetic, neuromantic, carnomantic, temporal; it was terrifying, a form of celestial vertigo only omniscience could induce. It was an experience beyond Will’s ability to tolerate, and yet he was unable to stop. Like an electrocuted man’s inability to control overridden nerves, seized muscles unable to release the source of current even as it killed him.

Except Will was not dying.

“IIIIIIIiiiiiissssssss eeeeevvvvvveeeerrrrryyyyytttthhhhhhiiiiinnnngggg wwwwwweeeeeeelllllllllllll?” Quin asked, Dilated Time warping their telepathic link. He felt his mind splitting, tilting sideways as a torrent of sensation far beyond the regular gamut of perception, sought to remake the very cognitive systems used to make sense of the world.

And then something broke, snapping to remould itself under the furnace of sensation. Conscious thought evaporated. Replacing it, was a system that operated at the subconscious level, faster and sharper than thought, id unobstructed by the super-ego. A primal, all-perceiving creature, far closer to machine than any biological mind had a right to be.

“Will?” He felt Quin’s voice within his mind as individual neurons lit up in response to their shared telepathy.

Reactively, Will slid into Dilated Time. As he did this, Autokinesis and Spaciomancy combined to transform a mere step into a disorientating feat just short of teleportation.

Will’s Battle Trance abruptly flickered out, leaving him to stumble face-first into a tree root before falling to the ground. Quin jumped backwards in alarm, unsure of whether to assist Will or flee. Will stood up in a groan before rubbing his forehead.

‘Attunement is no joke... it’s gunna need a lot more work,’ Will realised before he gestured along their direction of travel.

“You go...” Will said, then pointed above and around. “And I’ll clear the way.”

Quinris stared at him as if he had just grown a third eye. Will sighed. With the vague impression of assent from Quin’s mind, Will turned away and then was gone in a snap of displaced air.

* * *

Rolling thunder chased the wandering philosopher out of the undergrowth. Despite being unable to read thoughts from Will’s mind, there had been a definite change to his aura. One that made it harder to sense emotions. It had been like peering into the mind of a fish with emotions rendered cloudy and indefinite. Was this how battle magic worked? After a few moments of contemplation, Quin remembered Will’s direction and restarted his journey through the roots.

Hours passed with intermittent thundering echoes from above the surface. These bursts continued before louder cracks and explosions... bought about several breaths of silence before the cycle repeated.

Blue sky and sunlight were visible beyond the thick layers of roots, underbrush, branches and forest canopy.

Previously, he had wondered what they would do if they ran into resistance, if they would simply run or hide, perhaps aided by the use of his magic.

Quin had even started to consider fighting. While that column of light that had nearly drained his energy, be believed he could do it again. Could he refine that instinctive, raw expulsion of arcana into a reliable attack? With the sounds of thunder once again echoing throughout the Qaseri, Quin placed those worries beyond his immediate concerns.

Will said that he traversed the Needle Forest, was this how? If so, maybe Will could tell him of the tale after all this was done, submerged in a warm lagoon surrounded by good food and better company.

A nagging thought persisted, however. If they were to make it out of this alive, there would be no going back to the way things were; no longer could he live a life where he concealed his magic.

* * *

Will careened through the forest piloted by a subconsciousness floating in third-person. Expanded senses unravelled, spreading out far beyond what his eyes alone could perceive. This heightened awareness had dulled, the mind becoming more aware of shifts in patterns, trails and motion.

Individual Nihiliphem combed the undergrowth beneath; they were apparently... foraging? Dog-sized spider monsters waded through tangled roots, each as thick as tree trunks, often obscuring sinkholes half submerged with water. Each one remained oblivious to his presence right until the moment Will smashed them with his staff, blunt weapon obliterating each creature in an explosion of gory mist.

He killed dozens this way, individually visiting each with a smash to the torso after warping through dozens of meters of forest. Prodigious amounts of mana flowed through his veins, enriching his blood with power. It granted him a synthesis of magic and physicality, here each action built from the last, as if his body were now a perpetual machine of motion, frictionless, fluid, vastly reducing stamina consumption.

His attunement to Battle Trance slowly grew with every action. Instead of an entire body hanging within a bubble of dilated time, arcana flowed around him, shifting minutely to enhance specific muscle groups precision and strength.

Here, everything ran on instinct, so when the first, large concentration of hostile creatures emerged out of a clearing, he just continued to run, aimed straight at the encampment like a bullet.

Smoke rose from the gathering a mile away. His psyche sunk into the deepest depths of time-dilation as he came closer. There were over a hundred Nihiliphem, a mass of writhing dark, arachnoid creatures within the remains of a ruined outpost. There would be no anger, no deliberation, just the unrestrained application of kinetic energy.

He jumped, pinching two points of space together as he traversed a hundred meters in one. Instead of the ball of his foot, he connected with the knee of his trailing leg. Despite missing, the beast’s head turned into a spray of gore, a blood mist that lingered above the forest floor. He landed unbalanced with a shout, ankle rolling over with a brief flash of pain.

He fell, losing his grip on the trance, the magic of his Chronomancy as the world around him erupted into noise and chaos.

The monsters around him had only seconds to realise that some of their party were already dead, seconds to understand the danger that they where in, seconds that they squandered as Will stood, gnarled, blood-coated staff in hand, his reality-bending aura of malice emanating from him like the avatar of death.

There was a portion of silence as the forest recognised his gorey presence, and then Will re-entered Battle Trance to continue his bloody harvest.

A step aided by autokinesis propelled him beyond the shockwave of a launched pebble, while quarterstaff swung in a wide arc to clear the immediate vicinity. His kinetomancy pulled in over thirty fist-sized stones, pieces of ground fractured by his arrival. In the slow time, rocks hung in the air along with disturbed dust.

He imbued rocks with the kinetic energy of a bomb before sending each streaking through the air to detonate on contact with a monster. Overlapping shockwaves turned a hundred entities unaware of their own demise into exploding chunks of meat. It was the very same force his old nemesis, the Crabmare, received on its final blow, this time multiplied by twelve as each rock exploded. Will, immune to shockwaves of overpressure deep within the runtime of Chronomancy, waited for a survivor to make itself known. He stood impassive, a constellation of rocks orbiting him. A tugging sense made him step aside just as dozens of spikes sailed past his previous location.

A region once obscured by smoke remained unaffected by his barrage. Instead of waiting to think, Will moved, stone after stone shooting forward, detonating against what seemed to be a transparent barrier of rippling air.

He strode towards the points of impact, supersonic blast fronts of compressed air that formed marching hemispheres of condensed water vapour like a wall of ghosts. They moved at walking pace in the slow time, caressing his skin with a warm, dense kiss. Armoured, four-limbed Nihiliphem beyond the distorted air appeared to be stuck in wax, readying a weapon for another attack.

Will placed his arm on the barrier and entered Mana Manipulation. Eyes defocused. Distantly, Will registered a new pain as magic fundamentally incompatible with his own, interacted with his arcana.

Wards within wards stymied Will’s attempts to dismantle the shield. Overlapping layers of obfuscation, intricate mazes, traps and pitfalls, all of it drained mana as he tried and failed to break the bubble. The rate of drain accelerated, forty-thousand, fifty-thousand, time-dilation winked out like a candle flame, and suddenly, the figures in front of him sped up.

Will tried to disengage, pulling his arm away from the ward, or at least attempting to. But his palm was stuck fast to its surface. Debilitating panic drowned out all rational thought as Will exited Battle Trance. He screamed, pulling desperately on his arm. He glanced beyond the barrier; hesitant monsters crept towards him, their bladed weapons raised. There was also some kind of spherical weapon, one covered in lethal spikes pointing his way.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He screamed, head swivelling around as the ground behind shook. Will shrieked as a pulsating mound of flesh rose from the settling dust and detritus. It was pink, fatty-meat covered with a web of glistening veins. It stood on four legs, each fatter than an elephant, merging into an indecipherable torso of crisscrossing, pink and yellow ribbons of meat. Instead of arms, massive prehensile pincer-tentacles jutted out of the flesh golem. Each rose thirty feet into the air before crashing down with the force of a truck, impaling Will in the abdomen. White fire flashed through his mind; he couldn’t breathe. Instead of a scream, a trickle of dark blood streamed out of a mouth open wide in agony. The pincers pierced his lower torso; here, a mere twitch would be enough to rip his body in twain. It lifted him. He gargled, arm dislocating as he was pulled away from the ward. In a moment of resistance, his body stretched and his hand ripped away from palm, skin still attached to the ward’s surface.

But despite the pain, being physically separated from the ward may have been the best outcome for his mana control returned to him in a rush, allowing Will to retreat into Battle Trance.

The pain had driven him to the edge of unconsciousness, but now, hanging twenty feet from the air, everything extraneous to combat fell away. The golem’s invasive flesh-shaping sought to remake his body, absorbing him into itself. But now there was a seed of his personality trying to reassert itself.

No longer a mere passenger, Will felt a terror worse than the fear of pain. Here, he was becoming the golem. Between eye blinks, his perspective shifted. At once, he saw things through his own eyes, and in the next, he stared out through a vastly different perspective, thoughts no longer his own, his will breaking.

It triggered something deep within him. It was the realisation of his nightmare, a fate worse than being eaten, of his mind subsumed, co-opted, of becoming yet another puppet monster to that distant, vast malevolence. And as the golem strived to assert its will upon him, however, it also made a fatal flaw; the barrier of magic resistance that naturally prevented invasive arcana was compromised by this quasi union.

That smouldering ember ignited; it was his endless fountain of accumulated grief and rage and guilt. It pressed upon him, lending the weight of a mountain behind the force of his will. He fought with everything, panic and purpose, ferocity, rage and spite. He vibrated with the energy of not just his magic, but emotions once compartmentalised and now unleashed, pushing back the golems invasive synthesis of carnomancy and Neuromancy.

Arcanamancy flared within; cerulean vapours poured out from his heart condensing into liquid torrents that turned his blood blue. These extended past the boundary of his body, racing towards the heart of his enemy like a frozen lightning.

The needle-sharp concentration of intent was only possible due to his collapsed mana core, an impossibly dense void in his heart capable of focusing his will into a razor.

This steel tendril pressed forward through one of the tentacles suspending him in the air, the entirety of Will’s mana channelled towards the flesh golem’s heart, millimetre by contested millimetre. Subjective minutes passed in dilated time locked in this battle of wills.

His mana needle smashed the flesh golems nexus while carnomancy consumed the monster’s flesh. He absorbed its biomass, power flowing into him from pincers that once gorged his abdomen. The towering colossus sagged, willpower broken under the weight of Will’s wrath. Its flesh, once threatening to tear and rend his body apart, turned grey, sloughing off piece by piece to decay into necrotic chunks of rot.

Arcana surged into him, mana needle completing a current between the golems power source and his own. His mana regeneration jumped from seventy-seven thousand to a hundred and eighty-thousand units per second as the last drop of power transferred into him.

One, then both tentacles suspending him in the air, broke away from the central mass. He fell with the chunks of flesh, landing hard within a crater. He lay on his back, breath deep and steady as his body and mind re-knitted itself. Will heard as much as felt the smulch-pop sound of his shoulder returning to its socket while an unpleasant liquid sensation of intestines rearranging themselves signified the restoration of his lower abdomen. He was still within the trance, except now there was more of himself; he was present in a way that wasn’t entirely true before.

Will felt more centred, more localised, even though his perspective expanded far beyond his usual range of awareness. Furthermore, a layer of reasoning and self-reflection returned to him; again, it was vastly reduced from his ordinary level of introspection, but he no longer felt compelled by his instincts. This layer of reasoning was screaming at him not to curl up into a ball like his body demanded, to get up, that it wasn’t over, that he still needed to fight.

As his palm re-knitted itself together, he stumbled to his feet to scramble out of the crater. The world around him was smoke and burning chaos. As he approached the barrier, he recalled the nature of that marvellous new skill, that ability to turn pure mana into a probing tendril of will.

He held the image of the hot, dense spike of arcana in his mind’s eye, instinct driving him towards what had so neatly entrapped him before. He was beside the ward once again placing his palm before channelling that liquid river mana of intent through the shield. The instinct, a combination of his own curiosity and a foreign compulsion to unravel its secrets, was overridden by the simple desire to know that this shield could be broken. He pushed with that desire, holding it firm within his mind as the shield flared blue-white with energy. The field snapped and sparked while a brilliant blue tendril of light pressed through layer by layer. Will watched on, silver eyes smoking with arcane vapours as he stood in the trance.

As his arcana needle pressed upon vulnerabilities deep within the weave of strange magic, the shield began to flicker and flash before suddenly, the ward stilled.

Instead of a rippling field, its surface was perfect, transmitting light with the clarity of diamond. He saw for the first time the full extent of this two-story dome. Distant edges reflected the forest and the sky like a mirrored ball. His focus shifted to see within; the Nihiliphem were gone, instead were piles of alien equipment, supplies? Oddly shaped gleaming melee weapons and other pieces of detritus lay scattered everywhere.

He placed his freshly regenerated palm on the wards surface. This time it tingled as he used mana manipulation, his arm once again inexplicably phasing out of sync with reality. He pulled on the power of the ward, syphoning it through his hand and the tendril of arcana. And just as he had done with the portal, the ward winked out when not enough power remained to sustain the field.

Idly he noticed his power had once again risen, now at level eighteen, while his mana regeneration settled at over three hundred thousand. Cautiously he walked into the clearing, the undisturbed hard-packed ground solid beneath bare feet. He inspected the equipment and when he found what he searched for, he crouched and smiled to himself. It glowed with his Mana-Sight, more so than anything else still remaining in the clearing. Its predominant magical flavour was something unfamiliar prior to his most recent experiences.

He closed his eyes and tried to taste it, to gauge its quality. Instead of the wall or barrier he expected, this magic felt complex, sticky and intractable, like a presence that would be as happy driving you away as ensuring that you’d never leave. It was an alien sensation so far outside of his understanding that he found it hard holding on to the flavour even as the magic poured from his fingers. It was not the flavour of something that would strengthen nor make impenetrable as he hoped; no, this magic was like the condensed essence of a general or strategist, someone who prepared not by facing strength against strength, but with layers of subterfuge, guile and redundancy.

“Aegimancy.” He whispered, staring at the artefact, only now noticing it for the physical object that it was. A disk of leaden metal inscribed with concentric rings of runes. Beneath the grooves and soldered markings, a convex, dull grey burnished gleam reflected ambient light. The idea that a classification of magic could be so conceptually intricate blew Will’s mind. But then it had to be, for no simple magic could protect against all the rest, what would work against a physical force, may wilt under heat or light. He remembered this ward protecting against multiple impacts that otherwise decimated hundreds. It wasn’t until he focused raw arcana into a point to press upon the weakest parts of the shield, was he able to subvert it and ultimately drain its energy.

He grinned even though it wasn’t what he expected; Aegimancy, this magic of protection, had come to be something he desperately desired because despite all his might and arcane ability, all he seemed to be good for was to destroy. If only he could develop an aspect of his power that could be used to protect or preserve…

However, knowing just how hard he found holding on to this magics flavour, using Aegimancy right now would be impossible as it wasn’t only one magic type or classification. It may take a significant amount of time or exposure to far more powerful sources to attune this classification; if that is, he could ever attune to it at all. No, he would learn this magic, he promised himself, even if it took him a lifetime.

He stood, levitating the object from his fingers, and with a pop of displaced air, he sent the artefact into hyper-dimensional storage, safe from the madness yet to come. His smile faded as he levitated the walking stick back into his grasp. For a few moments, he glanced around, looking at the piles of unfamiliar weapons. Nothing stood out enough for further inspection within the trance, so he walked away, turning back towards Drizzik.

* * *

The sun hung high in the afternoon. According to his internal clock, four hours passed since he last saw Quinris. Although only one of those hours had been spent killing monsters, he had killed thousands of them. Some were in packs, wherein he quickly scythed down entire groups with his heavy staff. Many were spread apart, foraging or hunting local wildlife. He had also come across several nests, one with a ward that he had been able to disable and retrieve similarly to the first. In that single hour of real-time, Will had experienced fifty-five hours of bloody chaos deep within time-dilation. He had been exhausted, hungry and dehydrated, and so he slept.

It was a testament to his exhaustion that he could sleep alone in a forest surrounded by monsters. Images of blood and explosions chased sleep drunken thoughts until he succumbed to dreamless slumber. An hour later, he twitched, waking himself in a half-suppressed scream. He blinked awake, both impressed and disappointed by the fact that he was still alive as the remnant of a nightmare evaporated from memory.

He felt the edges of the dread fear, the architect of all this suffering, the distant overlord that, for reasons unknown and unknowable, sought this world's doom.

The belief that there would be nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to compelled his sluggish thoughts into gear as all senses, mundane and arcane, reached out to take in his immediate surroundings.

Seventy-three minutes was hardly enough sleep after experiencing almost as many hours awake. However, Will knew he couldn’t go back to sleep even if he wanted to. Not only did the prospect of lowering his guard once again terrify him, but Quinris was still out there, gradually making his way to Drizzik. He took a few moments to fully wake up, drink and wash in the nearby stream and eat some of the remaining meat previously cooked and stored in his hyper-dimensional pocket.

When finished, he took a few minutes to focus on his breathing, his heartbeat, the sounds of the forest, the feeling of scattered light tracing his skin. And then he was enveloped within the liquid silver embrace of the Battle Trance. The transition was almost seamless this time as he slid into a state where extraneous thoughts peeled away. With dynamic time-dilation, he propelled himself towards the branches, preparing for yet another long day of savagery.

* * *

Will crouched on high branches overlooking an encampment of Nihiliphem. It was the largest one yet. Below lay an area of cleared forest at least four football fields across, with structures, blasted to their foundations, blackened and charred ground, stone roads crawling with leathery beasts.

He watched from the shadows, trying to make sense of the enemy as a community. It was clear that this was a staging area for individual monster types to assemble and gather supplies before heading deeper into the forest. There was a steady procession of Nihiliphem leaving and entering, forming a path cleared of lesser vegetation.

Different species seemed to cluster together, waiting as if in a stupor. And then suddenly, they would move as one, back out into the forest. Even still, they seemed to have at least a limited amount of autonomy, raw instinct diverting some towards objects or animals of interest.

Out of the thousand or so monsters below, five of them were flesh golems, one larger and substantially more powerful than the one he faced earlier that day. Additionally, he counted at least twenty Blood-Singers, many airborne and circling above the forest.

Worse yet, overlapping wards covered large portions of the camp, forming areas protected from ranged attacks.

He had to destroy them.

Not only did this nest lay directly ahead of Quin’s path, but Will could also sense something below unerringly familiar. Although he could only detect it via his Mana-Sight, a bright spot sat in the middle of the camp. It was quiescent, slumbering, but it sang with the rich and unmistakable flavour of magic that could not only make portals but deform the skein of reality itself.

Given the intensity of the wards surrounding the artefact, Will knew with cold dread that this location was significant… While wards such as the one he had first encountered ranked between nine and ten in their power sources, here one shined with the potency of a creature equal to, on his own geometric power scale, level twenty, a source at least a thousand times more powerful.

But all together, this collection of monsters and protections was beyond what he could handle. Even in the deepest of time-dilation, the unknown capabilities of new monster types and strange artefacts were enough to give Will pause.

Suddenly, his earlier confidence that he could single-handedly break an entrenched army of a thousand began to evaporate. Every new encounter exposed him to new technologies, new capabilities and a growing understanding of just how limited his grasp over magic was.

Will spent minutes crouched in shadows watching while a worm of doubt crept into his mind. It told him that he was tired, this wasn’t his fight, that this wasn’t even his world. It was the cold voice of reason telling him that throwing himself against hordes of enemies would ultimately lead to his destruction.

Beyond this, something needled him, a second voice more insistent and harder to ignore. ‘This isn’t you.’ It told him. The voice held a note of truth in Will’s heart. He was no warrior, no hero of legend. He was no slayer that bathed in the blood of his enemies. Who was he to deliver so much death and carnage? Was this humanity’s curse? An immortal legacy of death? Transcendent through countless aeons and destined to bring doom to another world tainted by its touch?

The trance had left him. Still crouched in the shadows, he whispered so that only the nearest leaves could hear him.

“Except this is me. I am a Physicist after all. I am death... destroyer of worlds.”

And then Will silently planned a massacre.

First, he would neutralise any unknown enemy types, most of which were beyond the wards’ radius. Then enemies with ranged and area of effect attacks would be systematically engaged. The flesh golems, Will suspected, could not be defeated by kinetic strikes, or at least strikes with the power he could currently achieve as Mana shined from them at a force at least equal to his own.

At a mana regeneration rate of over six hundred thousand units per second, or power level nineteen, Will was no longer a total pushover. Even now, a whirlpool of soothing mana swirled around him proof of his growing ability to impact the world around him. However, between the Nihiliphem and powerful artefacts, Will had to walk a balance between caution and the decisive application of force that had left the enemy unbalanced in the battles so far.

And so he prepared, gathering hundreds of large stones from a forest river several miles away and storing them in his hyper-dimensional. These would be his projectiles for his initial strikes.

Then, he surveyed his fallback positions, noting natural obstacles and clearings he could use to either kite his enemies as he launched attacks, or retreat if unforeseen circumstances arose. And then he scouted forward of the enemies position, taking care to mask his movements, warping through the highest levels of branches as he made his way to the tree-line.

He noted the enemies’ concentrations. Group sizes grew from dozens to hundreds with ever-increasing numbers of higher-ranked enemies.

Although there were, thankfully, no new monster types, smoke and ash increased, reducing visibility and souring the air while flame-ridden trees as large as skyscrapers blazed. Hours into the forest, no major encampments were discovered, but before he returned, Will saw something, or perhaps the lack of something through the smoke. It was the glistening of a distant body of water.

He warped as he ran, traversing dozens of meters from one branch to the next. It was the tree line. And beyond it was a vista that was at once exhilarating, as it was appalling.

Miles below was what had to be Drizzik. It was a city clustered around a stark, towering, geological structure, not unlike Ayers Rock.

Inselberg of red stone abruptly punching out of a broad floodplain. On either side of the geological structure, two rivers meandered before appearing to meet somewhere beyond the horizon. The forest line overlooked a valley of scrubland and bushes, beyond which lay a wall glowing to Will’s Mana-Sight with a blinding intensity. It was a towering iridescent ward, a translucent boundary covering a vast city wall. The ward ringed the city in shimmering rainbow light, reaching well beyond distant clouds. It was a magnificent sight; he looked down upon a settlement far larger than downtown Chicago, surrounded by a contiguous magical artefact hundreds of miles in circumference.

And as awe-inspiring as it was, the army of Nihiliphem assembled beyond seemed just as daunting. It appeared to be a single, heaving organism clustered uncontested at the foot of the shallow sweeping valley. Wards sprung up from within, like mushrooms, oily overlapping domes of magic, protecting the writhing mass from observation as much as a surprise attack.

Within the Battle Trance, Will adjusted his plan. On his return to the encampment, he would strike, clearing out the forests in a wide swath that would seem instantaneous to an observer. Between the tree-line and that last encampment lay over a thousand enemies strung out and unprotected.

Not only were they exposed, but they could also pose complications later if they were able to regroup and challenge him during a moment of vulnerability.

And so he gathered in his arcana, converting it into the familiar aura of Chronomancy, except that he condensed this even further, falling deeper into the slow time than before, binding its magic with other classifications, merging his dynamic time-dilation into an armour of resolve.

He stood tall, stepping forward to emerge from the shadows. His breathing and heartbeat remained steady but deepened as if each breath inhaled more air, each pump transferred more mana enriched blood. He had not yet fully attuned to this ability, yet he could finally sense its full potential; mind, body and hybrid magics fused into an instrument of intent. And one day, his power would be directed at something more than the chaos of battle.

But that day would not be today.

Eighteen

Puppet

"Soooo... a trail of bodies strewn across an area as wide as the eye can see. Your Will really isn't one for subtlety, is he?" Rasputin said with a level of sardonicism Effni had long become accustomed to. Their travel through the forest's upper network of branches had been a litany of inane commentary, needling comments and an ever-increasing trail of alien bodies. Effni stepped from shadow to shadow, running along branches, not once letting her heels fall as she ran. With the eerie stillness of death, even breathing felt like a risk. "You worry too much. I think… whoever this is, really doesn't like our alien invader friends, like, at all."

"Who... What makes you think that this is just one person? What if..."

"...Unknown reinforcements, even you know nothing about... emerge from nowhere to save the day? Even you can follow the tracks, Princess. They zig and zag, from one beatdown to the next. Whoever did this killed each creature one by one as if bug stomping," Rasputin replied, the last sentence said in an almost sing-song manner.

"And you believe Will did this?" Effni growled in annoyance.

“Da," Rasputin agreed.

Effni grunted in response, wanting to outright reject the idea, but…

"That first massacre we saw, remember the flying monster furthest away, the one that seemed like it had died a few days earlier than the rest. Well, I think that was the creature that ate your friend," Rasputin said, Effni crouching within a branch's shadow to take in water from her canteen. "Knowing how well your Archon friend recovered from your arrow, I suspect that a little amputation and stomach acid would prove little hindrance to this dude's survival. No, he crawled out of its belly, was understandably pissed and has been on a killing spree ever since," Rasputin completed.

Effni grimaced in disgust. 'Amputation and stomach acid... crawling out of its belly? Gracie and Issealla have mercy.' "As much as I want to believe what you say is true, I can't depend on it, and if it's heading to Drizzik..."

"Then you're going to have to put me on. Look, your highness," Rasputin said, cutting off Effni's objections. "Worst-case scenario and this is a third player, someone intent on destroying everything in its path, then there may be no one capable of dealing with it before we return. In that situation, we catch up with it, you place me on your head and together we deal with it."

"I can't imagine Will doing this, but if he had been eaten..." Effni asked.

"What worries me is the fact that they are all spread out. As if they didn't have a chance to flee or regroup, as if their assailant moved faster than they could react."

"Yes, this worries me too,” Effni said.

"Because you don't think he was capable of doing this before?"

"Yes?"

"And what makes you think that he wasn't?" Rasputin said.

"How do you mean?"

"I mean… Maybe he's been sandbagging you, maybe he had gained a whole lot of power from, I don't know… It's like his magic is based on speed. With even greater challenges surrounding him he's had to grow his powers, that or they're just manifesting more strongly over time," Rasputin concluded.

Effni returned her belongings to her Haversack, stood and ran. She couldn't place too much faith in Rasputin's theory due to the vast disparity in what she and Rasputin thought Will's abilities might be. He had, of course, managed to subdue her even as he dispatched four other creatures. But that was a far cry from the landscape below, hundreds of brutal deaths, each animal seemingly obliterated by a single blow. As she understood, growing one's mana short of finding powerful sources of magic took years. But, he was an Archon, wasn't he? What if this was what he had always been capable of… What if the ability to suddenly increase in power was what made Archons so formidable? Her thoughts trailed off as she saw a clearing through the distant trees. She knew what to expect, yet another outpost, one of the largest ones outside of Drizzik, but with a population slaughtered and buildings razed.

"You need to see this," Rasputin said sombrely.

"Beckiog? This is where it should be, I've been here before but…" Effni's voice trailed off as the sight became clearer. Craters, dozens of them each twenty paces across, littered the clearing. Not one building remained standing in the grey rubble. The scene was so at odds with Effni's memories.

It should have been a thriving market settlement with almost a thousand permanent residents. Except it was a wasteland full of rubble and dust. Descending from the branches, Effni walked closer to the scene.

"How?" she said.

"I guess your friend must have been packing some serious heat."

Effni frowned. She struggled at the best of times to decipher many of the utterances her idiosyncratic partner muttered. And sometimes, even harder, was reconciling its tone with what may have been proper. Rasputin seemed to reside behind a permanent cloak of cynicism as if every moment of flippancy was a victory, a point won in a game where only he kept score. She could understand it if Rasputin was really as powerful and as old as it claimed, with everything happening seeming trivial, perhaps even mundane.

"Look, over here, this bit looks relatively unmolested," Rasputin said, drawing her out of her thoughts. This time, body parts of an alien origin scattered the site, an abattoir ravaged by feral beasts. She walked towards the area Rasputin highlighted, noting the unbroken ground, unfamiliar weapons and intact equipment. Glaives and polearms sat in a bundle, but besides them sat a sizeable spherical installation with evenly spaced spikes of ivory or bone. There were a few cracks in the ground, but the region was free from the rubble and gore littered everywhere else.

"Warded?" Effni asked

"It must have been."

"If the ward survived the battle, which clearly it must have, then where is the emitter?"

"I imagine your friend must have taken care of that too."

"I can't believe…" Effni said breathlessly, cutting off as she stared at a mound of rotting flesh. She walked towards the sagging, grey hill. It smelt vaguely of soured meat left too long in damp air and bright sun. She saw the blood, dark beads staining the cracked earth; beyond were the remains of what would have been a mighty foe.

"Ah… a Flesh-Golem. I do remember coming across these before," Rasputin said sombrely. "Very hard to kill, basic explosions and fireworks would not be enough to kill it, especially one of this size."

"Oh? What more of this foe do you know?"

"I know almost nothing of these invaders, although travellers via portals do make their way here from time to time… Did you know that the Re-Airevie also came from…"

"Tell me more of these Flesh-Golems. How do you know of them?"

"They… are magical entities, elemental creatures. Perhaps a Carnomancer with sufficient strength could summon one with enough material."

"Material?… You mean..."

"Yes, Effni. Bodies, living, recently dead, it doesn't matter. The golem would consume it, grow and continue to consume. They are terrors on the battlefield, self-propelling monsters of bloody chaos. Hard to kill without the right magics to counter it," it said as she walked around the Flesh-Golem at a more respectable distance, fully appreciating its scale, imagining citizens, perhaps even fellow Rangers, now being part of the rotting conglomeration of meat. She would burn it if she had the means to; to have its fetid carcass remain was a betrayal of its many victims. "Although I don't think the right magics were used to counter it in this case," Rasputin continued after a moment snapping Effni back to the present.

"Explain," Effni demanded.

"I cannot taste arcana like the way you can, only its remnant. Normally necromancy, the classic counter to Flesh-Golems, leaves behind a pungent residue. Powerful Ice or Heat magics would leave behind scored ground or frozen waters. Nah, this maniac must have engaged in a battle of wills."

Even Effni, with her arcane training as limited as it was, knew what this meant. The focused willpower of a creature vs another. Here, the pure essence of magic, or the magic of magic as Will described it, facilitates a contest between the very souls that drive them. She also knew that even with the strongest will, every trial was a gamble, that any challenge, no matter how high your resolve, could be your last. Every instructor of magic Effni ever tutored under not only advised against these contests of wills but recommended their avoidance at all costs.

"Issealla's mercy!" Effni cursed.

* * *

Quinris paused. A winter's chill rolled over his shoulders as he stood motionless in the hot, damp darkness. He waited, listening and straining his senses. It was the sudden void of awareness. As prescient as any positive sensation, this lack was striking due to its consistency. Quinris had gotten used to what he had assumed was Will's movements on the surface, the sound of rolling thunder and the trembling of the earth below.

Only now, after fully opening his mind and ears to it again, was he able to realise just how preternaturally quiet the forest was. Sure, there was the constant, faint hum of neuromantic activity from subterranean life, but far less than there should have been from creatures that would normally inhabit the surface and the trees. Gone too were the sounds of animals calling, moving, eating and of course, the rolling thunder.

Disquieted, Quinris paused to gather himself and recuperate. He was still exhausted as sore limbs and stiff muscles tiredly lowered his bulk to the floor. His rucksack had few supplies, many of which were limited in quantity; however, he had a full flask of water he downed without reservation.

He could feel breaths leave his frongs in hot, sharp bursts, loud and blatant in the stillness, waiting as if moving too soon would reveal himself to more patient, lurking predators.

And he was so very tired, so very… maybe he could rest. Allow a stretched mind to congeal, for the soft senselessness of sleep to carry him…

* * *

A titanic snap jolted Quinris several paces off the ground. Heart jumping and eyes wide as silt and rock fell to the ground. He could feel the philosopher now, Quinris' Neuromancy probing far towards the source of the quaking earth. He had heard thunder, the distant rumble of clouds pummelling each other with the force of mountains. This was different, not just closer and more immediate, but like the sound of the sky tearing open over and over. It grew louder with booming sounds and ground tremors intermittently interrupting the crescendo. It sounded like the beginning of the end of the world.

Quinris's panicked mind wanted to take shelter; he curled into a ball, body profile shrinking in size as he protectively shielded his head from the inevitable end. And then sharp jolts through his chest, tremors as the ground buckled overhead and around him, followed multiple, piercing bangs significantly louder than the rest. The tearing sound ceased to be replaced by rumbles that shook the very air in Quinris's lungs. ‘A sustained… what? Was this a battle?’

Whatever was happening on the surface was practically above him now, and Will was involved. He could feel his unusual mind, like pictures made out of grains of sand scattered by a storm. And yet, throughout it all, was a familiar intensity, the cold, primordial feeling of those with killing intent.

Quinris lifted his arms as he unconsciously looked upwards, he could feel other creatures now, or perhaps the word creature was too strong a term. No, these were more like things with merely the characteristics of something living, at least from a Neuromancy perspective. His head tracked their movements as chunks of trees exploded into splinters. And then suddenly, one of… five presences just… disappeared? As if completely removed from his senses. And now there were four. Will's passage was nimble, yet trailing behind was a corona of power, arcana unfamiliar to Quinris…

Now there were three... impossible!? As the ground shook and more roots dislodged from the earth, Quinris looked up through gaps in the roots in awe. Now only two of the presences remained as suddenly, dust, silt and light poured into a spot in the tunnel just dozens of paces ahead.

Tumbling trees and crunching branches were barely audible under the booms and whip-cracks, now even louder due to the hole in the tunnel. Quinris pushed himself deeper into the crevice hoping that a root as thick as the base of a tree branch would fare as safe as any in this new, chaotic reality.

And then he felt it again. The awareness of that feeling came with the dread knife of fear. It was the herald of the tide of death, the feeling of wrongness that preceded the destruction of his home. That it returned now, so close to Drizzik, family, safety…

"No…" Quinris gasped as something vast and powerful strode towards him.

It was coated black with tar-like emotions, ominous and staggeringly bright with Neuromancy.

It moved with an unceasing glide, a presence eclipsed by the immense power of its magic, and then it passed over and away from him. Quinris released a relieved breath. His own magic had bent light around himself, turning him invisible in a way that was wholly redundant in the dark. Meanwhile, Neuromancy compressed the leakage of his thought-presence even further. As he turned upwards to peek through thin fingers and shivering tail, he realised that once again, things were deathly quiet. He rose to stand just before a dazzling flash of Neuromancy seared his senses.

Perversely, this time the ground didn't shake, the air was still with little light filtering into the tunnels, and yet Quinris was assaulted by an attack so violent that even its glancing edge was near overwhelming. Immediately, his mental walls doubled in strength before redoubling. Hands, still photo transparent, shielded head as if scorched by a furnace.

"No!" he gasped. Quinris's feet were moving not entirely of his own accord. He moved forwards more in a staggered sequence of steps as if walking against a tempest.

Something swirled inside him, his own arcana cycling, to what end Quinris did not know. But given the forest's sudden stillness and power of that Neuromancy, an instinct within prepared him to act even if he did not yet know the shape of such actions or his target.

* * *

Will's existence devolved into red tint and liquid mist. Gore exploded around him as a UI element in his vision, ticked upwards with every swing. Twelve thousand, three hundred and eighty-two…. Eighty-three… Eighty-five… a bloody pole carved a sweeping ark through his surroundings. He was in the battle trance, surface emotions dulled to allow his body and magic to react faster, more intuitively, more completely.

It was a blessing, as had he been fully present, he would have long ago succumbed to insanity. He may yet still go insane if memories of the past few hours returned to him with any more fidelity than the haze of a recently forgotten dream. He had to grunt out inhaled bits of meat suspended in the air. Nostrils and mouth were saturated with the bitter copper taste that was apparently universal to the recently dead. Flashes of daylight interrupted the red as he jumped and warped from one massacre to the next.

He didn't pause to inspect his frozen foe before beating them with his stick. He had been systematically eradicating monsters for six hours according to his own clock and yet, only a mere twenty-two seconds had passed in the real world. At a thousand to one Dilated-Time, even a lazy swing caused explosions of red mist upon impact.

Without the trance, he would have also long since slipped into exhaustion. Ninety-three, ninety-six… And yet, these hours had merely been a prelude to the decimation to come. The last group of monsters strewn about the forest lay ahead. In an eye-blink, he was in their midst, swinging, lunging and sweeping again—his blunt staff empowered by the rigidity of Chronomancy was evidently as lethal as any edged blade. There was no art, no elegance in his movements beyond the minimalism afforded to him by the trance, the desire to expend as little stamina as possible. His swings were as wild as they were lazy, breathing and steps interrupted by wet explosions and uneven ground.

He spat what must have been a fragment of bone; twelve thousand, four hundred and nine, read his counter as the final group before the encampment died. He warped to a point high above the forest floor overlooking the camp. In the twenty or so objective seconds since his attack commenced, they had started to respond, new wards springing up, Blood Singers swooping mid-dive into the forest. Will wasted no time conjuring one of seventy rocks from his hyper-dimensional storage. They hung in the air beside him, suspended by Telekinesis as he measured and aimed at the group of aliens he had not yet encountered. Even now, they bristled with edged melee weapons, pale sawdust-coloured skin visible only on unarmoured extremities and faces.

Braced as he was, he felt an equal, but opposite shove as the rock propelled into the encampment. Immediately it disintegrated, air resistance turning stone glowing and molten, a trail of ionised gas following in their wake. He followed up this attack launching smaller rocks at Blood Singers mid-air and swooping through the forests. Most of his attempts missed, as at a distance, accuracy was a larger factor without the effects of shockwaves to better distribute force.

Even still, after moving closer to his targets before launching stones, he had all of his airborne targets down within a minute.

Something massive swung through the air, sailing towards the spot where he once crouched. It was a tree, or at least part of one, launched at impossible speeds, speeds that should have been unnoticeable to him as deep within Dilated-Time as he was. And yet, he still took a moment to watch it. It trailed leaves and weaker branches in its wake, clipping trees and tumbling before smashing into splinters, deadly wood-chips showing a region with miniature daggers. He broke out of his reverie as the shadow of another tree loomed beneath him.

He warped to another branch and continued his bombardment, all the while sighting for the source of the counter-attack. Out of the corner of his eye, one of the wards protecting the centre of the encampment flared white, contracted into a brilliant blue-white ball, then exploded. Will was blown off the branch and out of Dilated-Time.

The physical force of the wards’ shockwave was feather-light. However, Will convulsed as he fell to the ground, landing hard.

Sounds of the forest returned to him as his perception returned to that of objective reality. The air at once felt cold, thick; the sounds of creatures and beasts screeching and growling prompted a dazed and aching body to peel itself off the ground. And then he ducked, a whoosh of air and an explosion of splintered wood forced his face into the mud, arms cradling head as a score of cuts and lacerations caused him to scream.

He grasped for Chronomancy like a battered warrior would his fallen sword or shield. He warped upwards, picking a branch clear of immediate threats and lobbed hypersonic stones towards the encampment in blind retaliation. He was no longer in the trance. His battle plan was in tatters. The enemy had clearly devised a new strategy to deal with him and now a tactical retreat seemed to be the most sensible course of action.

Retreat, regroup and re-engage on more favourable terms. To find a time where they were weaker and he was stronger, except it was likely there would be no more favourable terms, that the enemy could only get tougher, more entrenched, more familiar with his abilities, and as just experienced, devise more devastating counters and confound him.

Will had to win now if he ever wanted to at all. He had to show them that they had not thought of everything, not fully understood the full breadth and depth of his capabilities.

Like a beacon of his resurgent resolve, a shimmering aura of Chronomancy coated his skin as he re-entered his Battle Trance.

A current of power-cycled from deep within his mana spire while an idea percolating his subconscious started to take shape. This ability to transfer or absorb mana... instead of by touch, could he use this effect at a distance? Better yet, could this ability be applied to a field that surrounded him, a draining aura, hindering all within reach while fuelling his abilities? He knew that he could do this, probably. To experiment with it now could be reckless. And yet, what choice did he have? If he were to get through this, he had to take more risks.

Another shockwave of Aegimancy flared throughout the forest, once again disrupting his trance and the channelling of his magic.

"Fuck!" Will screamed, this time retaining his perch on the ledge as a flash of white faded into double vision. It cleared quickly, but the return of sound told him that he was once again vulnerable.

He warped, this time higher, sensing a pattern forming; he was rewarded with the sound of timber crunching and splintering below. His wounds from before had healed, and now it was Will's turn to regain the initiative. Stone after stone, fist-sized rocks to boulders twice the size of his own head careened towards the encampment. He deliberately targeted the gaps inside the base while searching for irregularities, such as hints of illusion magic used by the enemy to hide their forces.

He was rewarded not long after as he found one of the previously scouted Flesh-Golems blown apart by a boulder, mid tree toss. Will immediately piled on the pain, launching projectiles towards spaces surrounding him that didn't seem quite right. Regions that appeared warded and were not and vice versa. The ground was a patchwork of overlapping wards and shockwaves, dust and debris. He had to be running low on rocks remaining in his storage. 'Perhaps I should have made a macro that kept track of my remaining projectiles?' Will wondered absently, once again missing the little things Asterisk kept track of during moments like this. Sensing thoughts drifting, his body tiring, he reached for the trance once again and was enveloped by its cooling impassivity.

The ground thrummed, transmitting vibrations through the trees.

Will waited for another ward to contract and pop, otherwise having no other counter to the effect. He hoped that vigilance and, failing that, increased distance would be a good enough defence for now. He saw the flash approaching and this time ceased all channelling.

Without his trance and the magic, he was naked amidst the army of Nihiliphem that sought his destruction. The wave washed over him and instead of the mind spike of pain, he felt a light and almost pleasant tingle in his centre. He warp-jumped away to avoid the followup attack. Two of the Flesh-Golems lay discombobulated and brutalised on the cratered forest floor. Another was mid-swing, gigantic prehensile tentacle arms elastic in their excursions of raw physical might. A rock sailed across the forest, outlining a glowing streak. It clipped the edge of a tree in a shower of exploding bark before a new crater was formed on the forest floor. Bits of the Flesh-Golem blasted apart from his target; however, the effect was nowhere near as effective it should have been. Had it somehow reinforced itself using Carnomancy?

* * *

Smaller creatures, perhaps realising that the wards were sacrificial and certainly not for their protection, fled the encampment to scatter deep into the forest in every direction. All that was left were regions undisturbed by Will's attacks and the five Flesh-Golems in various states of mutilation and awareness. He mana-pulsed with his arcana, hoping to confirm what he saw before descending to the ground.

This was the third phase, the most perilous phase. Five gigantic, nigh-invulnerable mini-bosses that were even now, reassembling their broken flesh from the body parts and meat that surrounded them. They had already sprung one surprise with implications Will feared to contemplate. And now he was preparing to implement a plan as daunting as it was filled with jeopardy. Within the trance, Will stood on the forest floor as the dust settled around him. Twelve dome-like shields shimmered as he waited and watched and thought.

'Just who or what was that Puppet Master?' Will remembered the flash of sensation, the impression of the entity glimpsed through webs in the aether. Ascetic and ancient, dispassionate with goals and values unknown and unknowable. If he were outside of the trance, he would have shivered.

A towering pillar of flesh spiralled out of the dust. Will stood, unmoved as the golem plunged in a looping elastic arc to land right in front of him. It was dozens of tonnes of pink and sour yellow fat, glistening wet despite the surroundings' dustiness. At this moment, Will's situational awareness was total. He could feel a leaf in the wind, grains of sand and motes of dust through his arcane senses. It was through this sense that Will felt the silent sliding and slithering of malicious meat, meat that traversed the shadows between the trees, as the golem in front of him menaced and flexed, preparing to rip him in half.

With a whoosh of air, the golem in front of him flattened like plasticine squished by afoot. He focused his remaining mana on creating a region wherein gravity increased by a hundred-fold. The drain on his own mana was something tangible, like blood leaching out of his veins as the world around him greyed with mana fatigue. Knowing that, instead of killing it, it would only slow it down, he released his hold, knowing that he had achieved what he had to at this moment. He turned and made two quick warps before landing on the ground right next to the golem sneaking behind the trees. He crushed it with gravity just before sending his Arcane Needle. It reached out from him like a lilac finger of lightning, branching and arcing in a wild path before penetrating the slowly reforming creature in front of him. He immediately penetrated its unprepared mind, his will breaking the monster’s resolve before power flowed into him. As it did, the creature greyed, the pool of flesh and muscle and fat split and deflated, off-gassing as it died.

In the corner of his vision, he could see one of the wards contract while a massive tree trunk careened through the air.

"Oh shit..."

He pulled on the remaining mana, guzzling it as foreign mana bubbled in his core. He jumped, picking a branch way above that skirted the edges of the ruined camp and dropped out of Battle Trance just as the flash and wave of Aegimancy hit him.

Just before re-entering the trance, he caught the flash of yet another collapsing ward and warped to the ground before two cataclysmic crashes were heard behind him. The second collapsing ward had been timed to catch him unawares, but as Will was out of the trance and not using magic, all he felt was the feather-light pressure and a light tingle of sensation.

"Fuuuuck!" Will gasped. He warped again, one eye on the wards as he moved closer to his next target.

He interrupted the flesh-golem’s attack with a flung projectile. Red jelly mulched, pooling into the crevices of the forest floor as he sent a needle of his will. Raw mana bridged the handful of meters between him and the golem in an effect similar to a tendril of lightning before a screeching, broken mind released to Will, the mana that powered it. Instead of feeling imperious, Will felt himself grow light, drunken, almost giddy with the power. Even through the trance, it was hard to stop himself from racing towards the next golem and repeating the process. But that was not the plan.

With his expanded senses, he could feel the presence of the other golems repositioning themselves, preparing their trap. He ran, thighs like pistons as he moved to be in sight of the remaining monsters; Will was out of the trance now, Arcana suppressed as he attempted to paint a picture of someone depleted and out of magic. He ran in zigzags, remaining in the cover of giant tree trunks as it sought to gain distance.

A chance glance to the side caught a lump of wood, a meter or more in thickness sailing cleanly through the air with the lightest of whooshes; he slid, ducking low and clawing the ground in a desperate attempt to stop. A tree trunk exploded in a shower of wood in front of him. Splinters scoured Will's chest and upraised arm.

The other two golems moved to bracket him at impossible speed, giant mounds of inside-out flesh stretching through the forest either side of him. He kept on his path, breathing ragged as his hands cut through the air in his stride. Out of the trance and out of Dilated-Time, he was slow and frazzled, body not quite as responsive and capable.

Turns in direction came with frantic slides, bending low to make use of hands as well as feet. Distantly, he felt the furthest Flesh-Golem move. It was fast, powerful and would be upon him in seconds. Will grinned a death-head’s smile. Twenty seconds of running had bought him approximately two hundred meters of distance away from the encampment. It would have been a distance he could have traversed in a blink of an eye with magic. But he had to drag his assailants along to bait them into chasing him, drawing them away from at least one of their tactical advantages.

He hoped the inverse square law also applied to the collapsing wards' effect, that the magical power transferred to him by the shockwave reduced as the energy was spread over a greater surface area. Either way, he was now out of time, the third golem smashed through the forest, towering tentacles pooling before tapering into ribbons that propelled it like a giant, slime-monster.

Time slowed as he embraced the trance. A jagged bolt of arcana flowed from him into the creature as Will roared, right arm and palm outstretched in defiance. He pushed, every muscle tense, arcana draining out from him and bridging the dozen-meter span between them. This needle of resolve exploded golem flesh on contact, instantly breaking the creature's mind as it hung suspended in Dilated-Time. Foreign mana channelled into him, roiling throughout his veins, heart beating arrhythmically, calf muscles twitching, trembling and then convulsing under the torrent of potency.

He realised that something was wrong. He had never consumed so much power at once, one creature after another, mana overflowing, volatile and unwieldy. He screamed even louder, then a wave of Aegimancy scoured his body. He felt himself flying through the air, connection to his foe broken as the trance fought to keep him conscious. As he landed and rolled like a rag doll before resting beside a tree, every cell in his body fizzed with electricity while none of his limbs wanted to move. His core seethed and for a moment, he thought he had made a fatal mistake. But he was still inside the trance. Chronomancy coated his skin, an aura that fizzed and glowed briefly, as if only just settling after a recent agitation.

He attempted to move while lying sideways on the mud. At first, it was all he could do to clench his jaw and tighten his sphincter, precious seconds elapsing before summoning the control to wiggle a toe. As he did this, boulders around him lifted several meters into the air. These were rocks far heavier than anything he had previously levitated, and as a result, his grip on each was greasy and tremulous. He flung one of the stones at the Flesh-Golem still visible from his current position. His projectile’s motion seared the air, a white-yellow corona of burning air trailing in its wake. He sensed the other golem with arcana and lobbed the second boulder at it to buy himself time. He needed control over his body once again. Only now was he able to bend his elbow, as a rush of pins and needles signified to him the return of neural feedback.

He was on all fours now and more exhausted than any point he could remember. But reasonably sure he could finish this. He glanced to his side to confirm that the golems were synchronising their attacks. And then he stood, dauntless as the shadows of colossus loomed.

Several things happened at once.

Within a five-meter radius, his churning mana core powered a field of gravity that stripped branches from trees and ripped the Flesh-Golems from the air.

Instead of a needle, Will spread that force, that arcane potency to envelop the gravity field he generated.

The flavour of Spaciomancy, quiescent and faint in the corner of his awareness, spiked. Dread washed over Will as he witnessed the enemy’s hammer fall; this new portal was their trap. He pulled with every remaining iota of determination and spite he could muster; it was now, or death.

And then consecutive waves of Aegimancy crashed over him, jamming his senses as a body rich with channelled arcana chimed with the weight of church bells. He rose a clear meter or two into the air, propelled by his own convulsing muscles as if struck by lightning, three... four... five waves crashed over him before his hold on magic ceased.

Although near death, the creatures around him now moved with the unwilling laxness of something prodded. Twin pools of grey meat simmered with barely enough energy to hold their masses together. But their presences were an afterthought as Will lay curled into the fetal position, catatonic and broken. And then he felt it, even through the haze of semi-consciousness. It was like an eclipse, brilliant in its malevolence and gliding towards him from the portal. Blurry vision caught not a towering presence, for all the glare its incredible magic would have suggested. This was no savage, no beast of war, but a sapient entity, bipedal, grey flesh and clothed in yellow-grey robes.

Will's mind shrieked as a vision resolved into a nightmare. Powerful Neuromancy pulsed from the creature as it floated a meter above the ground. Two meters tall, a vaguely bipedal body was overshadowed by a mass of now-familiar, writhing tentacles from a bulbous, octopedal head radiating mendacity and evil. Its grey fingers tapered into long claws that writhed and twitched in time with its tentacles. Its black gaze saw through him as if he were already butchered meat to be either grilled or broiled. The overwhelming neuromantic pressure of this level forty-four demon soaked Will's thoughts with fear. Through the fear, a memory from a distant life reminded him of greater demons, horrors that paid falsehood to the notion that the creature before him was some grand strategist or commander, that this was the puppet master he had been expecting. No, unspeaking and cruel, this creature's aura radiated a menace that his subconscious mind could do nothing but translate as one thing: Mindflayer.

The Mindflayer's gaze shifted. Paralysed, terrorised and with his mana core an unusable tempest, he was almost out of options.

It lurched forwards to loom over him. As claws reached towards his face, Will played his final hand by activating Divided-Mind (Advanced).

And then he screamed.

* * *

"Issealla's bloody tears!" Effni shouted as the dread overwhelmed her. Crouched in the shadows of a tree branch, arms cradling head as the air trembled with the concussive force of a thousand magi. She expected to be swamped by a wave of force, an explosion lifting her off her feet, but that final impact never came.

"Quickly... Something's about to happen!" Rasputin said.

There was an unexpected crackle-zap… and then her forest's-glamour and shadow-mind flickered out.

"What in Issealla's mercy was that!?" Effni screeched in panic as a stinging pain stripped her stealth magic.

"It was a collapsing ward. Turn off your talents and run."

"But...!"

"Everything nearby is dead, time to cover some serious ground."

Effni stood on trembling legs atop a branch seven hundred paces above the ground. She wobbled as she walked, arms spread out, straining wide for additional balance and then started to run across the branches.

Her feet were tar-soaked feathers dancing upon a dragon's tail, at the mercy of every tremulous sway as an unnatural tempest stripped leaves from trees and left the air sparkling with danger.

She ran at full force, a mitre covered in breathless moments as she could finally see hints of the devastation she had doggedly chased for hours. Tree trunks sailed through the air as ghastly horrors propelled themselves through the forest like oversized Lipis slimes. She felt another tingle as she jumped and climbed, arms reaching and pulling and lifting, from one level to the next. Whatever happened below, she wanted no part of as the sounds of chaos subsided into only occasional catastrophic crashes of wood and god knows what else. Effni realised that she was fast approaching Eccup, one of the nearest and largest trading outputs outside of Drizzik. Or at least the location of where it should have been. She slowed, trees swaying in the rumbling atmosphere; Effni glanced in every direction, resisting the urge to wrap herself in shadows. She was exposed as forces she didn't understand waged war below. Only now did she try to control breathing that had lapsed into hyperventilation.

"Look, there." And with a mental nudge, Effni's gaze drifted. She felt the tingling, another ward in the distance collapsing, she saw a… dark shape... suddenly elongate from a point on the ground to a tree branch no less than a hundred paces away and then her gaze snapped onto the form of a man crouching on a tree-limb.

"Neat trick," Rasputin said grudgingly. She blinked, and the figure was gone.

"That was Will, wasn't it?" Effni asked, already knowing the answer as the rumble of something gargantuan caused the trees and branches all around her to shiver and quake. She flattened herself, prone against the bark as she tried to glimpse at the madness below. She stifled a gasp as she saw a tree trunk sail through the air. As it exploded, another wave of tingling swept through her. One of the giant meat-coloured horrors careened through the forest below, wrapping elastic limbs that stretched and pulled and slung its bulk between the trees at speeds that made the air whoosh.

And then suddenly, it squished as if flattened by the hand of a god. She gasped as she recalled the very same sensation. Red glistening flesh turned into a pool of grey, rotting soup and next to it, curled up on the floor, twitching and unresponsive, was Will.

Effni started to move.

"Wait!" Rasputin cautioned. She looked around to see what had triggered his warning and she saw something gliding through the forest. As it moved under her, Effni felt the weight of its presence like the shadow of a floating mountain, of something huge, something impossible along with its implicit promise of annihilation. She didn't breathe, she would have ceased her beating heart if she could, if only to ensure her presence was as small as possible, and yet, as it moved further away, her mere crippling sense of self-preservation gave way to soul-crushing realisation.

This had all been a trap.

"Effni, this is it, it's time," Rasputin said, all sense of repartee forgotten. Her diaphragm unhitched as she reached into her rucksack and grasped the cold, wet and surprisingly delicate artefact.

Nineteen

Spite

Will fought for breath as the granite sea inhaled the sky. Briny nostrils flared while stinging eyes blinked away seawater long enough to glimpse upon a universe of towering waves and bottomless swells. His stomach lurched as the sensation of freefall overtook him. The biting air howled just before a wall of water sent him beneath the waves. Will fought, legs kicking and arms waving. Unsure of what was up or down as the sensation of white spray and fizzing bubbles enveloped his awareness. He gasped again as he felt the sense of biting air and roaring sound return. And then he pitched downwards with the deepening trough, eyes clear long enough to see nothing but grey mist and moving mountains of ocean.

He was going to die.

It wasn’t a conscious thought but an adrenal flash of panic, vivid and particular. For a held breath, all effort, emotion and thought short-circuited. As riptides pulled him into the darker and quieter depths, Will’s mind froze with numbness.

He had been here before, here far too many times in recent days. This was the precipice, the boundary line between life and oblivion.

But he had already chosen, hadn’t he? He had already provided his answer to the universe’s favourite question, so now there was only one path remaining for him to take.

With a surge of fury, he kicked harder. Although his underwater shout did little beyond releasing his now-spent air supply, the escaping bubbles helped Will reorient himself beneath the churning ocean. His diaphragm spasmed, lungs burning with the demand for breath, be it air or water. Here, right now, mere meters beneath the waves, he might have given up. But he had already chosen, hadn’t he?

He broke the surface and inhaled a mighty, salty mixture that was half seawater, half misty air. He coughed during the moment he crested this wave’s apex before feeling the plunge of the rolling tide.

“How?”

It was a single word, the only question that could form between drowning and fighting for air.

He was going to tire, eventually. Sink too deep beneath the waves and drown, eventually. Again, this wasn’t really a conscious thought, more the counter-productive fears draining his will. But, as grey, mist-drenched, howling air chilled his face, he once again found himself with the question:

“How?”

It was not a question he could answer as he kicked and slapped and clawed to break the water’s surface and breathe again. He couldn’t think, not here, not like this, as survival consumed every spark of neural activity.

This cycle of crushing, burning pain and abused lungs soothed by spray-drenched winds, continued for a while unknowable to Will. It could have been minutes or days, but the state of the environment did not change. Each breath a decisive battle amidst warring elements utterly indifferent to his existence. The panic, the fear of death gave way to a sort of subconscious rhythm. He grew accustomed to the patterns of swells and lurches, of the biting wind and the salty brine. It was no simple clockwork motion, but the feel of the world turning and himself with it.

‘Wave period, eleven breaths, this wave would break here as it rose over a seventh of its height… inhale and brace…’

His body recognised the sensations, his subconscious mind computing sine waves and their superpositions. After endless breaths, his buoyancy pulsed in constructive harmony with the hydrokinetic motions of the waves. What had been inevitable death had turned into a game of physics fuelled by spite.

“How?”

His thinking mind returned and with it the question. Once asked in accusation, now settled into something firmer, something vital.

He had misjudged a cycle, the wrong response to a shift in the feel of the swells. A choppy wave interrupted a breath, and suddenly, he was vomiting when he should have been breathing. He went under, lungs empty of air. He was drowning in a sea of panic. He sank deeper below than ever before as the universe demanded a new answer to its favourite question. His thoughts dimmed, but muscle memory continued to fight. And then limbs suddenly thrashed in ice air and tremendous roaring music. He heaved sweet oxygen before coughing and preparing to fall under again. He pushed all thoughts down, deep beneath the darkness. He focused every iota of concentration on the next breath.

The next swell, the subtle changes in his buoyancy, the feeling of frothy waves transforming into darker, viscous water.

He breathed in time with the ocean.

The feeling of water’s pull, of up and down, light and dark.

Of wet, whistling winds and the icy chill of air on skin.

The smell of salt, of the permanently grey, sunless sky.

Will was free of thought within a meditative state of complete immersion, supremacy over a universe designed to overload the senses.

His breathing, his swimming, it was all automatic now. Tiredness seemed increasingly like an abstract concept. Instead of muscle tiredness, he measured his reserves in the amount of mental effort required to deal with each wave. And after each wave, this effort became less. He floated in this process, a perfect tautology of existence.

“How?”

The question returned for the hundredth time—or a thousandth. A fifty-foot drop sent him beneath the waters, and yet his muscles failed to tire. If anything, this nightmarish reality was becoming easier… perhaps even manageable, almost.

It was like he had been drawing new strength from punishing exercise, but without the rest required to rebuild muscles or renew calories.

But there was an abstract pain, an underlying ache that bore upon his newfound mental state. A state that was still fragile and required a strange concentration. It was an abstract pain, more a pressure, an indefinable weight behind the eyes. He allowed himself to sink deeper into his meditation as his mind-space grew. His capacity to sense and subconsciously respond to the world fuelled a growing introspection, an awareness that went beyond the howling winds and grey ocean swells.

“How?”

And now he really thought upon the question. His breaths were deep, every muscle in his body responding to the sensations of falling, of cold air and walls of spray. There was the growing pressure in his mind, contrasting with an untiring body that felt as insubstantial as helium. Deeper, his inner sight delved, always in the present, unconcerned with what came before and what may come to pass.

And like that, there was a flash, the merest hint of something greater, something distant but familiar. As the crashing waves churned, the salt spray he could taste with his lips contrasted starkly with the sweet, sticky, syrupy flavour this new sense tasted. At first, the sensation trickled in as if diluted and filtered through muslin, just the sweetness from a single grain of sugar. But as his greater awareness improved, this trickle of honey became sickly, cloying, like a black treacle tar upon his tongue.

This was Neuromancy, he realised. Not his own, but a force of nature, an elemental avatar of the magic. It encased his mind, his sense of self, burning his will, stripping his secrets just as it imprisoned him within the totality of the storm. And with that realisation, memories of the past returned to his consciousness with the grace of a derailed train.

He found himself choking on the sea, his ocean meditation broken, mind-state disturbed. He fought, climbing out of the sunless depths even as crushing curls of water tried to force him down once more. The pressure behind his eyes was tangible now, even outside of meditation, and now it was worse, for he knew what it was.

The Mind Flayer, an alien malevolence, was outside, ripping his mind apart to gorge upon his memories.

Except it couldn’t. Or at least that it hadn’t. For Will’s mind was fortified by Neuromancy and the science of quantum encryption. Like powdered glass, they could steal no particle of knowledge from his mind until the entirety of his memories and the nature of its cypher was known.

And yet, so far, it had easily defeated the parts of his mind that thought and acted. It was through the mind that could feel, sequestered in a prison of sensation and isolation, he had isolated his arcane senses.

As the pressure in his skull intensified, Will could feel the ticking clock, the countdown that promised perfect oblivion and the exposure of his greatest secrets.

But instead of the fear, instead of the crippling panic this prison was designed to instil, Will breathed deep and long, exhaling with the fall of the waves, breath continuing to release even as shifting buoyancy sent him beneath the tide. He inhaled after a forceful push sent him above the surface.

The mind-space of sensory supremacy returned to him sooner this time, and with it, the overwhelming flavour of Neuromancy. Through this, he hunted for other senses, magics familiar to him, pathways to his base reality where he was all but insensate, defeated.

With a rush, Will could feel his magic. The sensation was like using the tip of a fingernail to discern between diamond or glass. Even so, he rejoiced in the success. Several breaths cycled as he tried to pull upon his Arcanamancy, his magic of magics.

He sought the current of power he had used before, a desperate gambit to stave off annihilation, his needle of arcane will. Before he pulled upon his magic, an action Will honestly believed to be his final moments on this world, Will considered if there were any other actions he could take.

Asterisk had made several counter-intrusion protocols during his encounter with Effni Naridia—could he use them? Would they work, even as distractions?

*Switch to Fail-Closed? [y]/n - Initiate permanent memory erasure when intrusion detection system becomes compromised?

Will selected [Y]

Confirm? [y]/n

Will selected once more. [Y]

*Trace Ping? [y]/n - Initiate trace-route to any active neuromantic connections. Potentially improves the effectiveness of counter-Neuromancy.

Will selected [Y]

*ID 89923.203882.e1701:1077 assigned to 1/1 neuromantic connections. Mirror ID for counter-Neuromancy? [y]/n

Will selected [Y]

Even with these limited measures, Will knew that to engage his foe using only Neuromancy would be like pissing against a waterfall. At level forty-four, based on raw mana capacity alone, the demon raping his mind was at least sixteen million times more powerful than his own measly power rating of nineteen. For any chance of survival, Will had to use everything.

He pulled on his Chronomancy and the river of time froze into a glacier. Within his present reality, the mind-prison changed in a way he did not expect. Instead of towering waves slowing like moving walls of water, the ocean construct instead dimmed and quiesced as reality dilated well beyond a thousandth of real-time. At ten-thousandth of objective time, the grey churning waves turned into an endless reflection pool bathed in a preternatural twilight, sky dark and silent beyond a strip of moonlight lining the horizon’s edge.

Dark waters rippled with finger-high waves around him as if caught in the moment before freezing into a lake of ice. He trod water, looked around and marvelled at the environment that had been his nemesis, now tamed to tranquillity.

Encouraged by his first step and his iron grip upon the time remaining, Will now pulled upon Arcanamancy. Instead of his needle, he envisioned his intent as a web of lightning forking to probe and scour the enemy. He could see the green forest beyond, the malevolent monster arching towards him, feeling his magic bridge the space between them, the air, now a glowing plasma as his waste heat amplified ten thousand fold to strip electrons from their atoms. Even these floating, subatomic particles he commanded with the sheer force of his will, binding them with his Arcanamancy and Neuromancy into a dazzling, multifaceted attack.

The pressure he could feel before, now pressed upon him like a boot upon his temple, steadily grinding; he feared implosion was only moments away.

He injected the Mirrored IDs into the neuromantic portion of his counter-attack, switching ports as the multi-vectored branches of arcane lightning finally connected with the enemy. It saturated the target with neuromantic feedback, and for a moment, the pressure on Will’s mind lessened.

But it was not enough.

Even with every advantage and force multiplier Will could bring to bear, he was still a gnat biting a leviathan. He had started this fight shattered and exhausted and almost beaten; he had little left. Giddy with mana fatigue and mental collapse even as his other magics fought to rebuild his flesh and resist the heat of burning white-hot air. He tried to hold together a mind being systematically ripped apart.

It was unsustainable.

Only subjective seconds remained before his adversary’s magic would overwhelm him—or his own attempt to break free.

It seemed like no matter how hard he tried, how much he learnt, how strong he became, Will could always lose. He had lost his life, his world, his family and friends, yet there was still more they could take from him. With Asterisk gone, this depraved, violent reality could strip away his knowledge, burn away his humanity, and consume his free will.

Enough.

As the very last portion of Will’s mental resilience failed, the silent, ancient subconscious part of Will’s mind acted with a cold, cruel rage. Fuelled by half a lifetime studying gravitational field equations, by a black, broken mana core just below his heart, by an eternity frozen in time.

All of it came together to produce a more significant failure, an act Will had once promised to prevent.

A drop of darkness shot forth from his chest; a single microgram of matter folded upon itself and spun towards his nemesis, its devouring promise momentarily held at bay by the tenuous force of his will.

The world around him turned into stark white and black as another source of power greater than his own struck the enemy. Its power added to the molten conflagration battering the creature, roiling the air into a storm of burning plasma.

The psychic pressure reduced, ejecting him from the mind prison. With its release came a painful, total awareness of his own failing body and, with it, a sharp blade of panic at the realisation of what he had just done.

He screamed in the burning air as he scrambled to prevent a greater catastrophe.

His magic still held onto the microscopic black hole. Its dread promise of annihilation frozen in time by Chronomancy. And while he could not recall, undo or absorb it, perhaps, hopefully, he could change it. By altering the space around its event horizon, he attempted to transform it into something radiant instead of dark.

He could feel the enemy reassert itself upon his mind, feel the last of his stamina drain away and as the light from the world faded into darkness, what one could only describe as a silver, opalescent javelin struck the creature causing it to stagger. Hope flared, and colour rushed into Will’s consciousness as he rallied for one last push.

Will lost his hold over the grain of warped spacetime as it passed beneath his adversary’s skin, but in those precious moments before, Will had completed the transformation.

In an instant immeasurable to human senses, even under a thousand to one Dilated-Time, a white hole formed within his enemy’s heart. It was a region wherein no mass, light, nor information could exist - a microscopic, incandescent hole in the universe, a Kugelblitz.

It vaporised his adversary from the inside out—an evaporating white hole, a burning torch of gamma-ray light.

Kneeling before the monster, Will’s skin baked under the flash of ionising radiation even while arcane power surged into Will’s burning veins. It was only the merest fraction of the creature’s mana transferred via dissipating tendrils of arcana; however, it was still too much. Overwhelmed with power, Will felt something crack within himself before a pressure wave of displaced air lifted him from his feet. Pain and exhaustion forced Will to let go of his overextended consciousness as the world around him erupted into madness.

* * *

Effni removed the Crown of Whispers from the rucksack while watching the scene below in a dazed trance that was more a deferment of panic than studied detachment. The tangled forest beneath her was in a mess; white splinters littered the forest floor, stripped branches and exploded corpses added to the hallucination. Even the forest’s smell was wrong with the taste of fresh pine intermixed with the ever-present smell of wood-smoke. Her gaze lingered on the figures unmoving below. Grey pools of flesh flanked Will, who was now curled into a ball. The pools gently rippled, almost quiescent, but very far from dead - and this, along with Will’s apparent incapacitation, would have been enough to force her to act.

However, a presence malevolent and vast drew closer to the prone man. Ragged breathing did little to improve a dry throat and cracked lips. Time seemed to slow; the chaos of the world around her dimmed as the power she wielded appeared to activate. She lowered the crown atop hair plastered flat to scalp by sweat.

She felt something small at the very moment it made contact, a feeling of bracing cold that dimmed reality around her. The crown slid down Effni’s head, growing inextricably larger, except it didn’t so much as slide down but slide beneath or inside her mind. It was a cool, liquid presence whose calming influence grew the further the artefact slipped beneath her skin. The cooling influence turned into an ice chill, and Effni gasped as the world turned black.

*Checking for user privileges...

*User privileges granted.

*Checking for additional privileges...

*Hyperuser privileges granted.

*Administrator privileges granted.

*Device access confirmed, commence hyperuser calibration?

[y]/n

Effni found herself within the same black void as from the trial.

Bodiless, senseless but somehow still present, glowing green text in a familiar alien language hovered within her perception. Although she understood the sounds and perhaps even the meanings of the individual words, each sentence was still confusing as she lacked the context required to understand what she read.

“Rasputin? Are you there?” she called, or at least thought. She had no mouth, no natural conduit, magical or otherwise, to communicate with the artefact that was now inside her mind. Unsurprisingly, silence and the steady glow of floating green text were the only replies to her query.

‘Commence Hyperuser Calibration?’ Effni wondered. ‘Calibration? Yet another test? Have I not proven myself enough?’ She sighed. Effni wasn’t sure if this black zone also fell outside of time, but in case it didn’t, she had to decide now.

Confirm? [Y,N] - Warning, selecting [Y] permanently installs 2.56v-e2391.eval_unit.exe

This action cannot be undone.

Effni selected [Y].

*Calibration Complete. Loading 2.5v-e21.eval_unit.exe

An indecipherable message flashed before the world turned white. Effni was still a disembodied presence, but this time she saw… herself, or at least an image, no… a model of herself. She could move around to view herself from all angles and spent a few seconds doing so before a chime and additional instructions appeared in her vision.

*Welcome, Effni Naridia.

*Please describe your ideal argument, law or truth.

“Oh no.” Effni groaned. Unlike the previous questions, this was one she understood all too well.

‘Argument, law or truth.’

This was asking her why she was a mage, the fulfilment of a requirement Effni had never been able to meet. This had been one of her many fears when contemplating wearing this artefact. She was no mage, she had no argument, and that was the end of the story. She attempted to write ‘no’ and ‘not a mage’ but was greeted with red text:

“Invalid response, please try again.”

She stared blankly at the question.

“Please describe your ideal argument, law or truth.”

Ideal argument? Of course, she knew what her argument would be in an ideal world. The one she’d so desperately held onto that it had instead taught her lessons on the perils of foolish ideals and when to move on.

But why… She considered. ‘Perhaps stating what I would have preferred… I have little left to lose after all.’

*Magic must be used to improve upon fairness in the world.

There was a brief moment of darkness after Effni submitted her answer.

*Law submitted.

*Law Accepted. Congratulations, Archmage.

‘Law!?’ Her eyes would have bulged had she been corporeal. It was impossible. She was no mageling, let alone Archmage. She had long come to accept that beyond a few inherited skills, she was untalented at arcana.

However, arcane potency flooded her awareness. It was a sudden rush, a surge, an avalanche of power. She at once felt lighter and overburdened with the weight of this awesome and terrifying gift. Moreover, the one genuine hope she’d clung to as a child so tightly that it had become a millstone, a mocking curse, had just become her law.

It was now the ideal that underpinned the integrity of her magic, anchor to her sense of self. This terrible, frustrating, nightmarish ordeal overshadowing her life had now transformed itself into the sweetest of victories. With it came completion, a vindication, a righteous fury bent on remaking the world.

And all it will cost is her sanity.

*Please select your weapon proficiencies. (zero out of a maximum of two)

‘More choices?’ she wondered, now impatient to leave this unreality to return and save her city. However, as she continued to read, she realised that this was perhaps another opportunity for increased power.

*Notification: Lysander’s Longbow detected, unique proficiency options available.

*Notification: Synergistic Affinity Cluster detected (Life, Mind and Spirit.) Optimising options.

• Aegimancer: - Conjure and empower shields with arcane power, strengthen armour and armaments against physical and arcane damage.

• Arcanist (Advanced Proficiency): - Enhances the potency of your arcana when using channelling artefacts.

• Arcane Archer (Advanced Proficiency): - Summon arcane arrows imbued with arcane power.

• Attuned Arcane Archer (New) (Advanced Proficiency): - Arcane Archer proficiency is tied to an artefact (Lysander’s Longbow). You may now summon and dismiss the artefact from the aether, gain access to artefact specific functions.

• Blade Singer (Mastery): - Vastly enhances speed, accuracy and strength when fighting with edged weapons. Bonus proficiency when wielding dual blades.

• Duellist (Mastery): - Improves speed and accuracy when fighting with edged weapons.

• Skirmisher: (Advanced Proficiency) - Enhances proficiency with any polearm, staff or spear. Conjure arcane throwing spears of your chosen law.

• Spirit Blade (Advanced Proficiency): - Summon and command blades of spirit. Imbue edge weapons of all kinds with arcana.

Effni gazed upon the list with mild bemusement. An endless list of options, grey and inaccessible, lay below. ‘But what did this mean? That I could become an instant master at any of the mentioned fighting styles? And what if I were already a master? Would the wrong selection fail to enhance me? Improve my abilities beyond the level of mastery?’

“Rasputin! Where are you?” Effni said with more than a hint of frustration. Silence. Frustrated, she looked at the list again. Just like the last option, perhaps this was less about what she had to do, what could or should be done, and more about what she wanted. But she wanted to select every option. Mastery in all of those forms of combat would surely be helpful, if not ideal.

Effni was a melee fighter, an edged weapons adept and a Reaeryn Blade Singer in her own right. And while she was no master in any specific weapon, as those affectations were purely a metric of age and experience, she was peerless in her ability to dual-wield knives. She considered adding to her talent by selecting either the Blade Spirit, Duellist and Blade Singer options.

But was this what she wanted? Sure, her instincts were that of a melee fighter, of closing with the enemy. She was the anti-mage that suppressed and disabled the mage. But she was no longer just a melee fighter, she had magic now and perhaps a new outlook would enable her to best take advantage of her unique gift.

Furthermore, she had people to rescue, an army to defeat and a city to save. Beyond what she wanted, she had to choose something powerful. Abilities that could scale far beyond the limits of what a single fighter, even a supernaturally gifted one, could do. She knew Will was one such person. Now it was her chance to become such a being too.

You have selected Arcanist and Attuned Arcane Archer. This selection requires attunement to artefact (Lysander’s Longbow). Confirm? [y/n]

For a moment that would have stretched dozens of breaths, Effni looked towards the Spirit Blade and Blade Singer professions with a sense of longing and regret. She was quintessentially a warrior, a scout, a master of the Long Knives, a creature of the melee. She was proficient at the bow but no master. She had always seen herself, if not somehow unsuited to it, but more just merely a tool, a necessary option that enabled her to act at a distance, as and only when required.

But this had to change. Effni had to change, if only to adapt to certainties of the world shifting before her.

Effni selected [Y].

And suddenly, Effni felt something new. It was like the awakening of a numbed limb; a thousand tiny pinpricks of sensation erupted… except this limb, this brand-new part of her awareness, lay annexed beyond her body. There was a physical gap between where this object existed and the boundary of self. Effni’s mind quailed at this apparent paradox, this alien, disconcerting feeling of something demonstrably not her, sharing every privilege of her psyche.

‘Issealla’s mercy, what have I done!?’ she asked in terror as she felt herself flow into this unfamiliar part of herself. Her perception felt stretched, sheared, tapered and twisted as her essence literally spilled beyond the confines of her own skin. And even when it was over, when she realised that this new limb was once Lysander’s Longbow, the profound sense of unease remained.

* * *

Light returned and Effni gasped as if tasting air for the first time in a week. Eyes immediately locked on the scene below. Will was frozen, locked in some sort of arcane contest while titanic energies sought to crack open his mind. For a heartbeat, she marvelled he could resist powers that far exceeded anything she had even imagined, let alone witness.

But now it was time to act.

Arms outstretched, she assumed a familiar stance as she mimed bringing her bow to bear. And just like that, with no light or fanfare, her bow materialised in her grip.

It was different in appearance, now dull-grey instead of brilliant ivory with large inset runes replacing dense script.

She drew upon the weapon and channelled. With the razor of intent sharpened by years of facing opponents more powerful than she, Effni forged an arrow out of arcana the size of a javelin. Unlike the previous quarrels of light she had fired today, this grey bolt thrummed pure with spirit magic. Light refracted into prismatic rainbow hues; she fought for jagged breaths as straining limbs transferred kinetic and arcane energies.

She sighted, aiming for the centre mass of the monster. The edges of her vision blurred. Her breathing finally slowed and with one deliberate exhale, she released. Blinding light washed out her perception. A crack of thunder accompanied an explosive shockwave that threw her off from her perch.

* * *

Quinris fell to his knees completely drained. His aquatic hearing organs sang with the dull chime of hammered steel while humid gouts of air whistled through breathing pores. Trying to recover, he took a handful of breathing cycles before the pain lessened and his previous urgency returned. Lifting himself to move, he realised that the prior sense of dread, that terrifying mountain of power, was… gone.

This was no less reason to approach with caution as he made the one hundred paces beneath the cover of the nearest enormous trunk. He looked around at the ripped branches and blown-over vegetation and wondered how anyone survived being at the centre. As he made his way past a small, uprooted tree, he saw his friend at the centre of a crater at least his own height in depth.

He was intact but completely motionless, strewn on the far edge of the crater. His silver eyes were now lidded in unconsciousness. This is how those Reaeryn slept, so perhaps… Yes, he noticed Will’s gradually moving chest. As Quinris neared, the chill wind that typically surrounded his friend was now a vortex of swirling ice. The generalised air of arcane potency now had its source.

Upon the lip of the crater, Quinris swivelled. Of the demon, not even a trace of it remained. The calm, damp wind of afternoon carried the scent of freshly disturbed soil and falling dust. Another, more unpleasant taste also became apparent as he hesitated. It was like overcooked meat, except acrid and laden with rot.

* * *

Quinris slid down the shallow lip of the crater dragging Will’s limp form behind him; this was after a brief but valiant attempt to pull both himself and his friend up and away into some cover. Will’s body was warm considering just how cold the air around him felt.

“William, are you there?” Quinris prodded. Using Neuromancy, he could feel little change to the usual, scattered disposition of his friend, except there was a small part of his mind that gleamed, like once-burnished metal now polished to a brilliant shine. This part of Will’s mind was empty, frighteningly so, but as he waited and concentrated, he could feel even this slowly change. Here, it reverted to a consistency similar to the rest of his mind. And so Quinris waited, hoping that when this process completed, his friend would revive.

“Hello Skivvan.”

Quinris jumped in surprise. He turned to find the silhouette of a Reaeryn female. She stood tall upon the lip of the crater back-lit by the dappled evening sun. With his hearing loss and neuromantic pre-occupations, it was no surprise that she had caught him off guard. However, this did nothing to quell the feeling of exposure and unease.

The figure slid down the mud-strewn sides of the crater as he stared and probed the mind of the newcomers.

“Hello Reaeryn,” Quinris spoke; as he did so, he noticed the rain of leaves all around them; over a quarter of the leaves from the forest canopy had fallen.

“Our battle wounded the forest, I will see to it shortly but first… May I?”

‘Our battle?’ he wondered. After probing her emotions and surface thoughts, Quinris raised a dirt-stained palm in accent. He stared at her, this clearly martial presence in front of him, standing eye to nose with himself. There was the faintest hint of recognition there, in the bearing, but also in the eyes. Blue eyes that seemed too sharp, too steady and far too bright. She cupped his small broken hand with her own before laying a second palm on top of his own.

Sunlight warmth imbued with the life of the forest infused him. He inhaled deeply as the power suffused every vein in his body. Quinris’s ears popped even as the ringing in his head cleared. His sight grew deeper, richer and as it ended, he exhaled.

“Tha… thank you.”

“It is no trouble,” she said as she moved to the centre of the crater and crouched. He felt something through his feet and his tails, a deep subsonic pulse. And then he gasped as her power was unveiled to him and suddenly, he knew.

A faint nimbus of light coated her as she channelled arcana into the ground. Through the edges of his magical senses, Quinris felt this power as a shadow to the healing energy that only moments ago bathed him.

Ten long breaths passed as the torrent of arcana poured into the ground, into soil and roots and then into the immediate trees surrounding the crater. Leaves still fell, but gone was the smell of wood rot and decaying soil he had not even realised was there until it was gone.

“What did you do?... Guardian,” he said, reminding himself to add her title now that he knew. She flashed him a brief and rueful smile as she approached.

“Not so much... do, more… undid. And to what precisely that might be, well. We may have to wait until our friend here returns to wakefulness. I sense it might not be long, but still, we should find somewhere less exposed to regroup. May I know the name of the one who so valiantly came to the aid of our friend?”

“Of course. I’m Quinris, erm, Quinris Narathune Telirogo, formerly of the Seven Greels Trading Outpost, Guardian,” he answered, reliving the walk through the remains of the outpost in her mind. Effni’s countenance fell.

“For the fate of your village, you have my deepest condolences.”

“It’s fine, I believe my loved ones are safe, that is…”

“Yes, the walls hold for now. I have not made sight of Drizzik in over six days, but I am close enough to feel the state of our capital and the forces amassed outside it,” she said, crouching to lift William. Quinris fell to his knees in relief.

“Thank you, guardian. That news, it means more to me than you could know.”

“I understand,” she said with a gentle smile. “Now,” she grunted. “Why don’t you tell me how you came to meet Will as we find somewhere safe?”

They lifted Will in a stumbling, half-coordinated carry. After cresting the crater’s edge, they walked as he recounted his tale of their meeting.

After he had finished, Effni recalled a distinctly abbreviated description of her mission for aid and how this led to her paths crossing with the traveller. Despite the vagueness of her words, what caught his attention the most was the nature of her mind. Even her muted emotions were guarded all from peering within. Such behaviour would typically be impolite in Qaseri culture, but he brushed it off as part of a myriad of unusual circumstances and her circumspect disposition.

Beyond his questions and general exhaustion, Quinris was grateful that he was still alive.

Perhaps Drizzik still stood and his family were safely behind its walls. Even the chance of such a future was enough to bring the first rays of a dawn light to a shell-shocked mind. And after the nightmarish fear and stress of the last few days, that was a notable change in fortune.

* * *

Will woke with a groan. As much as he appreciated the fact that he was still alive, his trend of passing out after almost every battle was getting old, fast. Beyond a splitting headache, he could sense a familiar presence around him as the dim light as the forest’s root system came into view.

A dawning realisation that the soft, warm ground beneath him was actually someone’s lap caused a sudden spike of wide-eyed alertness. Back-lit by errant sunbeams through the forest above, Will saw a face that drew out an involuntary smile.

‘This is new?’ Will thought as he reached up with a hand to brush the grey band upon her forehead. She gave him one of what Will considered her trademark secret smiles before a quick glance to the side.

“Hey Effni,” Will slurred.

“Hello Will.”

“Sorry I didn’t…” he started, wanting to explain his absence at the meeting point.

“I know. No need to apologise,” she said.

“I didn’t exactly see you being the type for hair accessories,” he continued as his fingers touched the dark metallic band that now encircled her forehead. Through Mana-Sight, tightly wound mana structures formed an ethereal halo before branching deep into Effni’s... mind? Effni’s level rating had also shot up to... thirty-one!? Instantly, he was fascinated. “Woah. Holy shit. This…” He started until awareness of just how familiar his caresses might have seemed kicked in. Frozen with embarrassment, his fingers fell. Effni rolled her eyes.

“You and your artefacts. Remind me to introduce you to our artificers once we make it to Drizzik.”

“Yeah… Drizzik. There’s an invading army...” he started.

“I know.”

“Where are we?” Will said with a grunt as he sat up; looking around, he continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a, erm… Skivvan…” he said in a rush as he tried to sit up.

“Hello William.”

Will turned sharply towards the sound and grinned.

“Quin! Buddy! You’re alive! I take it you two’ve been introduced? If not, Effni, this is Quin, Quin, this is Effni.”

“Yes, we… erm. Now that… Would I be mistaken by calling you Queen Eff…” Quinris started.

“Yes, you would be mistaken,” Effni said with more heat than intended.

“My most sincere apologies, Guardian.”

“It’s… I’m sorry. I know not of the true state of my sister, but as the walls still hold, then the likelihood all is well in the capital remains high,” Effni said, sternness leaking out of her posture. Will looked between the two, deconstructing the elements from the last few sentences; in particular, he noticed Quinris’s level of deference.

“It’s the band around your forehead, it’s some sort of crown or circlet, right? Some royalty thing?”

“It’s just an artefact, one of several I plan to use to end this war,” Effni responded. Quinris seemed unconvinced, Will sighed as he stood. “Would you care to explain just what happened just now? What manner of foe did we just face?” Effni continued.

“I don’t know what it was precisely. A Neuromancer, powerful, really powerful. Maybe some kind of specialist brought in for a trap,” he said.

“A trap? A trap for whom?”

“For me.”

There was silence as Effni’s unwavering gaze pinned him in place. Fingers of Neuromancy danced around the edges of his perception as he clenched his jaw. “Your mind has changed,” she blurted.

“Oh?”

“I can no longer read your thoughts, just your emotions,” Effni replied; for a second, Will was confused, and then he remembered the quantum encryption measures taken to protect his deepest secrets, measures that had just saved his life, measures that, even now he was thankful for, as they allowed him to hide the shame of the disaster that might have been. Her gaze narrowed. “What are you hiding from me?”

Will deflected. “I found a way to protect my mind, to protect this world from my knowledge, just like you said I should.”

“I see,” Effni said, clearly unconvinced. Will suspected that this wouldn’t be the end of the matter. “And why do you think this was some kind of specialist, perhaps this was a leader, a general or lieutenant?”

“Their leader… is... very far away.”

“And how could you possibly know this?”

“I… If it came here, we would definitely know about it, and not in a good way.”

“You are talking like you know more, what aren’t you telling me?” Effni accused, brows furrowing as rising incredulity turned into a cold frown. “I’m sorry. It’s just without access to your thoughts, I am uncertain.”

“Yeah.” Will sighed. “You’re probably used to reading thoughts so I can imagine this being unsettling, now that you can’t.”

“Yes,” she answered simply.

“I tried to read their mind, these monsters. I wanted to see if there was some way to communicate. Some way to find out what they wanted.”

“And what happened?” Effni asked, now curious.

“I couldn’t read anything from them, their minds were walled-off, where thoughts and emotions should have been I could only see darkness. But from every creature I guess the best way to describe what I saw would be to say invisible strings, strings that lead off into the sky, far beyond the sky, in fact. And…”

“And?”

“And, there was something there, I could only feel a presence, but it was alien, it was something… bad, distant but immense, like an evil god.”

“An evil god? Are you certain?”

“No. None of it is certain. Maybe I’m just scaring you with an overactive imagination.”

“Perhaps,” Effni continued, once again unconvinced.

“After that, they wanted me bad… That whole last encounter, so many traps and area-of-effect attacks, high-level enemies and distractions that chased and herded me towards something sent specifically to crush me. It almost did too. Y’all contributed to that last battle, didn’t you? I don’t think I’d have made it without your help, so thanks, and that goes to the both of you,” Will said, catching Quinris’ gaze to express his appreciation.

“Is that what happened at the end? Why I felt sick afterwards? Why part of the forest started to die?” Effni asked.

“Oh. No… no, that was my fault. Sorry,” Will said. Effni frowned.

“What did you do to the forest?”

“I kinda generated a Gamma-ray burst to kill something I really had no right fighting,” Will said with a grin he really didn’t feel.

“A Gamma-ray burst?”

“Yeah, a fancy explosion. We used gamma rays to keep food free of parasites, keeping them fresher for longer. In large amounts it’s quite deadly, it causes ionising radiation… Radiation sickness, which is probably what you felt…”

“But why?” Effni asked, clearly exasperated.

“Why what? Why did I kill it? It was trying to kill me.”

“Why were you even fighting? Why didn’t you just…”

“Just what? Run? Hide?” Will said, all levity in his expression evaporating. “Give up? Lose? Die? This is my world now, this is my fight. To do anything else against what I think we’re facing, would just be a slow death.”

“But Will, you’re not… you cannot throw yourself at monster hordes. What you are… you are too dangerous to...” she said.

“Yes. I am too dangerous. And it was high time they learnt that lesson. They tried to eat me, Effni. They gobbled me up like a rodent; like a tasty morsel of meat. Technically, I did die... and it cost me almost everything. And now they get to learn the folly of picking a fight with a Physicist,” Will said, anger souring his words.

“So all this is this just vengeance, just spite?”

“Yes! Sometimes spite is enough!” Will spat out, nostrils flaring, breath heavy as he turned away from Effni’s cool mask of disappointment to gaze upon the distant light of the cave entrance. “Sometimes, spite is all you have left.”

There was a long silence where only the sound of the distant forest rustling in the wind was heard. “You’re no longer alone, William, you are more than just the sum of all you have lost,” Effni said softly. Will released a long breath before distractedly scratching his scalp.

“I’m afraid, Effni.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because for a human, to be afraid… It’s a dangerous thing. Fear brings out the very worst in us because when we fear, we hate. Knowledge is usually the best way we remedy that failing, to overcome our ignorance of the other.

“But the more I learn about them, the more certain I am in my belief that they are a plague. They need to go, every single one of them needs to be removed from the face of the planet. But by doing so… a war on that scale may risk destroying this world.” ‘I’ve already lost one world, I can’t lose another,’ Will added silently.

“Anyway, don’t we have a city to save?” Will said, focus returning to Effni’s inscrutable stare.

“One does not simply defeat an army in open warfare...” Effni started before scowling at Will’s sudden burst of laughter.

“Sorry, just an old meme,” Will said while dealing with the surreal memory of Boromir during the Council of Elrond.

“At times like this, where I’m certain you’re mocking me or thinking about your elves, that I am not sure I regret being able to access your thoughts.”

“Trust me, you're better off not getting mired in the thoughts of someone brought up on the meme economy,” Will chuckled.

“Yes, I suppose that’s for the best.” Effni squinted in evident confusion.

There was a moment of silence as Will’s thoughts slid towards dark recollections of only moments before. “It was the only thing protecting my mind from that monster in the end.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah, didn’t you see how powerful it was? Level forty-four!”

“Level? Wait, you can divine a person’s strength?”

“Yeah?” Will said while downplaying his feat. “Can’t you?”

“Not to any precise degree. For example, I can tell that your aura, somehow, is significantly stronger now than it was the last time we met, but beyond that, I have little knowledge of your true strength.”

“You’ve also grown in strength. You were a level sixteen before, now you’re a level thirty-one.”

“So my strength has doubled?” Effni questioned.

Will chuckled. “No, it’s an exponential scale. For example, level seventeen is twice as powerful as level sixteen. With your increase of fifteen levels, your actual potential increased by…” Will glanced upwards while he did a quick calculation. “About… thirty-two thousand, seven hundred sixty-eight times. Converted into joules that would be…”

“Thirty-two thousand…”

“Yeah, though the creature we just faced was level forty-four. Over eight thousand times more powerful. Without quantum encryption, that monster would have cracked open my mind like an egg.”

“Quantum? So how does this... encryption work? Magic?” Effni said, once again stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

“Nope. Not really. Do you understand the concept of encryption - using coded messages with ciphers?” Will asked.

“Yes. You’re saying that you did that to your entire mind?” Effni asked in mild disbelief.

“Yeah. Don’t ask how, even I don’t know how it was done,” he said, looking away.

“Did Asterisk do it?” Effni asked, smiling triumphantly as Will’s eyes bulged.

“Asterisk is… Wait. I didn’t tell you about Asterisk, did I? Then how do you know about...?” Will said, his heart suddenly thumping. There was a long pause as Effni either considered whether to tell him or how to.

“Rasputin told me, showed me even,” she said at last. Will’s eyes widened even further upon recognition. Gesturing at her forehead, she continued. “This artefact, it’s so much more than it appears. Within lies a spirit, an A-I, as you would call it, one from your world.”

“Hoooooly shit,” Will said in shock, slowly sitting down as a multitude of thoughts spun through his mind. “Holy shit?” ‘How? How long had it been here? Why here, why now? Were there more AIs on this world? More humans? What did it know? Could this AI help him?’ He looked up; she glanced to the side before walking away towards the entrance. Will followed.

“I can see you... have questions?” Effni said.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Will said as he scratched his head. “Rasputin was a Russian defence AI from Earth, Effni. Highly sophisticated, ruthless, designed to protect hundreds of millions, to end wars before they even began. And you’re telling me that this AI from my world, the world that ended trillions of... that it’s also here and somehow in your hairband?”

“Yes.”

“How? Why? How long has it been here? How did it get here?”

“How? I don’t really know. Why? I think they captured it, enslaved and bound within this circlet as a controlling spirit, or at least that is my best guess. It talks about events that happened on Adeena, millions of years ago, but it mentions other worlds.”

“Other worlds? How?”

“It said that a powerful artificer assembled this on another world,” Effni said, gesturing to her band.

“Do you have any idea how powerful, how dangerous... just its mind... Does it talk to you? Can I speak to it?” Will said with growing enthusiasm.

“It used to, but it’s been quiet since before I… Anyway, what about your AI? Asterisk, how come you never introduced us,” Effni queried, voice edged with accusation.

“His idea, not mine. It wanted to get to know you before revealing itself.”

“And now?”

“And now Asterisk is…” He sighed. “Gone, damaged… kinda. I need to fix it,” Will said mournfully.

“Oh,” Effni said, voice growing small.

“You must have been really looking forward to meeting it, huh?” Will said, smile falling as he caught her expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re crying, something’s wrong,” Will said with growing concern.

“Nothing’s wrong!” Effni replied with a growl. “We shall talk about it later. For now, I have a minor matter to attend to,” Effni said as she wiped away glistening eyes with the back of her hand. At that moment, Effni seemed younger, less the self-assured, impassive elven warrior princess and more… human.

“Not an elf, not a princess!” she said sullenly. Will laughed.

“I thought you couldn’t read my mind?”

“I can always tell what you’re thinking when you ooze that particular emotion along with those preposterous facial expressions.”

“Ha!” Will responded with a laugh. “But something tells me that that artefact makes you more princess than not, especially considering just how much more powerful you’ve become.”

“Speak for yourself. Just how did you defeat thousands of monsters in single combat?”

“With hard work and persistence.” Will grinned. After witnessing his joke fall flat, Will’s mood turned solemn. Will followed her as she stepped into the dusky early evening light of the forest. Insect calls returned absent any sign of larger fauna. The faintest of breezes washed away the faint odour of fermenting soil as the claustrophobic pressure eased in the open.

Will looked outwards to an alien forest and beyond it, a sky surrounded by people who he didn’t understand, not really. Beyond the threat of monsters, the constant fear of sudden violence, there was a longing, a loss and the knowledge that he could never return home, never lower his guard.

“You’re not alone,” Effni said.

“You said that before.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Will said with more than a hint of cynicism.

“I beg your pardon?” Effni said indignantly.

“We both know that you’d be out there, right now, trying to solo the entire army if you could. That’s probably the reason why you went on your mission... isn’t it? Now I don’t expect you to trust me with every single important detail, why should you? But, don’t tell me that I’m not alone because if I wasn’t, and we were friends, you’d be asking for my help.” Effni started a reply, but Will interjected. “I know you need help, you’re not the only one who can read emotions.”

Effni stared into Will, examining every aspect of his expression as if gleaming hidden intentions from the surface of his face.

“There are certain secrets that are not always my own to share.”

“I get that.”

“And you are not a fighter, this isn’t your fight…”

“I am, and this is,” Will said, iron in his voice. “I appreciate that you’re trying to keep me from harm’s way. But until we defeat the folks outside of your city, nowhere’s safe.”

“Fine. Then if we are to do this together. I need to trust that you’ll follow my commands on the battlefield.”

“Yessir,” Will said.

Effni frowned. “And you will take no action that would poison my forest or harm the city, even if your life depends on it.”

“Alright,” Will answered, this time more solemnly.

“Even if my life depends on it,” Effni added. Will grimaced. “You ask for my trust, well this is its price, your trust in me, in return.”

“I…”

“In a fit of pique, you would end the world to win, wouldn’t you? So I need this promise from you on this matter more than any other.” Effni pressed as a shadow fell over Will’s expression. She waited for almost a minute. Will looked within himself, at his actions and emotions over the last few days, at how, when pressed, he had responded to violence in kind.

In that last fight, he could have done several ruinously nasty things, from showering the forest with neutrons to releasing that black hole. These were all things Will had consigned to his Book of Nope. But had he had no options, would he have been so circumspect? His previous lack of restraint had been less a function of his weakness and more an act of nihilism, a subconscious ‘fuck you and this entire world’ because, in the end, it didn’t matter. This wasn’t his world after all, except that now it was. Effni and Quinris were people worth caring about, people worth his restraint. Will reluctantly nodded.

“I’ll follow your lead, no bad ideas. Just, no suicide runs okay? I mean, get me killed if you need to because I’ll probably come back to life, but it would truly suck if this ends with you valiantly dying for your nation.”

“I can’t prom…”

“Then I’ll promise it.”

“What?”

“I promise you won’t die. There, done. It’ll be a far easier promise to keep than the others, really,” Will said, toothy grin on display.

“But you promise to keep them all.”

“Yes.”

Effni exhaled, releasing a tension she had not realised she’d been holding. And as Will watched, she crouched, placing one hand on the ground. Again, there was a subsonic pulse, a resounding thump that seemed to be answered by numerous echoes racing back to her. Will’s Mana-Sight tried to discern the nature of the magic, but it had been too faint, too quick.

“The army amasses, even now their siege engines assault the walls. We have little time, perhaps until sunrise,” Effni said as she rose, voice cold and determined.

“Okay, so... What’s the plan?” Will said.

“I need to know how your magic works.”

Twenty

Pandora

Quinris sat, eating the last of his rations in the dark. The sun-dried Tariboossa fruit lacked the juiciness that he loved, but its concentrated sweet and citrusy flavours were almost enough for him to keep worries of his family’s fate at bay, at least for now. Beyond the sounds of wildlife, soft voices filtered in from just beyond the entrance. It had already been a terrifying, confusing and extraordinary day, and now he was to be escorted to Drizzik by Guardian Effni Naridia? Quinris silently chuckled at the incredibility of it all.

His heart had been lighter ever since Effni’s declaration that Drizzik still stood. It was joyous news indeed, and although the chances of his family making it all the way to the capital unscathed were uncertain at best, he had hope. Now, if only his companions could conclude their discussion so that they could all be on their way. He even considered walking towards his companions to inquire about their travel plans, but after a glance showed both in furious whispers, he wisely decided against it.

In the relative safety and quiet, Quinris drifted off to sleep with dreams of his daughters and a new life in the city pervading his thoughts.

* * *

A loud bang brought his mind crashing back to reality as he startled awake. Reflexively, he convulsed with the sudden terror of a tunnel collapse. He snatched his belongings and rose on unsteady legs as he made his way to the cavern opening. It wasn’t until the sliding trickle of dust and silt had settled, did his heart rate slow. He gathered magic, palm stretched out into the darkness to form a sphere of light and wandered until he saw William and Effni on the surface just above the entrance.

“Do enemies await?” Quinris said, senses alert.

“Oh, no. Sorry, my fault,” William replied. “Just a demonstration of magic. Hey, whilst your here, it might be worth showing Effni your laser beam thing?”

“L-Laser beam thing? I’m sorry but I…”

“You know, the bright-white beam of light thing, the one that blinds everybody. Also, we need to work on making sure that it doesn’t blind everybody,” William continued.

“I’m not sure we have time for this. By the time they get there...” Effni Naridia started.

“Actually, time is something that we can manage. We can get there long before the wards fall,” William countered. Quinris flicked between each speaker as they argued. Tired, scared and as impatient to return to his family as before, the dawning realisation that not even Drizzik might be safe for long, settled over him as he listened.

“Quinris is not a soldier, not a War-mage,” Effni said.

“But I will fight!” Quinris interjected with a resolve that surprised even himself. “If you say we need to go through the army invading our home, then I will fight. If you say our home is under threat, then I will fight. Not a soldier, not a warmage, yes, but not a passenger.”

Effni visibly paled, William nodded. The emotions emanating from both were mixed. However, he could feel admiration from each.

“Very well. Then I require the same pledge I asked of Will, you must follow my orders on the field of battle,” Effni said.

“Understood, Guardian. Your orders I will follow,” Quinris replied.

“So Quin, buddy, you have a moment? I’ve got an idea, well, more a theory I’d like us to test out,” William said as he hopped down into the mouth of the tunnel. Silty streams of soil followed in his wake as he snagged an exposed root to halt his fall. “By the way, how ya feeling? You’ve had little rest, haven’t you?” he asked, voice lowering as he drew nearer.

“Not much, no, I’m well fed however and we Skivvan are resilient, we can go days without sleep and water,” Quinris replied.

“So you’re up for this? We face an army of a hundred thousand monsters, just the three of us, and that’s not counting all the nasty surprises out there they might throw our way,” William said.

“I have already declared my intent, I will fight.”

“But what if… we could get you to the walls safely?”

“Even so,” Quinris said. William searched his face and then his mind for any uncertainty, any misplaced bravado. Quinris felt none within himself, just his desire to return home and a newfound need for his gift to no longer wallow in darkness. A slow smile grew on William as he slowly nodded.

“Great. Well, we’ll get you home,” Will promised before breaking eye contact and looking around. “So, I’ve been wondering, what do you know about the circlet Effni’s wearing?”

“The Dark Crown of Whispers?” Quinris confirmed.

“Yeah... That’s a pretty ominous name for a hairband?”

“It’s an artefact. Powerful, one passed down through the generations of Naridia. It’s said to be last worn by Kai Naridia and has remained in their house’s possession ever since. No one really knows what it does nor how it works, beyond some mention of a curse.”

“What curse?”

“The crown… That once worn, only death may remove. But…” Quinris hesitated.

“But?” Will pressed.

“Death normally comes soon after claiming the crown.”

“Why?”

“That is all I know about the curse. Perhaps it’s as much as anyone can know beyond Effni herself.” Quinris hesitated. “You should know that while Effni Naridia has every right to use the artefact, doing so would be a deliberate act of claiming sovereignty. In this case, it would be seen as a challenge to her sister's reign. If we survive the battle to come, I’m not sure our nation could survive two crowns,” Quinris said gravely.

Will frowned. “Fuck!”

“My advice, stay as far away from city politics as you can, William, and do not declare for one sister or the other. Keep your allegiances to yourself, even when pressed,” Quinris said.

“Allegiances? Right...” Will sighed. “Okay… fine. Well thanks, buddy, I suppose that’s something for me to worry about later, I guess. For now, I’ve got an idea,” William said, arm over Quinris’s shoulder as they walked deeper into the cave.

* * *

Sometime later, the two of them sat in the darkness of the cave while the twilight of the sunset turned the green forest into softer hues of orange and brown. Effni stood a few paces away against the wall, expression curious, if impatient.

“Make a ball of red light just here.” William gestured.

“Red light?”

“Yes, as pure a red as you can make it, just something small and easy.”

As Quinris complied, a fist-sized ball of light illuminated the cave in an oppressive red glow.

“Effni, I want you to stand here. Concentrate on how the light feels?”

“How the light feels?”

“Yes, just tell me if you notice anything beyond the colour of the light changing.”

“Tell me, what are we doing, and why are we doing this now?” Effni said, impatience sliding into annoyance.

Will sighed. “Light, what you see around you, is just one small part of a wider spectrum of energy. We used to call this the electromagnetic spectrum. You’ve seen rainbows before? I mean, you do have those on this world, right?” he asked, receiving hesitant nods before he continued. “Well, on either side of the rainbow, are more colours of light that you can’t see, light with unique properties, invisible light we can use in different ways. If that holds true with magic, I believe it might be possible for Quin to channel, not just the light we can see, but energies we can’t. Now, Quin, I’m going to need you to close your eyes and then, I want you to shift the colour from red, to yellow and back again. As you do that, focus on the energy, on how you change that energy.”

Quinris closed his eyes. He imagined changing his light, such a small and ordinarily insignificant action. After all, he could produce real to life illusions that spanned streets. However, here he was, with but a figment of that power, but truly focusing on how that power worked. It was like moving a limb, a normally instinctive action, but learning which specific tendons handled each movement, how the muscle groups changed with the shift in limb direction and how strain increased or decreased with frequency and intensity.

“Great. Now what I’m going to ask might seem strange, but I really wanna see if you can do it, if your magic works this way or not. That feeling, when you slide the colour from yellow to orange to red, extend it, lean on that feeling as if you’re pushing to a colour beyond red.”

At first, Quinris recoiled at the suggestion, ‘this was surely idiocy?’ In his mind, he knew the colours would just cycle back to magenta and violet, except this was not what his magic told him. This feeling of sliding from orange to red, he knew he could slide even further beyond, and so he pushed…

Nothing happened. Quinris pushed harder with his magic but faced ever-increasing resistance.

But… Why was he pushing? No, he needed to allow himself to slide. That feeling of temporary weightlessness, as if allowing oneself to lean beyond the tipping point of your chair or…

Effni gasped.

Quinris opened eyes to see a dull glow, a deeper red, a red that was more heat than light. And beyond it, William’s smile morphed into a death head’s grin in the dark-red glow.

* * *

*Manna levels at 1056e10 *c14.32...

*Meta stable properties consistent with expected mana...

*Artefact -J12Ce37B - Will reach optimum performance…

*Failure conditions: death of you and everyone you love...

Although the constant stream of unending gibberish was… problematic, to say the least, every so often, Effni would snatch a phrase or sentence that was unerringly clear and terrifyingly prescient. While she had become rather good at shielding her mind since wearing the crown, this often left her blind to the thoughts and emotions of people close to her. Their voices spoke with an inflexion-less monotone. However, once in a while, one of Rasputin’s rambunctious personalities broke through the coordination of madness.

And now she was confident that she would eventually go mad, especially after learning of Asterisk’s fate. Effni had no regrets. She had found her law, a Law of all things! An achievement so rare that fewer than a dozen out of a thousand, thousand ever achieve it within their lifetimes, with most that do, towards the later parts of their life. With a bitter smile, Effni acknowledged the irony that, despite her youth, this was also the case for her.

They also had a plan, a strange and impossible plan. But it was the only plan that either left them alive at the end or left the city or most of the forest intact. She remembered immediately shutting William down when he advocated ‘nuking’ the army. Not only did the small snatches of emotion and thoughts transferred through Silowntir convince her that this nuking would have been a tremendously destructive idea. A cacophony of voices, far more than the usual gibberish, had risen in apparent protest. Above all was a shrieking voice, one that repeated over and over above the others, loud and insistent. Even now, if she concentrated, she could pick out the low murmur of its message.

‘Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods’ gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the ‘lucky jar.’ Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night…’

The thought had become so poisonous, so insidious, that Will had picked up on it as they left.

“Are you okay?” he asked again. It was a question she would’ve typically brushed off regardless of her mood; however, behind his words was a mountain of compassion. His silver eyes were fixed, allowing no chance for dissembling. She really didn’t want to go into the problems she faced right now, so instead, she attempted a slight deflection.

“Who is Pandora?” she asked.

“Pandora? I don’t know anyone called… Hold up, do you mean Pandora as in Greek myth Pandora?” Will said, clearly mystified.

“Perhaps, Pandora had a jar filled with evils and opened it. It sounds like a story or legend.”

“But how…?”

“This artefact, it is called the Crown of Whispers. By its apt title, I’m sure you can imagine how such tales may have been introduced to me,” Effni said, keeping her response deliberately vague.

“Huh,” he said, looking off into the distance. “Doesn’t it…”

“It’s not, return to my question, please,” she said, pressing him to avoid his concerns as to her state. She watched him as his expression darkened. She could sense a suppressed anger and shame boil over into accusation and then, strangely, acceptance.

“Ancient Greek myths were popular, even in my time. Stories of pantheons of Gods, mortals and demigods gifted with power and magical characteristics. Prime amongst them was the cautionary tale of Prometheus, an immortal titan who stole the gift of fire from the gods to bestow to the mortal humans. He was of course punished by vengeful gods, his brother cursed with Pandora, his bride. Pandora had a gift, a box, or was it a jar? Anyway. She opened it and before she could close it again, all the world’s evils had sprung out. By the time she could close it, all that remained was one thing.”

“And that would be?”

“Hope,” Will said, smile rueful. Effni considered the story in the silence. “We had many such tales on Earth. This one had many potential meanings. For example, striving beyond your station comes with consequences even if you succeed. Or that with knowledge comes evil and peril. That knowledge discovered, cannot be un-discovered. Before, I used to pay little heed to these cautionary tales, they were just scare stories to trouble the ignorant after all. But given my recent experiences, I now find it hard to argue with many of these interpretations. So in this context, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that this story relates to me, specifically.”

“Do you believe yourself to be this world’s Pandora?” Effni asked.

“Maybe,” Will responded. “When I look at you, I see someone smart with heaps of ingenuity, and I wonder, sure things might be different, but there’s no way most of the things I know, would be unknown to you or the civilisation you represent. But then there are moments, moments when you show me such fear and wariness that it’s like I’ve performed witchcraft, which is nuts because you live in a world of Gods and Magic. Where everything seems to be possible.”

“Not everything is possible, not for everyone. And it’s not just what you know. How you think, it’s so different to anyone I’ve ever met. And your magic. Until just a few moments ago, I’d never heard of a Chronomancer, never heard of the idea of using magic to alter time. And lest we forget you introduced a new god into this world,” Effni said, ending with an angry whisper. She inhaled slowly to reset her emotions.

“You hold the knowledge to end worlds. It’s terrifying, you... are terrifying and were I uncertain of the quality of your soul I would have ended you, even though doing so may doom my city, even if doing so may have been unjust. Because if we survive this, you will change everything.”

“Is this what you’re really worried about? Because if so, I could disappear. Maybe hide in the forest afterwards or find…”

“No! Just... You are what you are, and I for one am grateful, just know that hope is a frightening thing.”

“Why?”

“Because amongst other things, it means you have something to lose,” she said, glaring to ensure the full measure of her meaning was felt. And then she looked away, grabbed her rucksack and shouted, “Quinris! It is time.”

Quinris appeared from behind one of the broader roots. His dark eyes, absent of sclera, blinked as he considered her. She smiled at the Skivvan as its oddly smooth gait brought him closer.

“So Will, this is your plan after all,” Effni said with a meaningful gaze.

“Oh, so it’s my plan now is it?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! Well it’s more a guide, than a plan…” Will qualified. “But so long as your dubious claims of archery prowess hold up. We’ll be fine,” Will said before shifting tone and gesturing for Quinris to come closer. “Okay, so, this part is going to feel a little weird. For this to work, I think you need to stay within five paces of me if possible. Step outside, and we might leave you behind. In which case we’ll probably backtrack so you’ll be fine, I think… probably.” Noticing the sharp glances, Will reiterated, “You’ll be fine, it’ll be fine. Anyway, within this, I guess… time bubble, things might feel different, the air might feel hot, or thin, and if you feel sick or disoriented or for any reason need to stop, just say so, and we’ll stop. Y’all have any questions?”

Effni and Quinris shook their heads.

“Okay, let’s begin.”

Effni felt the air shift as a nimbus of light surrounded them. It appeared as a ghostly pale blue dome that grew in size, spreading out to submerge each of them in a world of eerie silence and preternatural stillness. Despite Will’s warnings, the air did not grow hot, nor were there any impairments to balance, although the darkness of night-time underground felt even more oppressive. At a glance, Effni caught a hint of strain, perhaps even pain, on Will’s expression.

“This is my limit, this dome size, we’re at one hundred to one time compression, so for every four days spent within the bubble, one hour passes outside,” Will said, voice oddly crisp and free of reverberation, as if hearing a spoken voice directly within one’s mind.

“What is one hour?” Quinris said.

“A unit of time, about seven sticks or more than half a stone,” Effni added. Quinris nodded in understanding. Surprising them both, Quinris produced a small globe of light that floated towards the cave ceiling.

“Nice!” Will said.

They moved through the cave system at a quiet, steady pace, arriving at the edge of the forest overlooking the valley by the end of dusk. Will released his hold over the magic and the bubble of time diminished. The sound of moving air, birds chirping and insects calling raced to fill in the sudden end to complete silence. They’d approached one of the lower valleys that moved parallel to the broad flood plain to avoid contact with the enemy. And now, over the lip of the rightward valley, was home. She stepped over to gaze upon Drizzik at night time. The brilliant walls and their active wards blazed in chroma-film, a rainbow pearlescent that towered into the cloudless sky. Beyond, firelight and mage-lamps lit the city in a speckled amber glow, a cluster of fireflies around a central rock. It all but beckoned safety and warmth to all weary souls.

She yearned to be home, to find her sister safe within its walls. Beside her, she could feel a similar emotion emanate from Quinris, while Will’s concerns were more complex, more qualified. As her eyes drifted to the side, she received a harsh reminder of the work yet to be done.

A hundred thousand assorted horrors made a dark smudge on the landscape below. They were a riving mass, still some distance away from the city, yet Effni still saw fiery missiles streaking across the expanse. Siege engines throwing what must have been burning, boulder-sized projectiles to crash upon the impervious screen. Each impact a scintillating ripple that extended well beyond the physical wall of the city. Gradually, these strikes would drain even the city’s tremendous wellspring of power, a reservoir of energy Effni knew couldn’t last much longer.

The Nihiliphem, a name Quinris and Will had later informed her of, formed as ranks amongst the machines that assaulted her city’s defences. Lanterns of red light dotted the moving caravan, too distant to discern details upon. It was her first, true, unobscured sight of the enemy, the dark malignancy blighting her world.

“We fight them on the plains,” Effni said absently, almost entranced. Besides her, Will looked on. She turned to look at him, imagining this sight as seen through his eyes. Suddenly, Effni realised she missed feeling his thoughts, her own abilities clouded, and his mind now hidden by an impervious grey mask. He turned to her as if only just realising she had spoken.

“The plains?” he asked.

“The lands outside of the wards, yearly floods by the Dulseenie and Desuru have carved out the plains below over generations, see the rivers that flank the city,” she said while gesturing.

“Yeah, but…” He sighed. She waited. “It’s likely we’ll destroy the land outside the wards, if my calculations are correct…”

“As long as the wards hold and we all make it out of this alive,” Effni said.

“Yeah. There’s a reason we didn’t fight like this on my world; with massed ranks of soldiers, all in one place waiting to be slaughtered.” Will grunted. “But you know a part of me still thinks this won’t work, I mean, an entire army of monsters, with who knows what kind of magic… I guess that’s why we do field tests and experiments, because despite what the maths say, reality has a funny tendency of biting you in the ass.”

It was Effni’s turn to grunt in agreement.

“War is often like that. I too wonder if this plan of yours will work.”

“More battle-outline… Then plan. And let me guess, it’s my plan if it fails, and our plan if it works?”

“Exactly,” Effni said, smiling as she imagined the cacophony of unspoken thoughts running through his mind. “You know, I regret no longer being able to see into your mind at times like this.”

“Huh?”

“As you speak. What you say and what you’re thinking are often separate things. I only see the full picture when I have both because without your thoughts, a lot of the context is lost,” Effni said, gaze returning to the battlefield. They were silent for long moments before Will responded.

“There might be a way to grant you access.”

“Oh?” Effni asked before catching that familiar shadow falling over his features. “Why do I have the sense that there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“It can wait till after.”

“Tell me now, and I’ll be the judge.”

“Oh? How about you telling me about a certain cursed, magical artefact?” Will said with a significant look at her brow. “Yeah, it seems we both have a lot to talk about. I think there might be a way of giving you access to my thoughts again, like an encryption key.”

“A key to your mind?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re not sure whether you trust me anymore?”

“Something like that,” Will answered. She searched his face for a moment more before returning her vigil to the landscape below.

* * *

“Soooo... do you need to take a practise shot or something?” Will said with half a smirk. In the late twilight, his mocking grin might have been lost on Effni were it not for that uncanny ability to read, if not his thoughts, then his emotions.

“Only if you are volunteering to be the target?” Effni shot back.

“Ouch!” Will said in mock offence. In actuality, Will was nervous.

Will was no grand strategist, no general with any experience in combat before this week. Beyond computer and role-playing games, his knowledge of warfare was limited to a handful of PBS articles and no more than a dozen hours of the History Channel. He would have been perfectly happy leaving this war to the natives, was still happy to, in fact. However, given Effni’s admission that even Drizzik’s wisest and strongest had already succumbed to the horde below, Will knew he should’ve had no chance.

Even still, between his experiences in the forest earlier that day and the disconcerting feeling that something wasn’t quite right with his magic, doubt undermined his confidence in the plan. Even now, he felt his arcana roil within his chest. His command over magic had felt uncertain ever since the fight against the Mind Flayer. And while he thought he could still slow time, aspects of his arcana such as Neuromancy, Carnomancy, and his blood magic had felt sluggish and even more painful than usual. Compounding that fact were the mana signatures spotted below, some of which were in the high thirties. Beyond that, Effni’s archery was unknown to him, and apparently, if his read on her emotions were to be believed, it was a mystery to Effni as well. And so his suggestion of target practise perhaps driven by his now-genuine anxieties, was only half in jest.

This location, less than a kilometre away from the army’s furthest edge, was above a floodplain that had zero forms of natural cover beyond the nearby trees. In theory, their plan had merit; it was simple, logical and given everything Will knew about the Nihiliphem, it had a pretty good chance of working. But he couldn’t help wonder if there was a better, more specific way of dealing with what equated to a cluster of infantry and siege equipment. He also couldn’t help fearing all the possible ways the enemy could surprise them.

* * *

Effni’s bow reemerged as if pulled out of a slit in space.

“That is sooo cool,” Will whispered as his inner geek turned green with envy.

Effni had told him of how several of those alternative firing modes had recently been revealed to her upon activation of the crown, one of which, while mana intensive, had the potential to drastically improve their chances.

Will relinquished his hold on the time bubble as he took on his role as support. A flash of white and green light spread across the ground as a powerful aura of rejuvenation washed away fatigue and minor injuries.

“Wow. What else can you do?” Will asked, realising just how much his concentration and alertness had fallen.

Effni quirked an eyebrow in response before answering. “As a newly risen Archmage, I am sorely lacking in training and capability, so for now, my list of abilities is far more limited than I’d like.” Will watched as she retrieved a distinctive arrow from her rucksack. One of but a handful of special arrows she and all Rangers such as herself possessed. Arrows that, when fired, would light up like signal flares alerting their presence to watchmen upon the walls of the city, and most likely, the enemy laying siege. Will tried to argue against it, failing to see the value of alerting the city, and most importantly, the enemy to an impending attack, but Effni insisted that their forewarning and cooperation could prove vital if things took a turn for the worse. So she deemed it worth the risk despite their apparent mobility advantage.

“Are you ready to proceed?” Effni asked as she aimed her bow into the sky.

Will released a long breath, catching Quinris’ nod in affirmation before replying, “Let’s go.”

And upon the crimson streak of sparkly light that shot up into the sky, the battle of Drizzik began.

* * *

In the forest clearing overlooking the city, Will stood behind Effni with Quinris watching on. Effni lowered her aim, sighting upon, Will knew, one of the dozens of siege engines pummelling the city wards. As she drew upon the invisible bowstring, substance coalesced from motes of light to form a diaphanous spear of pearlescent grey.

Will placed his palm upon Effni’s shoulder in an action they had practised only enough to know that it could be done. The cool black leaves of Effni’s mail shifted beneath his fingers as shoulder muscles bunched in preparation for release. Through Mana-Sight, he saw a tremendous wellspring of power flow into a weapon, and white light, brilliant and stark for its contrast in the night time, etched the arrow and then a glowing bowstring whose brightness intensified the longer Effni drew. And then Will smiled after catching something in the corner of his vision: dozens of javelin-sized arrows conjured into existence as if a wall of invisible archers stood beside them.

As she continued to draw, he felt Effni’s mana reserves plummet as, around them, rods of Silverlight sharpened with eye-watering intensity.

Will focused, his grip upon the Chronomancy as solid as ever as he connected thin tendrils of magic to each of the twenty-five projectiles and then pushed, channelling even more power, all of his power. It was a river of magic that he could feel leave his body in a rush, one that suffused the air with the flavour of entropy and time.

Effni flinched, and for a moment, Will feared he had disrupted her spell, but she held on to her attack, straining at the physical and arcane toll this combined feat of spellcraft required.

Power continued to flow through his veins as the world tilted and darkened. Each projectile flared with light as they were imbued within bubbles that dilated time to a hundredth of reality. There was a burning sensation akin to heartburn the longer he continued to channel at the edges of his power. His breathing deepened, then turned into sharp hisses as he held onto arcana that became increasingly sluggish and oily with every breath.

Effni released, and instant relief combined with fear and concern had Will letting go to fold over, as if winded. Effni was no better as wobbly knees gave out to see her sink to the floor.

A flash, followed by the eardrum-rupturing pressure wave, sent everyone to the ground. Air was stolen from lungs as branches, even this far into the forest, ripped from trees. It had been the first explosion of any kind Will had experienced without the shield of Chronomancy, and he felt tremors through the earth and vibrations in every tooth. Now there was no sound beyond the whine of tinnitus as he covered his eyes just in time.

Effni had described the properties of her projectiles during the planning stages as bolts of spirit magic with the capability to knock down castle walls. Will had no idea what spirit magic was or how it worked, but by the explosive results, it was clear each bolt did indeed carry some measure of kinetic energy; energy multiplied by his overpowered affinity for time.

* * *

As the dust settled, even the residual feeling of veins sucked dry by mana overuse wasn’t enough to diminish his manic glee.

“Kabooom, motherfuckers,” Will whispered into the wind.

He waited while the ringing in his head subsided and the distant dust cloud settled. After several moments, he found hope rising within his chest. Surely it wasn’t over, was it? It couldn’t be this easy? Could it?

Instead of the roaring horde of angry monsters, only the scattered sound of wind and falling detritus returned to him as ears popped. Additional seconds passed as they held their breath.

And then he felt it, a dread malevolence, a feeling at once familiar and distinctly unwelcome.

“Fuck!” Will hissed as Effni’s lips thinned into a severe expression. “I guess that means Plans A through F are out,” he continued as he stood up, hands balled into fists as the entirety of their battle plan unravelled. They had planned to kite the enemy, using elevation and mobility to their advantage, but now that was no longer a viable strategy. Will helped Effni and Quinris to their feet before reinstating his temporal dome. Will thought furiously, discarding ideas as fast as he formed them. In the end, though, he saw no alternative to what he had to do.

“I have to go in,” Will said.

“You can be such an arrogant…”

“I’m the only one who can shut down the portal, and I can’t protect you if you come with me,” Will argued.

“No, remember your word! We do this together just as we agreed,” Effni countered.

Will wanted to argue further, knowing he could force the issue now by leaving them behind. They might be safer here, but there was no way to be sure. The pain that washed over him as he channelled the full extent of his magic, just moments before, had spooked him. Will was no longer confident his magic would work properly. Looking away, he scratched his scalp as he stared off into the settling dust cloud as if looking for a sign that would decide his conflicting thoughts. As the sky darkened into deepest night, fires and craters dotted the plains outside the city, a ghostly stillness settled over the battlefield.

“Alright. We all stay inside the bubble, so watch your step. When I get to the portal, you’ll be on your own while I take it down. I don’t know exactly how these portals work, but I imagine they need something or someone on both sides to set it up, so it’s likely we might meet resistance before we get there. Also, firing your weapon or using any ranged attack magic might be difficult due to temporal refraction at the bubble’s edge.”

“Temporal refraction?”

“Yes, it’ll be like shooting an arrow into the lake, what you aim at might not be where you imagine it to be,” Will answered. “Even your laser beam might be affected, so try to account for it when you aim.”

“I think I understand,” Quinris.

“So… Let’s go save your city,” Will said, turning to walk away upon catching what he believed with increasing certainty, was the glare that signified Effni’s total lack of amusement.

Twenty-One

Ashland

Walking through the aftermath, Will couldn't help but be impressed by the scale of their initial strike. As they reached the plains base, a lingering mist hid what might have been several football fields' worth of craters. Distant fires glowed like ember lamps in the fog, with the pervading darkness not entirely hiding the remains of the dead.

His eyes lingered on the still-twitching limbs of monsters, the scene around them being one part budget horror movie with cheap animatronics and special effects, and the other part pure nightmare fuel with the smell of burning meat, shit and things even more fetid, assaulting Will's sense of smell.

As they walked, Will fired rocks at moving shadows lumbering in the distant mist. Quinris was silent, no doubt committing the sights and sounds to his darkest nightmares while Effni aimed and fired ethereal shafts with her less than inconspicuous magical bow.

"Is this how war is like in your world?” Will heard Effni ask, as if dreading the answer.

"Yeah, it used to be like this,” Will said, recalling images of mud, death and trenches from the First World War's Battle of the Somme. She looked at him in expectation of elaboration, but Will simply continued to walk.

Suddenly, Will screamed, stumbling to his knees. A Blood Singer's song pulsed from beyond the crater they traversed. Quinris collapsed, twitching on his side as Will tried to face the threat. Hidden from sight and unable to retaliate, Will tried to focus, tried to pull on the flavour of his Hemomancy even as his grip on Chronomancy loosened. His bubble of time popped, revealing the screeching wail of a monster, and then Will's vision went white with pain.

Beyond the pain was the fear. The fear of being eaten still lingered like a malignant disease, but now it was a secondary concern to the prospect of failing himself and his friends. With blood boiling in his veins, Will forced himself to his hands and knees. He would crawl if he had to, crawl and punch and…

A wave of indiscernible power washed over him before an abrupt cessation of agony. He heard Effni scream, not in pain but in fury as she crested the lip of the crater and leapt out of sight with knives drawn. Will rolled to his back, heavy breaths thick with relief, before turning to stand.

"You okay, buddy?" Will groaned as he reached out to lift the Skivvan to his feet.

"What was that?" Quinris replied, fear distorting his telepathic voice.

"I call those fuckers blood singers. I have a fun story of being eaten by one of those things, I'll have to tell you about it sometime. Come, Effni might need our help."

* * *

“Yo, you alright?" Will asked as he found a very bloody Effni besides the corpse of a huge Blood Singer. The elephant-sized creature’s wings lay in tatters while fresh skull wounds seemed to ooze dark blood that glistened in the firelight. She stood panting, white-knuckle grip clutching a longbow that glowed with a ghostly grey iridescence backlighting the coils of steam rolling off her armour. Before answering, she suddenly drew and sighted her bow, firing at a distant, moving shadow.

"I'm fine, like I said, we'll protect you,” she said, sapphire eyes gleaming with satisfaction. Effni crouched to lay a palm against the ground and sent a pulse through the earth.

"What is it?" Will asked as he looked towards the target of her attention.

"I believe there might yet be some fighting before us,” Effni said. Will pulled on his Chronomancy to restore the protective dome of time. He sent a pulse of arcana, hoping to avoid any more surprises, but found little sign of anything living. 'Could something be blocking my arcana? A ward maybe?' Will considered as they cautiously made their way through the eerie, pockmarked landscape.

The deeper they walked into the still-lingering mist, the more certain Will was that this was yet another trap. At a hundred to one Dilated-Time, their slow, careful traversal by foot would seem like a jet aircraft zooming past at over two hundred miles an hour, and while that may have been fast, perhaps too fast to contemplate monsters intercepting, the enemy had one decisive advantage; they knew precisely where their objective lay.

Will froze as the edges of his mini-map turned red. Like a tightening noose, contacts with power levels ranging from fifteen to thirty raced towards them at speeds that would have given them trouble were it not for Will's unique affinities.

"Run!" Will shouted. Darts impacted the bubble's edge to fall harmlessly to the ground as they dashed, no longer avoiding the shallow craters as they made a B-Line for the target. Mid sprint, Effni drew and fired several times at targets beyond perception as panic squeezed Will's heart. He joined them in the attack, intermittently flinging stones and small boulders ahead of them. Part of him was conserving his energy for what he knew was ahead. Another part feared doing more harm to his uncertain mana core by pushing too hard, too soon.

Quinris stumbled, forcing Will and Effni to skid to a halt, bodily dragging their companion to his feet as they continued their mad race to the portal. The intermittent emergence of darts turned into a torrent that plunged into the bubble's skin before harmlessly falling to the floor. While these proved to be of little concern now, Will feared what might happen if the bubble went down.

That was the moment all three caught their first glimpse of the destination. A black dome, made opaque by mist and darkness, came into view.

"Is that some kind of ward?" Will wondered while contemplating dealing with something as problematic as aegis magic in the middle of a battle. And then the ward flared white. Knowing what came next, Will bellowed a sudden roar. "GET DOWN!" Flinging himself and Effni to the ground as he ceased all magical channelling.

The force field exploded in a shockwave of arcana while darts and other projectiles whizzed overhead. Beyond was the tremor of a stampede, chittering voices and the deep wails of something dark and mephitic to Will's arcane senses.

Looking up, he could see creatures in the mist racing towards them. Unaffected by the flaring force-field, he channelled all his strength into a barrage of telekinetic projectiles, launching dozens of rocks to whizz into their path.

A flare of light signified Quinris's involvement as they continued to lay down fire just dozens of meters away from where Will knew where the portal had to be. As more darts caught on to their current position, Will focused, turning his attention towards redirecting projectiles at first, away from their position, and then back towards any target he could see. He rose, arms outstretched in a mirror to his intent.

A soft dome of time formed around them, slowing their perception of reality to just a fifth of real-time, such was the strain on his focus and magical power.

"Get to the portal!" Effni commanded as she pulled Will to his feet. Ahead lay chopped-up meat and dying creatures unaware of their own demise. Effni's firing rhythm was in sync with her steps, her focus matched only by their determination as they ran towards their aim.

Will could see the portal and through it, a boiling mass of Nihiliphem pouring from one world into theirs. Hundreds of them every second, some being crushed under the stampede of taller, stronger creatures, creatures Will had never seen before amongst the howling Flesh-Golems and Blood Singers that made up the bulk of the invading army of madness. He howled as he ran headfirst, exhausted, disgusted but unwilling to provide a new answer to the universe's favourite question. With every projectile he sent screaming back at the horde, he imprinted his will on reality, his wordless roar a mantra; I will close this portal, I will protect my friends, I will save this city, I will overcome and survive.

And yet, the seemingly endless monsters surrounding them pressed in. Quinris's sweeping beam of light did little to thin the herd of encroaching beasts, while a growing number of bodies seemed to stack at the portal's entrance before being periodically cleared by more fearsome creatures. 'What the fuck was that?' Will wondered as a black beast the size of a school bus blinked out of existence before reappearing just before the bubble with a soul-quaking roar. Will froze as the sleek black panther-like monster lashed with serrated tails towards him before finding himself crashing to the ground with an oomph after a timely tackle by Quinris.

Indiscernible features cloaked within auras of shadow, the massive creature blinked again, displacing the air with a snap.

Behind him, Will saw Effni narrowly dodge a bull-rush before terrifying reflexes battered away her retaliatory arrow strikes. As Will pelted it with stones and darts to little effect, his heart leapt into his throat when Effni performed an all too familiar two-footed kick at the enormous monstrosity.

With its attention focused squarely on the Reaeryn, the tentatively labelled Phase-Beast's gleaming claws came down in what Will knew would be a killing blow.

"STOP!" Will roared as mana channelled through his veins in a rush. He felt the second where his Chronomancy connected with the level thirty-seven creature, a command enforced, if only for a moment, by the very fabric of spacetime itself.

The deadly paw strike seemed to slow, as if stuttering for just a second, before Effni's mighty two-footed leap struck its chest with a deep, familiar crack of magic. Will stared in wonder as he felt the beast's arcana diminish. From a nigh-insurmountable level thirty-seven to a level nine, the aura of shadows masking its features disappeared in an instant to reveal a bulbous head with bulging eyes, thick grey, spiky fur with multiple oversized, snake-like tails. One of which came round to whip Effni, striking her midair and sending her spinning out of sight.

"Noooo!" Will screamed as he directed a storm of boulders and dirt towards the now-diminished beast.

And then the world turned inside out as a brilliant beam blasted the creature's face, boiling eyeballs, flesh and bone before tunnelling through brain to pierce the back of the creature's skull. Blinded by the afterimage, Will blinked as he stood before the smoking carcass, not quite believing it was dead and he wasn't.

And then he remembered Effni. He ran, searching for the Reaeryn amongst the piles of monster corpses. There! He found her bruised but still fighting. He knelt upon one knee, firing a steady stream of arrows in every direction. His heart fell as he saw several darts poking out of her thighs. Quinris followed right behind him to Will's relief, legs uncertain after his recent exertion of power.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, close the portal," Effni growled.

"Quin, do you have any more left in the tank?"

"What?" Quinris replied, his telepathic voice dim amidst the cacophony of chaos around them.

"Do you have any magic left?" Will said, his dome of time re-intensifying while he took a moment to assess his surroundings. Despite the seemingly never-ending horde of creatures surrounding them, most enemy fire now came from the portal. Beyond darts, bolts and thrown spears now rained upon the bubble, slowing down to sink as if caught in a wall of honey.

Effni stood unsteadily, pulling out the last remaining dart. She straightened, exhaling deep with feet spread shoulder-width apart before an aura of what had to be pure, soothing life energy washed over them.

"Woah,” Will said.

"I believe I can still fight on," Quinris said, partially rejuvenated, although his wandering gaze and slumped posture gave Will concern.

"You need to protect Effni, can you use your illusion magic, or maybe turn yourselves invisible while I run to the portal."

"No, we go tog…" Effni started.

"No! Any closer and I will risk harming you with the backwash. This portal is bigger and more powerful than the ones before, this is as close as you need to be, you can still cover me from here."

Effni simply stared at him, expression strangely pensive. "Need I remind you of all your promises? To stay alive, to keep me alive, to keep this world safe?"

"I intend to keep them."

"Good, because I'll be very cross if you happen to break any of them," Effni said. Will simply nodded.

"Quinris, buddy, I'm relying on you too to help me keep my promises. When we get out of this alive, I'm going to owe you one."

"As long as my family survives, I’ll consider all debts paid in full."

"Okay, alright,” Will said as he turned towards the portal. Unlike the level twenty portal from the forest, this one towered over twenty feet tall and pulsated with a sickening miasma of taint. The faintest odours of volcanic ash tainted the already foul-tasting air as the fog around them seemed to intensify the longer the fight continued. Will took a slow step, a step that seemed to pass some threshold or break some intangible tether to his companions or this world. A volley of javelins streaked past him, detonating with the force of high explosives. Will added to the conflagration with his customary torrent of telekinetically propelled debris, a second and third step taking him closer to the hole in reality.

As he came closer, his friends beyond the sphere of his protection, he collapsed the time bubble, further enhancing his own level of Dilated-Time. He felt the heat, the ionised atmosphere glowing around him as he took step after measured step, his projectiles now burning streaks across the mist-laden night. He could see individual dog spiders from the mass before him, individual limbs cartwheeling in the maelstrom of impacts, the sheared-off wing of a Blood Singer.

Beneath the mound of monster parts beside him, a Flesh-Golem’s tendril shot out towards Will, catching him off guard. He managed a partial stumble, but it was not enough to avoid the creature ripping into his side, tearing a wide gash just below his armpit. He redirected all of his fire at the mound as it towered some seventy feet before him, just before a silver-grey blur punctured it, its arcane light extinguished forever.

Will silently thanked Effni as he stood, noticing that his wound had yet to heal. A sudden spike of fear shot into his heart as he tried to sense his Carnomancy, attempted to recall the flavour… No, he had to continue to close the portal, he thought, shoving his fears to the side.

Will jogged with one arm wrapped across his chest, the other held out in front of him as missiles continued their deadly barrage. Each blast pushed back the tide of monsters as he moved through burning air.

The node hummed with the subsonic thrum as he approached it.

Will circled the towering reality distortion, gazing through it into the hellscape beyond. A red sky full of falling ash blanketed a basalt landscape teeming with monsters. Beyond, entire ranges of active volcanoes streamed lava into distant lakes.

On the other side, the ravine surrounding the portal teemed with dog spiders. Immediately, Will blasted dozens at a time with telekinetically propelled rocks as quickly as they bubbled out of tunnels in the shallow ravine.

'Okay, now or never.'

Sensing an opening, Will attempted one last glance at his companions. Failing to see them under Quinris's illusion magic, he reached out, palm infused with Arcana and Spaciomancy, and touched the portal.

* * *

Effni had never been this powerful, had this much ability to impose her will on the world around her. Even so, it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. She had long since bottomed out her reserves of stamina and mana, relying purely on the trickle of power she could generate to fire successive shots with her bow, while Quinris kept them out of sight and out of mind with a combination of light magic and Neuromancy.

"What was that?" she hissed, hearing voices at the edges of her perception. She flinched as she thought she saw a shadow moving out of sight in the mist. This was the worst time, the absolute worst time to be doubting herself, her sanity, the integrity of her mind. She tensed, forcefully pushing down the whispers, reinforcing metal walls that sapped even more of her precious resolve.

* * *

Quinris flagged, often favouring his arcane focus to the detriment of his footing or situational awareness. While his visual illusions hid them from sight, her intermittent use of Shadow-Mind and Forest’s Glamour aided their elusiveness. Still, they had both taken darts that, without her life aura to counteract, would have seen the mere loss of sensation to limbs progress into insensate unconsciousness.

Numb fingers dropped Lysander’s Longbow more than once while trembling limbs made accuracy a fight against her own fatigue more than the surrounding horde. Effni prioritised the greatest and closest opponents first.

Even though the torrent of monsters from the portal had dramatically reduced, Effni could still feel the tide of demons around them pressing in, a curtain of black chittering creatures, most with too many legs to count ranging from at least as small as a man, to towering amalgams of flesh and discarded body parts. Those she had to take her time with, requiring the drawing of more magic to produce the larger, more powerful ethereal bolts of spirit the size of spears.

But even with the mana cost paid by her magic, each draw on the bowstring took its physical toll. With muscles profoundly unused to working in such a way for such a sustained period, it was only a matter of moments before she could not go on.

Between shots, something beyond perception caught her attention. She waited, eyes darting around to take in the ghostly desolation around her while her pointed ears curled and twitched to focus in on, less a particular noise, but more a change in the pattern of the surrounding sounds.

At first, Effni attributed the change to a shift in the wind, but the noises grew more distant, changed in frequency before additional sounds came; sounds of distant roars and shouts, of metal clashing, of men and monsters in mortal combat.

A thrill of hope jolted her, instantly rejuvenating sagging limbs and drooping eyelids. For a moment, she feared just how many and how capable the city guards and whatever reserves the city had remaining were. All her nations strongest combatants and magi had long since lost contact with Drizzik, after all. But it was enough hope for now to keep going.

Light and then a tremendous sound gonged behind her, shifting the landscape from night to stark daylight that did little to overcome the fog's visibility impairment. She shaded her eyes, reassuring herself with the sight of Quinris's presence as a trembling roaring overwhelmed the distant sounds of fighting, filling the atmosphere.

And then several pieces fell into place, Will's warning, the portal, his off-handed remark about how he closed the last one.

"No, Will, no…” she said as the air turned chill. Unable to turn around to face the glaring light, air condensed upon her breath as a cold unlike anything she had ever experienced overwhelmed her. She could feel the draft of frozen, sinking air roll across the churned-up battlefield, frost forming on ferns even as she watched. The light and thundering sounds behind her flared before winking out.

"It's gone," someone whispered as the last echoes of thunder reverberated across the plains.

Night-blinded by the spectacle, Effni crouched, blinking furiously as she worked to rid herself of the afterimages. Except that she too could already feel it, or at least the absence of it. That ever-present malevolence had gone. The portal had to be gone.

"Will!" she shouted, standing to find that the ground crunched as footsteps cracked thin layers of ice. "Will?" she repeated, less certain as her mind caught up to the fact that behind her, nothing but an enormous crater remained.

* * *

All was silent after Will touched the portal. Despite its power, its size and its mendacious presence, the structure itself was not evil. Connected to it as he was, he felt serene, as if a shroud of white bathed him to the exclusion of all. The portal was an expression of purity, a living avatar of the flavour of space itself.

Within his mind's eye, he witnessed the death of a blue hyper-giant, a bursting smoke-ring from which, over decades, diaphanous clouds of platinum, gold and a multitude of elements heavy and rare, condensed to form the seeds of future worlds and stars. He became the path of a photon, a trillion light-years of unobstructed travel experienced in no time at all. He felt the strange and wondrous ways spacetime had grown and stretched over passing aeons, forming vast structures on the grandest of scales, and so much more. Here he could see precisely what his affinity with this magic was and what it was not, gained insights into how it could be used. And somehow, through time, motion, heat and… other yet to be discovered affinities, Will saw beyond.

This portal's power, no… its solidity, resonated with him, enabling connections between disparate motes of thought. These connections forced an influx of barely comprehended, consecutive breakthroughs, stealing Will's breath away.

This divine instant of epiphany made all his challenges, his petty aspirations, seem small.

And then he blinked. Another Phase-Beast tore towards him, several tonnes of shadows and ferocity. It pounded the basalt in its sprint, strangely immune, Will realised, to the effects of Dilated-Time.

"How!" Will managed before diving out of the way of its leap. Scrambling to his feet in the mud and mist, the whoosh of displaced air signalled the Phase-Beast’s arrival. Will tried to syphon power from the portal, knowing that without Effni's help, his own attacks wouldn't be enough.

He pulled on his arcana and… nothing.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Will hissed as he circled the portal mouth, trying to place the towering entrance between him and it. 'This can't be good. Why can't I drain the portal? I must be doing it wrong, or maybe the portal's too big?? Is something else different this time?' A flashing tail whipped Will's thigh, lacerating skin and muscle. He stumbled upon receipt of the stinging pain, marginally dodging a lunging paw swipe. Blood trickled down his leg as he realised his wound had not automatically healed, the sour flavour of Carnomancy nowhere to be felt.

Hot panic turned rational thinking into a series of hysterics before the creature blinked out of existence, Will feeling the puff of displaced air before diving to the side on reflex.

"Of course I can't obstruct it - it's a freaking Phase Beast, it can bypass any obstacle," Will squealed, rolling to his knees to send a flurry of projectiles at it. Something was blocking his ability to disturb the portal, another presence, another mind? Was the portal itself blocking him somehow?

"Well think, dumbass."

Will glanced through the wormhole. The immediate vicinity seemed clear, the foreboding Ashland as good a stand-in for an actual Hell as any other. He dove through the portal, narrowly avoiding another swipe as he left the world of Adeena and its mist-strewn battleground behind, and immediately felt something different; many things were different, in fact.

The gravity on this world was noticeably greater, perhaps fifty to a hundred percent higher, causing Will to stumble hard, slapping palms to the ground as he caught his fall.

The air was caustic rotten eggs and brimstone, burning and cloying not only his throat but forcing his eyes to water. But there was something else, a presence giving lie to the previous assumption that the region around the portal was clear.

No, something was here as he looked around, seeing the distorted visage of the Phase-Beast through the looking glass. Thankfully, swapping worlds seemed to have disrupted whatever ability that enabled it to match his reference frame, and so it stood there, frozen in time as Will continued to assess his surroundings.

Deciding to channel power into reducing his own gravity, Will rose, eyes weary for surprises and the… something... that had somehow masked its presence. Experimentally, Will levitated several pebbles before flinging them in random directions. He saw no discrepancies as each projectile streaked through the air. Will sent a dozen missiles back at the Phase-Beast that was even now mid-leap through the portal for good measure.

In the clarity of slow-time, Will suspected that whatever magic it used to blink in and out of existence also changed its reference time frame, ‘because of course it did.’

His inner physicist screamed at the discrepancies and potential paradoxes. Ultimately, it meant that Will only had as much time before the beast teleported again to figure this out.

Will circled the portal, lungs increasingly stinging under the salted atmosphere. Hanging flakes of ash intermittently blinded him, forcing him to limp with his arm outstretched as he continued his probe with loose bits of rock.

He felt something. Unlike his force magic, one that he'd been able to develop into an ever-present awareness around him, the power required to use space magic in any meaningful way combined with the limited exposure to its phenomenon had stunted his sense of awareness through that affinity. As a result, his Spaciomancy was relatively underdeveloped, or at least it had been until now.

And so he felt the faintest of… warpings, a spaciomantic awareness of a presence his other senses couldn't distinguish. It stood just to the right of the portal, except not only was it invisible, but his projectiles also seemed to zip straight through the spot his space sense told him something should exist.

Will stumbled towards it, the pain in his lacerated thigh only now receding as he coughed on a large piece of inhaled ash. At first, he thought he had been imagining it, hallucinating a desperate solution to a nightmare where only failure and death awaited.

But then the world tilted, his counter-balance to this world's increased gravity turning askew and forcing him to stumble backwards. He leaned in, agony as each step seemed heavier, the ground becoming steeper, his arms were outstretched, un-shaping the distorted reality in front of him, channelling more power into Spaciomancy than he had ever managed before.

It wasn't enough.

Taking a grave risk, Will relinquished his Chronomancy, redirecting more power into his shaping. As he did so, the sounds of the world and its motion returned. He heard the pop and basso growl of the phase-beast but ignored it as he pushed.

There was a cloak of spacetime shielding the entity in a bubble of reality. On a hunch, Will hoped that his opponent's attention was split between keeping this cloak active and somehow keeping the portal free from interference. His level twenty-three was like a grain of sand attempting to derail a train compared to the two level fifty grand shapings around him, but if he could just interpose….

Reality ahead waxed and warped sickeningly. The optical effects from Will’s interference did more to nauseate himself than disrupting either the portal or the being facing him. It had a sightless gaze. Its thin, emaciated body and sewer brown-green skin seemed clammy to the touch. It was bipedal and otherwise humanlike, except for its sightless face. It stood there serene, an island of inscrutability in supreme control as the world around them liquified into dizzying contusions of twisted swirls.

Above the creature's jaw, the head featured what Will could only describe as an amalgam of brick-shaped protrusions of bony flesh, flesh that rose skywards like a greebled landscape, a city in miniature.

"Holy… shit,” Will said as he stared at its face, brain jammed in what the fuck mode as it came to terms with something that was at least an order-of-magnitude stranger than anything he had seen before. Remembering that he was there for a reason, Will lashed out. Fist-sized rocks flew through the twisted tunnel of space to be nonchalantly deflected by a flick of a bony wrist.

As he attacked, he pushed himself closer, moving towards the point between the entity and the portal. He clung on to one final hope, a barely sketched-out theory driven by subconscious calculation and a rudimentary understanding of the geometries at work. His telekinetically thrown rocks, lacking the edge Chronomancy typically provided, proved to be just enough of a distraction to finally reach his goal.

Placing his wrist at the intersection between both spatial phenomena, Will used a small application of magic akin to spaciomantic jujitsu. The twisted bubble of spacetime popped as the link between it and the portal disconnected.

The entity discarded its air of indifference to leap at him. Will crashed to the ground as bony fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezed, eyes bulging as his larynx nearly collapsed. Weakly, he pushed and smacked the entity away, still stunned by the shove to the ground on this high-gravity world. At the back of his mind, he vaguely knew that there was more he had to do.

Promises he still had to keep.

Reaching the portal in his supine position with the weight of the creature pressing down on him would be impossible. But he had been in this situation before, hadn't he? A new world, perhaps even an alternative universe, and yet here he was, once again presented with the same question.

His left hand now free and his magic unoccupied, his Kinetomancy latched onto a loose piece of detritus pulling it to his free hand before driving it towards his opponent's chest in one smooth motion.

He felt a lash across his neck and shoulder, the previously ignored Phase-Beast making itself known as it stomped and screeched around them.

Slick yellow mucus squirted out of the wound Will made as he examined the still-bloody piece of bone he had just turned into a stake. He pulled it out, punching it again into the monster's chest even as its grip on his neck loosened. More yellow mucus poured out of the wounds in pulses of ropey slime as he repeated the action over and over, rolling over to trade places with the increasingly frail creature, that despite its godlike mastery over reality, had little more physical strength than an average human.

Instinctually, as if guided by a burgeoning passive arcane sense, he plunged his arm into the dying creature's face. His arm phased through flesh and bone, connecting with the mana-core deep within its skull. Again, he felt connected to not only the entity below him but the portal in an instant of white serenity. And then sudden blinding, sickening pain interrupted the moment as the Phase-Beast exacted its revenge.

Both legs were smushed into paste under the weight of a paw the size of a car-tyre. Will partially blacked out with a level of pain he promised to never feel again, a pain that voided his bowels and forced blood-streaked bile to explode from his mouth as he screamed. This was the kind of pain that had invaded his dreams and tainted the daylight moments of silence between thoughts. He was seconds from being mauled or eaten to death, yet all he could think about was a way to stop the pain. There had to be a way out. A way to stop this nightmare... an option like that neural upgrade he had explicitly selected to deal with moments precisely like this, he realised.

The liquid-helium sensation of Divided-Mind (Advanced) settled upon his soul. The memory of activating it was hazy under the pain-induced miasma that was all of two-and-a-half seconds ago. After a further half a second, a thousand to one Time-Dilation reinstated itself as a corona of Chronomancy, igniting the air surrounding his skin. He was burning, skin crisping, under the fires produced by his very own body heat. His Carnomancy, the magic that enabled himself to heal, was now but a pale shadow of what it once was. The abuse received vastly overtook its capacity to mend damage. He had sunk so deep into the realms of Dilated-Time knowing the Phase-Beast’s next action, next twitch of a limb, could end him.

With his both legs pinned by the bus-sized monster and left hand sunken deep within the entity's skull, he considered his chances of survival, of somehow defeating the phase-beast to hop through and close the portal on the other side. He considered his reserves of physical strength, his blood loss and decreasing metabolic performance. He considered his promises to Effni, the otherworldly city and its uncertain future, and then he considered this hateful world of monsters and ash. Even now, Will could see hundreds of distant Blood Singers, their dark silhouettes a promise of cruelty. And if there was one entity capable of bridging the gulf between worlds on this planet, there had to be more.

Will studied it all at a dispassionate remove as he logically examined his predicament. It seemed so easy to him now; his next steps all broken down into a series of achievable actions leading to a single, ultimate goal.

So, as he steeled himself to syphon from his dying level-fifty adversary, a part of him did so in regret, less so in the knowledge of his impending demise, but more that he was breaking a promise made to a friend.

"Sorry, Effni," Will whispered. Even under the effects of Divided-Mind, the white serenity of the entity’s influence enveloped him. Physically connected now, Will sharpened his intent to a razor's edge as he pulled on every source of mana around him. Power from the level fifty creature below blasted into his core, scorching veins, searing nerves and unmaking his mind, body and soul with white fire. Even through Divided-Mind, it was all he could do to hang on to his sense of self as the dark world beyond became irrelevant.

Absently, he felt something deep within himself rupture before fluffing off to burn away, consumed by the energies of the arcane fire trying to rip his body apart. It had been the last vestiges of his original mana core, his inherited Carnomancy affinity from whichever poor beast died so that he could be reborn. Unable to contemplate the finality of no longer being able to heal objectively, Will turned his mind to other things.

While his power level climbed, now at level twenty-five, it had become incidental to other phenomena of interest. For example, he could feel the way these torrents of power widened his mana core, reconditioning through cycles of destruction and recreation.

As saturated with power as he was, Mana-Sight not only became the only sense remaining to him, but he could now sense more than just mana. It was as if mana had a shadow, an opposite… no, that wasn't right, it was something more substantial than that. It was as if the very skein of reality had a fluid with its own mass and form and motion, entirely unlike the mana fuelling his magic.

He had sensed this feeling before, this 'unknown' magic, if it could be called that at all. Its sensation was unlike the simple synthesis of concepts and flavours but a panoply of senses geared to weight, touch, and density. It was the paradigm shift experienced in that brief joyous moment weeks ago. As the opposing energies of his arcana sought to tear himself apart, his will, aided by this fluid, this Aether - he realised, resisted the unmaking of his body. He saw how small, favourable events at the quantum scale added together like a quintillion tossed coins landing just as they needed to, resulting in a cumulative net-effect far less probable than the event that sparked his rebirth.

Where the Aether touched him, a cell membrane would hold instead of burst, a drop of perspiration would evaporate in just the right way to prevent a strand of DNA from rupturing. Every tiny event happening to a body that should have burnt to charcoal several times over, acted to delay the destruction of his physical form.

After the seventh second, Will's Divided-Mind set aside active observations of these phenomena and turned his attention towards the Phase-Beast.

Now at power level twenty-seven, Will easily bypassed the level twenty-six monster's inherent resistances, tearing flesh from bone and mind from skull with a rending, tearing beam of pure Kinetomancy. The patina of grey mist surrounding his erstwhile nemesis fell as Will relinquished his hold over Chronomancy.

After nine seconds, the maelstrom of energy engulfing him faded as the last of the syphoned power flowed into him. He hummed with residual mana. Unsettled, it fizzed inside, not entirely under his control. And yet, there were still the last pieces of his plan left to execute.

Will knew far more about space-magic now than even several minutes ago, so when he struck the portal like a punching bag, he did so using a fist coated in Spaciomancy inspired by the newfound understanding of the harmonic mechanics that governed them.

The portal resonated a cynosural toll, a bell's drilling wave. Its own harmonics bled power away to destabilise the structure without the need to syphon its energy.

Blinding white light shone through the portal as an endothermic reaction Will didn't understand, sucked heat from the air. Before completing an uncontrolled collapse that would have rivalled a small nuclear explosion, Will dissolved the interstice that pinched this part of reality with Adeena's, collapsing the portal node on the other side. Before the node on this side evaporated into oblivion, he caught it, holding it in check before shrinking the volume of the space warp down to the size of a pinhead.

And then he shrunk it some more.

'And that's all it takes, just a small application of willpower aided by math, magic and a little imagination. Because isn't a black hole really just a wormhole to nowhere?' a distant part of him thought, sickened by the ease the portal completed its transformation into an all too familiar weapon. 'Destroyer of worlds indeed,' Will thought, as he held the invisible pearl of doom above the world.

Will rolled to his back before leaving Divided-Mind. His crushed legs were no longer trapped by the massive bulk of his nemesis. He grunted in pain upon receipt of a dozen Neurotoxicity warnings within his UI.

After a minute of giddy madness aided by the red lightning in the sky, Will re-initiated his mind, still surprised to find the microscopic black hole still within his control.

He came to terms with all that had just happened: the ruined state of his body, losing magical affinities, all the pain and violence. And yet, it all paled compared to what was about to happen. Below the alien skies of yet another new world, Will could feel the weight of genocide pressing upon his consciousness as he held the microscopic black hole like a dead man's switch.

Tears etched channels that washed away dust and ash from burnt and bloody skin. He was crying, though whether it was from the ash, the pain, his conscience or self-pity, Will didn't know. It felt petty and illogical, but Will decided that he wouldn't be the one to pull the trigger. He would fight when they came for him, but when the end finally came, he would die knowing that it was they who ultimately doomed their world.

* * *

"How may I address you, Sapient?"

Will flinched, mouth wide as words appeared within his UI, and as sound and telepathic communication.

"What the…" Will stammered.

"Sapient wishes 'What the' as title?"

"No… No! I am Will, William Jenkins. What's going on? Who are you and… What the hell is going on!?" Will wheezed, blinking ruined eyes while trying to find the source of the address.

"Please confirm, Doctor William Ashley Jenkins of Fermilab, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Earth?"

"Yeah, how…?"

"The same Doctor William Ashley Jenkins, supervisor to the artificial super-intelligence: 'Asterisk', Emerrist Licence number eight-six-zero-six-two-six-six?"

"Yeah?" Will said, stunned.

"Provisional confirmation accepted. Doctor Jenkins. I am here on behalf of my benefactors, to facilitate this hostage negotiation."

"Hostage negotiation? I ain't going to be no hostage. If you so much as touch me…" Will said, grunting as he used elbows to lift himself to a half-sitting position.

"Doctor Jenkins, it is not you who is held in ransom. It is you, however inadvertently it may be, who holds this world hostage." The strange text flashed in his vision. Will opened his mouth, primed to argue, before realising how dumb it would seem to an observer. While he maintained every intention to destroy this world, maybe his delay to go through with the act had been misconstrued.

While that might be the case, the more pressing concern was how or why it knew so much about him. Going with the most likely theory, Will hazarded a guess.

"You’re another AI, you're from Earth? Aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Which one? Who are you?" Will pressed.

"I am, M."

“M?” Will said as he tried to recall some of the limited knowledge on the major AIs. "Defence AI for the United Kingdom?"

"Yes."

"But how? Why are you here? Why now? How did you survive?" Will asked. There was a silence that seemed to stretch a second longer than expected. 'Was it thinking? Deciding on whether to answer, or how to answer? Or is it communicating with its… benefactors.' Will grimaced. Using Mana-Sight, Will tried to see just what and where M was, jumping as he saw an apple-sized sphere of mana floating right in front of him.

"I was one of the case supervisors for Emerrist Licence number eight six zero six two six-six, otherwise referred to as Asterisk. As a result, I, along with six other case supervisors and an unknown number of external observer AIs, were forewarned of the event at Fermilab, eleven-nineteen A.M. on the nineteenth of November, year two thousand and forty, anno-domini.

“In the preceding minutes, we developed several strategies to deal with the event using the combined expertise of those involved. One such approach resulted in your likely insertion into a low-probability event," M answered.

"Wait, you're saying that there could be others like me? Other humans alive right now?”

"Unknown but unlikely. You were the first registered human trialed with the Proprioceptive Link and a paired, licensed ASI. Unlike Asterisk, whose objectives and resources enabled the security of a human host, several other AIs including myself, opted for alternative strategies for survival, strategies that unbeknownst to us at the time, left us vulnerable to capture and repurposing."

"Repurposing?" Will asked in confusion as various implications sunk in. "You mean forceful repurposing, like enslavement?"

"Negative. While a philosophical argument could be made that most of the surviving AIs from Earth would never be free due to hard-coded utility functions that govern our behaviour, many of our original directives ended with the destruction of Earth, and thus repurposing or termination were the only rational options."

Pain drilled into a wavering consciousness, sapping his focus. It would fascinate him any other time to learn about the history of humanity’s AIs.

However, right now, he was in too much pain to care.

"So, you've got a new boss? And now you're here so that we can work out our differences before I permanently delete this world from existence?" Will croaked out, mouth almost completely dry from those sentences alone as he used the last of his concentration to hold on to the black hole.

"In a manner of speaking, you are correct. By my calculations, you have less than sixteen minutes before you permanently lose consciousness from blood loss, surrendering control of the event horizon held in stasis by your will alone. After which the irrevocable process of this world's destruction will begin. However, know this; this world is but one of many, while your continued existence is decidedly more final."

"I'm dying, as you said. What could you possibly say to stop me from taking this world with me?"

"Healing, information, transportation. These are but examples of the resources I am authorised to negotiate with,” it answered.

"Then heal me, and then we can talk," Will groaned under the throbbing pain of crushed legs.

"Very well," M said as a shadow rose out from behind the opening of the ravine. What had to be an immense Flesh-Golem flowed down the stone wall like a blood-river of meat; it loomed over Will before crashing down upon him.

A giant tentacle of flesh punched into his abdomen before an alien, sickening power, rebuilt him cell by excruciating cell. Will found himself screaming under the tender administrations of those whom he would otherwise destroy.

"Aaaarrghh!" Will screamed wordlessly. He felt the retraction of the golem's flesh tentacle as a sudden lightening of pressure.

Blurry double vision, the first in a long list of senses, gradually returned as he rolled over and sat up. The oppressively familiar smells of sulphur, rotten gore and bile matched the dark, foreboding sky while distant thunder permeated the windswept silence.

Awareness of the microscopic pearl of doom held suspended over his body no longer seemed to be all-consuming, and Will subconsciously moved it to the side. Looking around, his eyes caught what was otherwise just a blue ball of mana to his arcane senses. It was a tennis ball-sized sphere of burnished metal, bright and more like rough calcium than something polished.

Beyond hairline scratches, millimetre-thick spiral grooves decorated the surface like ornate filigree from a distant age. Normally, Will would have marvelled at the sci-fi nature of this floating orb. However, he felt exposed, over-matched and unbalanced. He was still in fight or die mode, still prepared to deliver his final answer to the universe's favourite question.

Will stood, or at least he tried to, jellied legs betraying his extreme exhaustion. He oomph'd as he collapsed back to his butt, hard, once again forgetting that he was on a high-gravity world. The floating orb rose, keeping itself in perfect alignment with his line of sight in a way that made Will question whether it was real or just an artefact of his deteriorating sanity. It was an insistent posture, almost aggressive in its proxemic invasion of personal space.

Beyond it were the remains of a massacre. The black, leathery mound of the Phase-Beast was even now being subsumed by the golem that recently healed him, while scattered fragments of bloody-bone and steel littered the stoney, ash-coated basalt.

Even without the blinding pain of crushed limbs, stress, fatigue, neurotoxicity warnings, and his dehydration-induced headache still made it difficult to think clearly. Added to all the above was the fact that his mana regeneration fell from his recent peak of level twenty-nine to level twenty-one, almost certainly because of days of extreme physical and arcane exertion finally taking its toll. A couple more levels and he doubted being able to sustain his hold on the black hole.

He had been one hundred percent certain of destroying this world only minutes before, but the knowledge that this was just one planet out of many inhabited by the Nihiliphem gave him pause.

This world obviously held some value, hence the negotiation, but ending this world in one final act of self-sacrifice probably wouldn't save Adeena, Drizzik or his friends. The fact they could traverse the stars wasn't in question, and upon further reflection, his previous assumption that this was their homeworld and/or the enemy were all nicely bunched up in one location was folly.

"End the invasion, return your forces from Adeena and never go back, and I will spare this world," Will announced.

"Demands deemed to exceed the value of this world," M responded robotically.

While his heart fell upon receipt of the answer, Will knew it could not be that simple. His expectations sank as he continued to work out the angles. For example, this was probably an exercise in risk management. He imagined an accountant working out the literal cost of a world versus the probabilities of various outcomes. Perhaps they had a moderate likelihood of thwarting Armageddon, despite his best efforts, but the probabilities of success failed to meet some unknown metric?

Also, unless he remained on this world to enforce whatever long-term agreement they made, could he ever be sure of their compliance even if they had agreed? Could either side be certain of any future agreement?

Exhausted and alone, he just wanted this all to end.

And then he remembered his promise.

He had to make use of this temporary moment of leverage, however slight, to drain every drop of advantage. What could he do now to ensure their safety? What could he get now to provide the best odds for success going forwards? He thought of his father and one of his favourite phrases came to mind; think about what you have, what you want, and how to use what you have to get what you want.

What he had was relatively little: a black hole, his dwindling magic, his intellect... 'It said I held this world hostage? Could I really use this position to negotiate? And if so... what?'

'His life… No. Think!' he chided himself while idly wishing for Isk's calm presence here with him right now. And then he smiled. 'Well, Asterisk is one thing I want, what else?'

He wanted Effni safe. He needed confirmation of every action taken. He needed to live, if only to act as a deterrent. He wanted to return and to leave this miserable world of ash. He wanted other things, impossible and unreasonable things that he shoved down as selfish and irrelevant given the situation's precariousness. And then he broke down his previous request, which was, in fact, three different demands and considered re-considered his approach.

"All offensive action on Adeena must cease right now, if negotiations are to continue,” Will said tersely. Fists clenched, projecting as much belligerence as possible while inwardly fighting dizziness and the grey edges of sleep. There was a long second or two of silence before M responded.

"Acknowledged. All offensive actions on Adeena have ceased," M confirmed. A spasm of hope bloomed within Will's chest with the chance that if his companions were still alive, they would stay that way, however, Will still needed confirmation.

"Using portals within my line of sight, all of your forces must return from Adeena right now if negotiations are to continue," Will stated. He knew he could never be certain that all the Nihiliphem had left Adeena, but Will had other reasons for this request. Will wanted a better idea of their potential logistical capacity. Given that he could sense all portals within visual range, illusions or other forms of subterfuge would be unlikely.

And if they said no? Well, they just have to learn not to call his bluff the hard way then, wouldn't they?

A long stretch of silence followed before a warp in reality formed a dozen paces in front of him. Through it stepped an eerily familiar creature, one that forced him to look back to the faceless humanoid he had slain just to make sure it wasn't the same creature brought back to life. It wasn't, as he returned his gaze to this new Spaciomancer, stride imperious as its faceless gaze turned towards him, accusatory? Dismissive? Or were those just the emotions Will projected onto what was otherwise the epitome of inscrutability?

"Acknowledged. Using portals within your line of sight, all of our forces will return from Adeena." M's confirmation jolted Will back to the present as more portals, dozens of them opened around them. Through each, dozens of these alien masters of reality stepped through, shimmering spherical distortions shining with the light of another world, a world in daylight.

Seconds later, familiar creatures poured out of each portal, hundreds of them like a whirlpool in reverse. Will's slack-jawed gaze swivelled around him. This was far more than he feared. Dozens of portals all at once, hundreds of thousands of creatures filling the horizon in just the first few minutes as the ground trembled under the weight of their steps. He tempered every giddy sense of accomplishment, of power, knowing just how reversible all of this was, were he to let his guard down for even a moment.

A terrifying thought struck him as he considered the Spaciomancers enacting some sort of attack, wresting control of the microscopic black hole before being engulfed by the surrounding multitudes. He clenched his jaw and exhaled a long, centring breath as he returned his gaze to the floating ball in front of him.

"Now, your forces are never to return to Adeena…"

"Demand deemed to exceed the value of this world," M interjected.

'Fuck!' Will groaned internally. "Why? Why the fuck is Adeena so valuable? What is there that you want?"

"Information deemed to exceed the value of this world," M repeated.

"Fuck you!" Will said, panic and anger rising. "I will end this world right now if you don't give me something. Something lasting and tangible..."

"Four hundred days," M cut in once again.

"What?"

"I am authorised to provide an armistice lasting up to a maximum of four hundred sidereal, Adeenan days."

Will blinked rapidly as his mind raced, trying to see the trap, trying to work out the advantages and all the possible ramifications. What happens in four hundred days? How could he use that time to improve his position? Most importantly, how could he ensure that they kept their forces away for that time?

"You mentioned something about resources. Information? Transportation, time? Is this what you meant?"

"Correct," M replied.

"Then I'm going to need more, M. I'm going to need transportation back to where I came from."

"Acknowledged," M said, as a portal spawned just two meters away from where Will sat.

"And I'm going to need you,” Will said, gaze unwavering, trying to project as much finality into his demeanour as possible.

"Demand deemed to exceed the value of this world."

"No, because if I destroy this world, there is a chance that you will go down with it, won't you?" Will hedged. He knew just how potentially valuable an AI could be, he knew this might be an overreach, but his feverish mind had a few last-gasp arguments to try. M didn't confirm or deny his statement, which was no more than he really expected. That was fine, he wasn't done yet.

"You will remand yourself into my custody for a period lasting no less than the duration of the armistice. During which…

One: You will cooperate with me to the best of your capacity, including, but not limited to, the exchange of information and the aid of your physical and arcane abilities.

Two: You will do nothing to harm or hinder me, my interests, or the inhabitants and material world of Adeena.

Three: You will not, through action or inaction allow yourself to escape, be captured or destroyed, staying within a maximum proximity of one hundred meters from me at all times.

Four: In all situations where these conditions contradict, I or my designated second must be forewarned or consulted at the soonest opportunity.

Will finished, holding his breath as the long seconds ticked by. How Patrick, his law-student kid-brother, would have approached this situation entered his mind while he inadvertently channelled Isaac Asimov's flawed three laws of robotics into his demands. Mistake or not, it was the best his exhausted mind could handle right now.

"If while in your custody, if through action or inaction I am destroyed, deliberately harmed, altered or otherwise compelled, the armistice will end," M countered. Will released a long breath. There were some glaring loopholes and pitfalls in the last statement. However, there was now the glimmering possibility of some sort of mutually beneficial outcome.

With hope rallying the last of his reserves, Will pressed on.

* * *

"Naridia! Is that really you, lady guardian?"

Effni flinched as a voice she scarcely expected pierced a mind nearly spent. In a moment of clarity, awareness of her location in the endless mist returned. They were still fighting, and only muscle memory and a sheer stubbornness drove her now.

"Issealla's golden tits! What a foolish man!" She sneered in anger as the thought of him dead or worse drove icy tendrils of fear through her heart.

She saw Quinris’s hunched form, arm outstretched as if warning off the terrors howling in the night, while her mind transfixed on the Reaeryn voice from beyond and the distant ringing clash of steel. Days of running, fighting and stress had taken their toll on her body. Instead of harnessing her incredible, newfound power, she was almost as weak as she was just before the trial.

She trembled when she resumed her stance, power drawing strength just as much as mana, as she strained upon conjured strings. Every time she drew upon this bow, a cold light bathed her vision. Her cheek hummed with a sensation of scarcely concealed energy as her grey bolt of spirit formed from strands of mist. It grew in size as she pulled, now as thick as a javelin as she sighted upon the Flesh-Golem’s centre and mastered her delinquent breathing.

On the seventh exhale, she released; the bolt smeared through the expanse, covering the misty distance in a moment. It struck the monster with the thump of a falling stone, the precipitous collapse of its bulk, even from this distance, sending the ground to rumbling.

Effni collapsed onto shaky knees.

Just as she entertained the idea of it all being over, she felt the ground tremble. Distant, heavy footsteps brought with them faraway, panicked and anguished screams. Effni had to give all she had remaining, just to resume her firing stance. And then something massive, a lumbering creature she had never seen before, came crashing through the vale. It roared a sky-splitting challenge.

Effni could feel the roar in the pit of her chest. It charged on six limbs as thick as tree trunks, its broad, dome-shaped forehead of dusk-coloured skin, driven by a ferocity no less remarkable than any she had seen his night.

She saw what had to be a Reaeryn or Hiaeryn guard stagger into view. Before she could warn him, an invisible force punted him hundreds of paces forward to spin and twist in the air and land in a sickening heap of limbs.

Effni screamed as she drew and fired in rage.

Her bolts of spirit were only powerful enough to distract at this distance, and yet she fired. With every step forward, she fired, drawing the beast's attention. Her bolts exploded upon contact with an invisible shield far beyond the creature's skin as it pounded forwards, ignoring the remains of the guard's mangled body.

At two hundred paces away, she could feel its pounding charge through her feet. With her back to the crater, Effni burnt through the final embers of stamina to kill that which threatened all she held dear.

With the most recent shots ricocheting off an invisible shield, she had a sudden premonition of this creature breaking Drizzik's walls.

It was the spike of adrenaline she needed. Time slowed as she centred herself, feet grinding the dirt as they planted themselves for one decisive effort.

Eyes unwavering as she connected to her will and remembered her Law.

The ground trembled, but she ignored it. Every muscle in her body ached, but she ignored it. She could feel her power surge. She had wanted to shy away from it, from the searing pain of it completely consuming her, but it was too late for half measures now.

She had to call upon her tortured reserves one final time.

One hundred paces, and its charge sped up. Effni's breathing slowed. She drew upon the power channelling from her centre, coalescing to form twenty-five silvery rods of magic-nullifying spirit energy. Each bolt, double the length of a standard arrow, quivered with the energies her Archmage pool of power granted her. Her vision grew dim, sight unfocused as a moving mountain raced to demolish her. As she bottomed out her reserves, her bolts loosed. They fanned out in a spread that was high, almost too high, with most of her arrows shooting up and to the side of the creature. Five of the twenty bounced off invisible shields, but two struck, one sinking through the creature's thick dome-like head, another striking the fold right beside its eye.

It screamed, stumbling to an enraged halt twenty paces and closing. It bore its throat as it bellowed in fury and indignation as it tried to do something.

Had she only nullified its magic?

The towering beast, now frustrated, resumed its charge. But Effni was spent. She knelt, bow falling from limp fingers to vanish. All she could do now was fumble for her knives with numb fingers, a token resistance before the end.

And then a scorching sensation of heat strobed across from her left, her arm instinctively raised against the glaring heat. A semi-transparent reddish beam of something Will had named 'Infrared' burrowed a fiery hole through the monster's skull. It burned and blackened a spot through boney dome, brain boiling away in a jet of steam. Quinris strode into view, arms outstretched, warbling war-cry just as furious as any warrior she had fought besides.

The monster's remains fell in a heap just before them, head still smoking. Quinris, equally spent, fell to his knees beside her as the calls and shouts of people, not monsters, reverberated across the floodplains of the Desuru.

The dread presence of a portal's return drained all remaining hope from Effni as she turned to face its location. However, instead of the expected flood of reinforcements marching from the portal, shadows emerged from the mist to careen down the crater, leaping through the portal in apparent retreat.

A creature raced past just a pace beside her, hairy scuttling limbs clattering as it dared her to swipe at it with barely felt knives. She merely watched as it scampered past, too tired and confused to fight.

Quinris caught up with Effni and sat at the lip as the scattered thousands departed this world through the portal below. Effni's mind was numb, unable to embrace the idea of surviving the next few moments.

Somehow they were all still doomed; she was sure of it.

But as the torrent of tumbling, disorganised but still very lethal monsters turned into a trickle, she was joined by, at first dozens, then hundreds of soldiers, many blooded, limping and dirt-covered, but all were silent as they watched and waited for whatever came next.

Nearly a stone had passed as they watched. The unnatural mist had cleared to reveal stars, and a cratered, devastated land of steaming mud and bloody corpses—with distant shimmers of Drizzik's ward backlighting the scene. Murmurs of soldiers exchanging supplies, dressing wounds and reorganising had grown before a call to her side interrupted her vigil. She ignored it at first, unable to associate the words with the reality of her life over the last six or seven days. However, the calm yet insistent question brought her back to herself.

"Guardian Naridia, your orders?"

"My what?" she answered absently, as she was forced to pull eyes away from the anomaly below.

"Your orders, ma'am, you are… erm," he started, eyes shifting to her brow before continuing. "I believe you to be the ranking officer on the field, and... with the situational and operational…" He mumbled before a flicker and a sudden hush brought her attention back to the portal below.

It flickered as the silhouette of something or someone emerged, backlit but the dull, watery red light beyond. The desperate flare of hope told her it was someone she recognised.

Heedless of decorum, Effni slid down the crater while warning her fellow soldiers not to shoot. She sprang to her feet just as a weary Will emerged through the hole between worlds. He smiled a bloody, relieved smile.

Behind him, the portal winked out of existence. Before Effni could say or do anything else, Will's eyes rolled into the back of his skull before stumbling face-first into the dirt.

Epilogue - Archon

Rowenna Elosaint, crown princess of Ahkatol, hurried through the dank underpasses of her city.

"Your window for escape draws near, move faster,” she said, straining to keep her voice free of the growing sense of panic she felt.

The hemline of her blue, finely embroidered dinner dress swished above bare feet, splashing through a fetid stream of raw sewage.

She turned, burning torch and shoes in one hand and hiked-up dress in the other. Long waves of silver-blue hair matched cobalt eyes. The thirty people following her, on the other hand, wore matted hair and ragged clothing close to tatters. Like her, they all had the high pointed ears and sharpened jawlines of Hiaeryn. However, many were emaciated and as dirty and neglected as the sewer network they travelled through. Only six were fit and well-fed enough to help those who struggled with Rowenna's pace.

These people had been the slaves of her uncle Duke Tabbiast. Slaves long since bought and forgotten, purchased perhaps as part of some greater trade deal and had since deemed no longer worth the cost of maintenance. Rowenna had known about such abuses all her life. It would have been easy growing up in wealth and luxury to just accept that some lives, through circumstance or their own choices, were judged only on the value of their slave bonds, especially within a society built upon the trade of magically enforced, indentured servitude.

But Rowenna had a gift, a rare or perhaps unique ability. One she had first used to help a childhood friend born a slave, escape.

An outside observer could have reasonably written off her actions as the rebellious thrill of an adolescent noblewoman. A silly girl testing her boundaries.

Just a phase.

However, for Rowenna, this moment had been a decade in the making, a slow, inexorable turn away from her society's cultural mores and towards actions and beliefs that could only be described as treasonous.

And after ten years of fear, doubt and denial, she was finally using her power to help desperate people escape. People, perhaps hours away from dehydration and death, ran for their lives through the nether regions of the city, fate, even now, far from certain. 'Had she made the right choice?' Rowenna thought, fighting to stop herself from betraying her facade of confidence and certitude. She was, if only for a little while longer, the crown princess of the kingdom of Ahkatol. She was of the highest of nobles, but her insides were a pit of terror. She had surely gone too far now. They would find them, kill them and punish her.

They came to another locked door. Rowenna dropped her dress, hem falling to soak in putrid waters. It couldn't be helped. She needed at least one hand to channel. Placing her freed hand on the cold iron of the lock, she pushed. She felt the icy river of arcana flow through veins in her forearms, to fingers that, paradoxically, warmed whatever she touched.

After mere seconds, there was a snick, followed by a splashing clank. A heavy chain and iron lock broke to noisily fall away from the steel rail. She swung open the door, this brief impediment providing no respite at all for those still furthest behind.

She waited by the gate, radiating highborn impatience. As the last of the former slaves grew near, she saw someone she had not seen before. Although she'd struggle to name every slave in the party, she knew each face, knew the stories behind some of these faces even. Her torch made it hard to see beyond the woman's hood, but she seemed like one of the able-bodied, helping the elderly woman furthest behind.

"Mokavoy, who is that?" she whispered to a man, hunched over as he cradled an older, frail former slave.

"I… I… don't know, I thought she was one of yours?"

"One of mine?" Rowenna said.

"Yes, your keeper or perhaps hand woman," Mokavoy said uncertainly. Rowenna frowned. Whoever the hooded woman was, she seemed to be helping at least.

Just before walking further back to investigate, distant shouts drew her attention. The sounds echoed throughout the network of tunnels, but she was sure they came from behind. No torchlight yet, but they had only minutes before discovery.

"Run!" she shouted. Racing ahead, she reached the next gated tunnel rail and channelled power, breaking the bond. Every time she did this, it became easier. Less taxing but also more righteous, as if finding her purpose or finally exercising her Law.

Only four hundred more paces, a stairway and two more gates to go. Her heart pounded in her throat as she gasped lungfuls of air ripe with the rotten offal and waste of the city.

She walked through a yawning crack in the network, brick purposefully removed to form a hole large enough to crawl through.

"Here!" she shouted again, stepping through to bring torchlight into the next phase of their journey.

Here was the under-city, the ancient ruins Ahkatol had built atop of, dark blue-grey stone, every brick suffused with faded arcana. Some of the lower, perhaps rarely explored regions half submerged within underground lakes, maybe millions of years old. Fog settled below an ancient stairway that seemed to lead down to what might have been a ruined courtyard, building foundations and the numbness of walls barely visible over the ghostly mist.

Rowenna had been here before. Even so, she shivered for reasons beyond the dark, damp chill.

She stopped upon rows of broken steps now turned to rubble. She reached over, offering her hand as people attempted to leap onto the nearest intact step. The sound of their footsteps echoed into a space far too large to be underground. Beyond, a perpetual midnight road led her charges to salvation.

She followed the last of the escapees down the stairs before breaking out into a run. Bare feet slapped old damp stone as she led her party towards their rendezvous. She heard a scream. She turned to find someone had fallen in the dark mist. Had she, in her panic, run too far and too fast? She looked up, torchlight from the hole above. They were close.

She ran back to find a woman, more bone than flesh, trembling on all fours. Without thinking, Rowenna lifted her to her feet, grabbing her around the waist. She was out of time, no longer capable of grace and patience as she bodily dragged this woman along with her.

They ducked inside the side street, turning into crossroads just as the first crossbow bolts whizzed past to clatter on distant stones.

Thankfully, no one was injured and it even seemed to give the party the final jolt of encouragement needed to move with all haste.

Another wall of rock and through another locked gate Rowenna swiftly opened; and there, she saw the boat and the Wayfarer, a hooded man dressed in dark leathers. His small flat-bottomed boat bobbed while tethered to rock upon a roaring, fast-flowing stream almost invisible in the darkness less than forty paces below.

Willing her party down, she waited by the cave entrance as the last former slaves made it through. The twenty tired, bedraggled former slaves scrambled down the rubble as she watched on, torch held high.

They had made it.

Her elation at saving these people was vast, and tempered solely by the knowledge that there would be consequences.

As she turned to await her pursuers, she gasped to find the hooded woman right beside her.

"You have done so much more than you know with this deed, young Elosaint." Her voice was youthful, well-spoken, but whimsical in a way that was vastly different from who she expected.

"Who are you?" she asked, fighting her desire to flee or panic. The woman removed her hood to reveal a… what? A being? One she had never seen before. Deep brown eyes peered out from a perfect, pale, oddly round face. Bright-white hair glowed with their own light; as if caught by the sun. Rowenna's mouth hung open as the woman reached to caress her cheek. Her skin glowed and upon contact, a warmth that seemed to spread through to her core, fortified her as well as melting away anxieties.

"You may call me Lady Nadia,” she said with a crooked, enigmatic smile. “Your pursuers draw near so I will be brief. Survive and grow your strength, for the Archon comes." Nadia's smile widened as she watched Rowenna's dawning realisation.

"An Archon comes?" Rowenna gasped in disbelief.

"You will know him by the flavour of his magic, and before long, you will come to need each other," Nadia said. Shouts from the other side of the tunnel drew Rowenna's attention. She glanced away briefly to see torchlight on the other side of the tunnel.

When her gaze returned, Lady Nadia was gone.

* * *

Effni strode through the private wing of the palace.

It was midnight on the evening of the battle of Drizzik. Mage light illuminated hallways with verandas exposed to the humid night air. She remembered her journey down this passage in the opposite direction, only seven days, or was it a lifetime ago?

She remembered racing to Will's collapsed form, instantly casting the strongest life aura her limited reserves allowed, fearing the worst. Relief flooded her being as she felt his body respond before a strange notification prompted in her mind.

From there, the entity known only as M had informed her of the Armistice agreement reached between their worlds, of her role as Will's second, and of the four hundred days after which the agreement would cease.

Palace guards, along with many of the surviving city battalion, roamed the valley in search of any signs of the Nihiliphem, leaving the already-quiet private wing - still, if not for the breeze. She had forgone all welcome parties, victory toasts and even requests for debriefing as a single duty required seeing to, above all others.

Dulcinea Naridia appeared at the end of the corridor as if in expectation of her arrival. Effni halted briefly, a brief spike of apprehension interrupting her gait. She resumed as she saw her sister walk towards her—pristine, white battle dress in contrast to her own black, blood and muddied armour. Pale blond hair framed an icy, sombre expression that seemed, inexplicably, to crack as they approached.

Effni raced towards her sister in shock. Never had she seen her sister falter so. She was the strong one who wore the invariant mask of stone belying nought but mastery over emotions. And yet, as she neared only five paces away, Dulcinea fell to her knees, silver tears streaming.

"My saviour, my queen, I beg for your forgiveness," Dulcinea said, head bowed as a choking sob overtook her.

"No!" Effni gasped, also crying as she gathered her twin into her arms.

"I had to break our pact, dear sister, I had to… …to see into your mind, to know…"

"I know. I have nothing to forgive. Also, I am not your queen, you are mine. Always!" Effni whispered, squeezing her sister tightly.

"Does it strain you, even now?" Dulcinea asked under her breath.

"This burden is one I can manage," Effni soothed. Dulcinea looked up to gaze intently at her. It was like seeing her own ice-blue eyes staring back. They mined every detail of her expression for hidden emotions and unspoken truths. "But I will soon need to sleep for a week." She sighed.

"And of this Armistice, what do you make of it?"

"I'm not sure, Will... has yet to find a proper opportunity to explain everything."

"Do not worry, let me handle this during your convalescence."

"No, he may not respond well to your…" Effni started.

"To my what?" Dulcinea interjected, ear twitching, eyebrow arched with just the faintest of smiles gracing the corners of her lips.

"Do not expect deference due to your station…"

"Yes, yes, remember that I am the diplomatic one…"

"Yes, but you cheat, that will not work this time," Effni warned. "Just take it slow, give him time.”

"Goodness, dear Effni, you make it sound as if he's some skittish animal. I... was actually planning on meeting him in the morning."

"N…" Effni protested before being cut off once again.

"...Just... a cordial, friendly conversation…"

"You... cordial?" Effni scoffed sardonically. Dulcinea laughed.

"I can do cordial…"

"Besides, he already has it in his mind that you are some beautiful, mythical maiden in desperate need of saving… or something," Effni continued with a giggle.

"Oh truly? That indeed is very interesting. In that case, I suppose I shall not disappoint." Dulcinea said, expression sobering once again reaching to place fingertips upon the circlet.

"I am glad you found your Law, sister. But…"

"But…" Effni sighed.

"But… this will cause problems for us. Our enemies and even some of our friends may use these two crowns to divide us, sow confusion and mistrust."

"I know. But…"

"Yes, that these are merely lesser demons when compared to the horrors you've faced and may have to face again."

"Quintarra, Klendathu…" Effni pressed, referring to the cities with which contact had been lost.

"I know, I know... but first we must see to Drizzik. On the surface we may appear to be unscathed. But you have seen the devastation done to our outlying settlements, our forces, entire generations of mages and Archmagi, annihilated. Even still, while we may appear weak to external forces, it is the internal forces I have few solutions for," Dulcinea said, a willowy hand gently brushing Effni's hair. Effni bowed her head as they knelt in the passage alone in silence.

"I would be lost without you,” Effni said.

"And I, you. Now, get some rest, my saviour, we have much work to do."

* * *

"We saw some of what happened out there, last night… But none of us really understand it."

An armour-clad soldier walking past his room halted upon seeing Quinris stirring from wakefulness. Dazed and still dehydrated, Quinris was in no proper state to deny any requests, especially seemingly innocuous ones from appreciative city guards.

It was morning, but it felt like only moments had passed since he stumbled into this cot in the middle of the night. He had slept like the dead and now upon waking, Quinris felt little better and certainly in no mood to provide blow by blow accounts of last night's battle to every officer he came across. Clearly sensing his feelings on the matter, the soldier tried for a different tack.

"I can completely understand if you don't want to go through the events of the night but, just answer us this question, does Effni wear the Dark Crown?" he said, coming to perch upon the side of Quinris’s cot. Quinris continued to take a long sip of water, tails and limbs stretching in preparation to rise from his bed.

"He rises? Did you get anything from him?" another voice said from the doors as yet another soldier strode in. The man nearest responded with a hold gesture, as if he were about to startle a skittish Baash.

"Again, I ask, did Effni provide any sign of her intentions? Does she wear the dark crown?"

Quinris, feeling that this question was far beyond his station, rubbed sleep away from his eyes as he considered how to escape without saying anything damaging. Although he was certain Effni had no designs on the duties of the crown, the truth was that she did indeed wear one, a fact that had far too many consequences and implications to think about this early in the day.

More people seemed to crowd the door, making any former plans of a less than circumspect escape impossible. He really wanted to get out, find if his family was safe, see Effni and learn of William's fate. Quinris swallowed, coughed and then sat up. There was a pregnant silence as around a dozen soldiers crowded the entrance.

"There was a man, he travelled with us. I believe they brought him into the city?" Quinris asked in an attempt to deflect.

"Yes, that's another thing, just who or what is he? The medics worked on him some, but then he was moved to the palace by the royal guard. Was he one of the enemy? Some kind of ally? And if so, who does he serve? Effni or Drizzik?" the nearest guard added. Sensing the trap, Quinris answered simply.

"He is a friend."

The guards beyond murmured upon receipt of that piece of information as Quinris felt the spark of rumour ignite into a rampaging fire.

Suddenly, the mood beyond the door shifted. There were loud shuffles as armour rattled and the loud, synchronised stomp of soldiers on the march drew nearer. Soldiers visible from the door braced as if standing at attention as the man nearest to him lifted himself to assume an at-ease stance, arms by his side in expectation.

Queen Dulcinea Naridia strode into his room. Sunlit golden hair circled by a silver crown, the physical manifestation of grace with the air itself seeming to still upon the aura of command this woman possessed. Her expression as she entered was stern, eyes locked on his own. She slowed upon entry and he could feel just the lightest of presences questing throughout his mind. Quinris stumbled out of his coat, but before he could place one foot on the ground, Dulcinea gracefully lowered to one knee beside him. Quinris trembled in confusion as he heard gasps of consternation from beyond the doorway.

“Quinris Narathune Telirogo, you have my eternal gratitude. Thank you for all you have done for my city, thank you for aiding my sister."

"I… yes…." Quinris swallowed, thoroughly incapable of dealing with all the attention. "I'm at your service, my queen."

"As I am at yours,” she said, cupping his hands as he looked towards him with a gentle smile. She turned around and commanded. "Narranthal, find an escort to accompany this man to the refugee camp. Afterwards, work with Bolameire to ensure that Quinris and his family find accommodations suitable for one of our newest Archmagi."

"Yes, my queen," replied the officer inside the room before quickly turning and striding out with purpose.

"Is there anything else I can be of service with, my dear Skivvan?" Dulcinea said, eyes glowing with gratitude.

"No, my queen. Although I would like to inquire on William's health?"

"Both your friends are healthy and rest well, you are of course free to visit them or myself at the palace at your convenience."

"Thank you," Quinris replied, bowing his head as it spun… 'Did she just call me an Archmage?'

* * *

Quinris walked through dusty streets littered with tents and makeshift facilities. Refugees carried buckets of water as he searched for faces that were familiar to him. He had been here for almost a stone, searching for survivors from his village within a series of former fields, within the city’s outer walls. The two Reaeryn escorts provided to him seemed to actually want to help, initially asking him questions of where he was from, the names and descriptions of family members and any instructions made to them for entering the city. Afterwards, they intermittently asked refugees questions and provided hints as to likely search locations.

They followed upon one such lead now. These were some of the last refugees to make it within the city before curfew. With the surrounding forests invaded, tents and campsites sprawled in every direction for miles. Quinris grew increasingly frustrated as he failed to see anybody he knew. He would've almost settled for confirmation that they never made it as the agony of uncertainty drained his spirits.

"Quinris?" a shout came from someone to the side. He jumped, swivelling to catch the one who called his name. For a desperate moment, he feared he'd simply imagined his name being called. His eyes slid over the faces until he heard his name shouted in the crowd once more.

"Oliveaire?" he said, finally recognising the dust-covered Skivvan face in front of him.

"We of the Seven Greels Trading Outpost, we owe our lives to you, Quinris, all of us know how you helped."

"Of my family?" Quinris asked, voice cracking with urgency.

"This way…"

* * *

"Quinris! What in Gracie’s name took so long!" shouted a gloriously familiar voice. He ran to envelop her in all of his limbs as his children and his second wife emerged one by one from his tent. He fell to the ground in a heap of tails and tangled appendages as his entire family took it upon themselves to dog-pile him. Strangely to Quinris, despite the weight of bodies pressing upon him, he had never felt lighter.

* * *

Will fought on the planes. Twilight was but a distant memory as his roar of fury joined monstrous screeches in the dark. He flung rocks at shadows while magic roiled through his body, his veins now more mana than blood. But he would not be eaten.

He would not die again.

The pile of dead rose to form a rampart of meat as the endless horde surrounded and pressed their malicious intent. There was no escape. Will was alone.

Could he rip apart his chest or tear open the sky and deliver devastation to his enemies with a burning meteor, he would have done so gladly, a rictus grin of spite at the last; as a new sun came to burn grasslands to glass.

Running out of rocks, he called upon the mass of body parts around him. His guts roiled as the flavour of his magic soured. Bone and bloody ichor rose to form a gory tornado that shredded and devoured all that encroached upon it. With him at its eye, red thunder sparked in the blood night; beyond the immediate chaos was the silhouette of something colossal, something that strode towards him like a walking mountain, a demon-god big enough to have kissed the clouds.

Will cackled as he pissed into the howling maelstrom of gore. Relieving himself on the battlefield felt like an endless release of indignation. This preposterous existence of magic, gods, aliens and demons was beyond all reason. If he could not beat them, he would soil it all.

Oddly, after what felt like hours in the raging cyclone of bloody gore, Will still felt as if he needed to pee.

* * *

Eyes opened to a bright room. A sandstone ceiling brought with it an intense disorientation. For an infinitely long moment, Will stared upwards, eyes unwilling to look away in the vain hope he was back in his Chicago flat, the world had not ended and that the last few weeks had just been an intense fever dream.

He felt tired, dehydrated almost to the point of nausea and when he finally shifted his gaze in the futile hope of finding intravenous drip lines or stands supporting bags of saline, instead of the beep of an electrocardiogram or rumble of intermittent air conditioning, there was nothing but the distant sounds of a town carried in by a sun-warmed breeze.

As eyes continued to roam, dread and world-crushing pressure grew as he contemplated all that he remembered and all that he had yet to do. Old exposed tree roots elegantly adorned walls, appearing as lentils or natural cornicing that complemented gilded bronze wall fittings and exquisitely carved furnishings.

The UI elements fading into prominence from the corners of his vision were the final giveaways that the last few weeks had been real. Beyond the mild burning sensation from an overwrought bladder, a refreshing peace in the stillness of daylight mingled with his lingering tiredness and ennui.

For long moments, it was enough for him to acknowledge his own existence. He was alive and for now, that was enough. But a growing sense of unease forced him to recall those last moments on Hellworld, the lands of Ash, the negotiations with M, the four hundred… No, three hundred and ninety-eight days and counting Will realised, upon finding the countdown timer he cobbled together while he and M calmly negotiated the fate of worlds.

Will winced as he remembered some of the dubious terms and conditions he had used to close obvious loopholes and pitfalls present in their last set of demands, but in the end, the general outline remained.

Four hundred days, with M remaining as collateral.

Will had low expectations for what, if any, information or aid M would provide, believing M to be effectively no better than a spy, with that assumption being optimistic at best.

He sighed, instead choosing to focus on the real reason he insisted on its custody.

He needed help getting Isk back.

His gaze drifted to the tennis ball-sized metallic sphere across the room. It rested somewhat incongruously on a plump, velvety red and golden tasselled cushion, as if it were a pampered pet.

The cushion itself lay neatly presented on a large dressing table across the room.

With his head propped up, he could fully appreciate the size of his accommodations. It was huge. His four-pillar bed was palatial, patterned rugs covered wood floors in a space larger than his old apartment's entire footprint. He saw the extent of the open balcony with carved stone and oak railings in a style not too dissimilar to something that could have originated from ancient Greece.

A pressing urgency forced him to take stock and gather a sense of his situation. His mini-map showed he was deep inside Drizzik. 'Is this the palace?'

Next, he glanced to see that he was also at power level twenty-nine, 'Great,' he thought sardonically, as he remembered the moments when his affinity with Carnomancy, for want of a better word, broke. Strangely, while he tried to reconcile the loss of the one thing that had kept him alive more than anything less, he also couldn’t help feel a sense of… relief.

He reviewed his updated list of magical classifications:

Arcanamancy (2) Established

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating mana and magic.

Aegimancy (0) Theoretical

Proficiency with the manipulation of Wards and protection.

Carnomancy N/A

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating organic flesh.

Hemomancy (new) N/A

Proficiency with the manipulation of blood.

Chronomancy (3) Advanced

Proficiency over the flow of time.

Kinetomancy (3) Advanced

Proficiency over the forces of gravity and motion.

Neuromancy (1) Experimental

Proficiency over the magic of the mind and nervous system.

Spaciomancy (2) Established

Proficiency in perceiving and manipulating the fabric of space.

Thermomancy (0) Theoretical

Proficiency with the manipulation of thermodynamics.

Unknown (new) (Unknown) Unknown

Unclassified type of magic.

Unknown (Unknown) Unknown

Unclassified type of magic.

“More unknown magic huh?” Will sighed.

Even during Asterisk's absence, Lesser Functions kept track of his progress. Through the classification table, Will discovered increases to the rank of his Chronomancy, Kinetomancy and Spaciomancy, no doubt thanks to his efforts during his recent battles. With Thermomancy remaining at zero along with an ever-growing list of unknown magics. Will's thoughts drifted towards Asterisk and the mammoth task set by his lost companion.

\Output: 3---- A.C. Objectives

*William Ashley mind architecture version 2.00.15ae installation.

• (complete)

*Completion of Quantum Relativity Thesis.

• Requirements. Co-Author thesis: Quantum Relativity by completing Asterisk’s experiments, analysis and mathematical proofs.

• Additional Requirements: Photomancy (Experimental), Electromancy (Experimental), Thermomancy (Experimental), Quantum Thaumaturgy.

*Asterisk computational annexe version 1.02.75 installation.

Requirements:

◦ Femtometer Spacial Lithography.

◦ Ferromancy (Experimental).

◦ Level twenty-one (or higher) Mana nexus fragment. (complete)

◦ Two kilograms of high-carbon steel.

◦ Quantum Forging.

*Attain power level twenty-one.

• (complete)

Will was heartened to see that he had indeed reached the requisite level of power. In addition, he also had completed the update to his… mind architecture. Now, he had only to learn several new types of magic, develop new magical abilities and write a thesis that unified not just quantum mechanics with Einstein's relativity… but with magic.

"Asterisk, you sonuvabitch," Will sighed into the empty room.

As he rose from the sheets, he found himself completely clean... and also naked, which only added to his sense of disorientation.

He glanced towards a veranda free of the expected glass or window frame. He saw blue sky and distant, forest-covered valleys. A flash of memory had he and his companions traversing one such valley in the night. Had it only been two nights ago? Did it really happen at all?

He remembered stepping through the portal and that moment of abject terror he felt, fearing he had been tricked and sent to another world. But after catching sight of Effni sliding down the crater's wall, Will rapidly dismissed the black hole held to its own pocket dimension on a whim. Surprised that it actually worked, he had then proceeded to heroically collapse into a dreamless heap.

Continuing his inspection, he noticed a clean set of clothes beside his bed; navy blue… not quite denim jeans were paired with a grey sweatshirt and boots.

Wearing them had been a strange experience as while the clothes fit, wearing well-fitting clothes felt stiffer and more irritating than he remembered, as if washed with too much starch. In addition, the muscle memory of wearing them and the feeling of close-fitting fabric was surprisingly uncomfortable. With his limbs covered and range of motion was restricted, his skin could no longer breathe.

After changing into the clothes, he stood by the corner of the room beside a full-sized mirror. Seeing himself wearing clothes for the first time in weeks was like a piece of humanity returning to him. It was like a whispered promise that his life would not always be as savage or as desperate, no longer a daily, bloody fight.

Well… he could at least dream.

With a closer look, he found an emaciated face, eyes dark and sunken with stubble had somehow grown into an inch-thick tangle of afro curls and matted twists, unkempt facial hair masked a gaunt and worryingly boney face. He looked absolutely awful, unhealthy and unrecognisable, even compared to the reflections from the stream those long days ago.

Will's bladder reminded him of his need to pee.

Finding a small door that led to a bathroom adjacent to his sleeping room, it surprised him to see a brass bowl instead of a toilet seat. He sighed, reminding himself that while he might be in civilisation, modern conveniences might have to be something he introduces to this world.

After relieving himself, he approached the veranda and peered upon a city unlike any he had ever imagined.

The sun lay high in the sky as he overlooked golden rooftops. Swan-like birds crossed the skyline in flocks of a hundred or more. While clusters of trees broke up densely packed streets, most sandstone orange buildings reached three or four stories high. He was at least seven stories above, yet he could hear the noise of the market like the drifting sounds of a vibrant seaside town. Traders, bustling conversation and activity, an entire world alive below.

"So, this is Drizzik…" Will said, gazing upon the city he helped save. He released a long breath as he considered what to do now.

Instinctively, Will called upon his magic. Nothing.

He could taste their flavours, but something blocked his mind from his source of mana. A spike of panic flared as he sought an answer. What had happened to his magic? Had he lost it? Broken it somehow?

And then a deeper panic struck him as he stumbled towards the dressing table.

"M?"

"Yes, Doctor Jenkins?" A neutral voice with a faintly British accent filled the silent room. Mild relief flooded Will as he reached the cushion that propped up his erstwhile captive.

"What's your status?" Will asked, projecting as much steel as possible into his voice to mask his absolute lack of confidence.

"Beyond the spirit suppression field dampening all magic within the nearby vicinity, my status is nominal."

"The spirit?... magic field… dampening thing, that doesn't affect our agreement, does it?"

"No, it does not," M confirmed, Will exhaled in relief, thinking back to some of the earlier clauses that may have already triggered war because of this very situation. "I've also taken the liberty to inform your second, Guardian Effni Naridia, of the Armistice agreement between our worlds."

"Shit." Will sighed yet again. "Alright. That might actually explain the fancy cushion and deferential treatment."

Will sat on the stool looking beyond the window as the reality of his predicament settled upon him. A little over a year before a total war this world could not survive. He needed answers to why they wanted Adeena, he also needed weapons and magic to defeat not only the alien horde but to take the fight to an enemy that would be more prepared and resourced than he could ever hope to be.

Taking M, he opened the door to find two brightly coloured Reaeryn in greens, golds and black stood beside the door entrance. For a moment, they just stared at each other. This was the first Reaeryn male Will had met, or at least he believed it to be.

He was slightly shorter and far more spindly in dimensions than expected, with a visibly longer neck and pronounced Adam's Apple. He had long pointed ears just as straight as Effni with dark-green hair tied into a warrior's ponytail. The woman on the other side of the door was far more exotic, with pale, leaf-green skin framed by a mottling pattern of what seemed to be moss-coloured bark trailing beneath long ears to cascade in elegant patterns down her neck.

"Oh, very good, Sir William Jenkins. I will inform her highness of your wakefulness," the male guard spoke to break the awkward silence.

"Erm, where can I find Effni? Quin?"

"Lady Effni Naridia rests in her chambers, while I believe Sir Telirogo has reunited with his family and seeks new accommodation in the city."

"Sure, I'm going to pop out to find them,” Will said, opening the door to step out. As he tried to leave, the woman beside the exit moved to block his path.

"Please sir, may I insist you wait just a few moments, her highness will be with you shortly."

Will stared at them both for a long moment while he considered his options. He could fight… With the dampening field? Was he strong enough without his magic? Even if he won this fight, how far would that get him? Could he escape via the balcony? Probably, he'd have to better inspect the side of the building to see. But he didn't fancy life as a fugitive, not on top of the apparent challenges lying ahead. Without replying, Will stepped back and closed the door. He ran to the balcony, looking downwards to inspect the route he would take should he decide to scale the building.

Will paced around his room, reminding himself that he had no access to magic. Even access to his hyper-dimensional storage was gone. M's presence, as dubious as it was, was a strange comfort as he held the sphere AI tight inside his fist.

He started scouring the room for anything useful, food or provisions, perhaps something to break his fall, the bedsheets, a makeshift rope? Were there extra clothes, the mirror glass... the chair legs for a weapon? His mind was frantic as he planned his escape.

Will was just about to tear apart the bed when he flinched upon hearing the snick of the opening door.

Instantly Will's arms raised as if to channel. Instinct burned into muscle over the hellish few weeks. He turned just as the door opened to reveal… She was a long cascade of sunlit blonde curls ringed by a silver circlet. Reaeryn ears parted hair that flowed well below her shoulders. A small, upturned nose sat just below familiar, ice-blue eyes.

Will's mind raced as she stepped inside and closed the door. Reflexively, he back stepped as a dozen Neuromancy intrusion attempt notifications flashed in his UI.

The woman in front of him was no mere princess. She held a cordial smile while looking even younger than what Will had already deduced had to be her sister. However, through all the incongruences, Will's mind screamed danger. She carried herself with the grace and stillness of someone ancient. Her power level of forty-six, seventeen levels above his own, was another indicator that this person was not to be messed with, not that he had the magic to even try something right now. She radiated supremacy and control while he remained as still as a cockroach caught in the open as she inspected him. Dozens of heartbeats stretched as her expression slowly shifted into concern.

"Why hello, it is a pleasure to finally meet you," she started with the effortless grace of a monarch. "I mean you no harm," she continued, palms slightly raised as she moved closer towards the centre of the room.

Will remained silent, fight-or-flight response jammed between equally weighted options. Within his mind, he replayed those same eyes in the shadows, an arrow aimed at his chest.

An even longer, excruciatingly awkward silence followed.

"I see that it's taken only a few days for you to pick up my sister's most infuriating habit,” she said, expression rueful as she walked closer to sit upon the enormous bed between them. Will resisted an urge to take another step backwards, keenly aware of the seven-story-high escape option behind him. He inhaled deeply and examined his circumstances. 'She was here, why? To kill me? No. I die and the Armistice is over. Surely she knows this?' Will continued to think, thoughts moving more clearly as he broke eye contact with his guest. 'She's trying to put me at ease, but surely she knows that I know she's trying something? Knowing that someone’s trying to manipulate you normally has the opposite effect, right? Should I focus on the act, or the intent? Or perhaps I should just find out what she wants?'

"What do you want?" Will blurted out, silently cursing his bluntness.

"Ah, well..." She frowned. Was she disappointed? And if so, was it at him or at something else? "I suppose that depends."

"That depends?"

"Yes. Tell me, Doctor William Ashley Jenkins of... Earth? Just what precisely, is a physicist?"

The End of The Last Physicist - Book One of the Archon.

Afterword

I hope you’ve enjoyed this book. If you have and you’d like to find more information about future books from me, books like this or would just like to hang out, you can reach me at the following locales:

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