by Zeppy Cheng
10… 9… 8… 7…
The roar of a huge drone blossoms overhead.
6… 5… 4…
The balrog smashes the building with its side, sending ripples through the concrete. It is so close, its heat haze drifts over the floor. Worse, I can see the whites of its eyes.
3… 2… 1… 0…
A blast of fire with the intensity of the sun rips through the air and slams into the balrog right where the light is shining. Molten metal and rock flies everywhere. The balrog reels. The pillar I am leaning against collapses, sending me sliding straight towards the firestorm in front of me.
I am in a life or death situation.
I am near a huge monster.
And I don’t even care about what will happen to me next as long as I survive.
I brace my heels against the floor, stabilizing myself for a half-second, then grab my bow and nock an arrow. The fire around the balrog slips down its body, revealing a patch of its head where the red crackling slade-rock armor has been broken. The balrog is still very much alive, and is turning to me with its gigantic, devilish eyes.
My Anima vision spots a tiny point. It’s where the missile hit, about the size of a penny. There, the balrog’s very essence is exposed.
I fire my bow. My entire body turns green, and I am suddenly convinced I am a papaya. A piece of fruit sliding off a grocery store shelf.
My arrow buries itself inside the balrog, diving deep. The balrog’s eyes go wide. A light switch flicks in its brain. It staggers, rips some holes in the buildings around it, and stomps on a tank. The flames around it erupt in a display of fireworks that shoots hundreds of meters into the air. The balrog moans, roars, and then collapses to the ground. I slip off the tilting floor and float into the open air.
I am aware of everything. Yet I know nothing. A beam of light cuts open the balrog’s body. A blood-red ring floats out of its chest, spinning, and wraps around my stomach. I am floating, not falling.
Unimaginable power flows through me. My entire being explodes into magic, pain, and the pure essence of reality. I scream without making a sound as I float towards the street.
I land with a bump. My vision snaps back into focus, and so does reality. I am no longer a papaya, and my hands are back to normal — except for the blood-red cracks running through them. They shimmer with a starry radiance, almost as if they are alive.
Esla kneels beside me. “Caught you.”
I stagger up and glance around. We are not in a good situation. At least fifty lesser devils surround us. They climb over the body of their master, spilling out of alleyways and dropping from the buildings above. They don’t approach us directly. Instead they form a circle around us, chattering to each other in whatever language they speak.
A stirring of power erupts in my chest. I embrace it. It begins gathering in my hands, a glob of deep blue energy that contains the fury of a thousand lightning bolts.
One of the devils approaches. I do not know what is going to happen — all I know is that they are not attacking. The devil bows before me, lowering itself to one knee. “You have defeated our master,” it says in a guttural, rocky voice. “You have absorbed his soul. We are now yours to command.”
“Um…”
Esla turns to me, her eyes wide. “You killed the balrog? Not the military?”
“The military softened him up.” Confusion fills me. “But I was the one who killed him.”
The devil lifts its head, still on one knee. “My name is Jirgrar. I am at your command, as is my legion.” He points to the ball of lightning in my hand. “If you wish, we shall store ourselves away within your personal dimension.”
“Personal… ?”
Jirgrar bows. “Yes. I smell your power. It was not an accident that you killed our previous master.”
I lift up my hand, looking at the ball of plasma in my palm. “Okay, then. I guess you guys can… do whatever it is that you do.”
“As you command,” says Jirgrar.
Without warning, a light shimmers deep within the plasma ball. All at once several hundred beams of curved light shoot out from it and surround the devils. As one, they shiver, twist, and disperse into a blue light that collects inside my plasma ball.
And then there are no more devils. The sounds of battle fade away.
I know the number of devils within me instantly. There are two hundred and fifty-one of them, comprised of five different types. I will probably learn more about them later.
Esla looks to me. “You should, uh, probably not tell anyone about what just happened.”
I get the feeling I am being watched. “Yeah. Keep it secret for me.”
She nods.
The tank that drove us here peels around a corner and stops in front of us. Its engine winds down, then dies away with a clatter. The balrog’s body lies on the street, leaking fiery energy. The tank commander pops out of the top hatch and peers at us, shielding his eyes. “You did it!” His voice carries over the suddenly quiet landscape. “We killed the balrog!” He squints. “I guess the brass made a good investment, eh?”
I look at Esla, and she looks at me. We both nod. The missile killed the balrog, not I.
Esla holds out the glorified laser pointer. “Here.”
The commander climbs out of the hatch, walks up to Esla, and takes it from her. “I’m going to recommend all three of you for a medal.” He looks around. “Where’s the tall guy?”
“Right here!” Corbin hangs out of a broken second-story window. He jumps out and slides along a cloth awning, landing on the ground and thumping it with his steel rod. “I just got done fighting a devil. All of a sudden it disappeared.”
Esla and I exchange another look. We don’t have to talk.
“When the balrog died, it took all the devils with it,” Esla explains.
Corbin peers at the burning landscape around us and whistles. “Whoa. That missile or whatever sure did some damage.”
“I’m just glad it worked,” says the tank commander.
“Hey!” yells a voice from half a block away.
I turn around. A group of Adventurers are approaching. All around us people are popping out of the woodwork, some Adventurers, some soldiers, and a couple of civilians. I can’t identify any one guild, but I recognize several of the faces. These are all powerful, well-known Adventurers.
Mr. Tuffman is among them. He reaches us first. “I recognize you. You’re with my Riding Valkyries, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”
The tank commander edges between me and Mr. Tuffman. “This boy and his two friends helped the military kill the monster. You should be praising them.”
“What happened to its Spirit Circle?” says Mr. Tuffman.
Esla glances at me, eyebrows up. I nod.
“Markus is the one who held the laser,” she says. “So I’m pretty sure he absorbed it.”
“But you shouldn’t be able to absorb energy without a ceremony,” says Mr. Tuffman. “The body is still here!”
As if on cue, the body starts to crumble.
I take this as my own cue. “Dr. Barrimore gave me a potion yesterday. You can talk to him if you want to know what happened.”
“Dr. Barrimore?” scoffs Mr. Tuffman. “You mean that hack who thinks Spirit Circles should be given to bad companion spirits?”
“Well, you guys can test me.” I bristle, wanting to defend my mentor who has been working so hard to prove his theories. “I absorbed the circle, and I think my powers changed. A lot.”
The tank commander waves an arm between us. “We should carry out this conversation later. We need to report in.”
“Don’t worry about that,” says an Adventurer behind Mr. Tuffman. “We have that covered.”
A couple of police helicopters chop-chop-chop overhead. More and more vehicles are arriving at the scene. Two news vans screech around the corner and stop next to the fast-decaying body of the balrog. A dozen cameramen and reporters climb out of the vans and approach the group of
Adventurers hanging around.
“Alex Rim!” says a reporter, shoving a microphone in the face of one of the more famous Adventurers in the group. “Who landed the killing blow?”
The tank commander pushes his way through the crowd, displacing Alex Rim. “My name is Lieutenant Anders. I can tell you that the government deployed the weapon that destroyed the balrog. Since this young man here—” he points to me— “was the one to manage the guidance laser, and the missile was fired by a drone, he was the one to absorb the, ah, Spirit Circle.”
Mr. Tuffman nods his head in dawning understanding. “I don’t know how that would work, to be honest. We’ll have to do more research. In the meantime, we need to get in contact with the doctor who caused this… bizarre transfer of energies.”
“Dr. Barrimore,” I say pointedly, hoping the camera picks up his name.
Mr. Tuffman nods. He turns to the camera. “It looks like, as in a dungeon, the monsters dissipate once the boss is dead.”
I nod along with the story.
The reporters then turn to the rest of the Adventurers, singling out the rock stars. I assume they know the people watching TV want to know about their favorite celebrity Adventurers, not some rando like Mr. Tuffman or me.
The tank commander — Lt. Anders — claps me on the back. “You did good, kid. I’ll recommend you for the highest award an Adventurer can receive.” He turns to Esla and Corbin. “And you guys, too. I know how much you helped.”
“I didn’t do much,” says Corbin.
“You held off the devils while we were climbing,” says Esla. “That deserves an award.”
I sink to my knees. “Guys, I’m kind of tired…” The expenditure of energy I made, as well as the scare of almost dying, has taken me over.
The world fades away and I feel a pair of arms surrounding me. “Thanks, Esla,” I say as I collapse from exhaustion.
11 A Hero’s Welcome
I wake up a hero.
The morning news, showing on the TV in the common room, displays footage of me almost falling out of the twentieth story of a building with the balrog beneath me. Then comes the missile strike. When the smoke clears, the balrog is dead and I am floating downwards on a gust of Esla’s wind. The newscaster talks about my bravery and how I saved the city of New York.
In the common room with me are three of the other Riding Valkyries’ apprentices, Sarah, Evan, and Blake. Sarah’s attitude towards me seems to have taken a complete one-eighty. Where before she was cold, standoffish, and uncaring, now she is happy to smile at me and congratulate me with a high five.
“Thanks,” I mutter. I finish talking to the people in the room and sit down on a couch. The news continues on and on about the devastation, showing the missile strike at least five times in ten minutes. No matter how closely I look, I can’t see the moment when I made the fatal shot at the monster’s vitals. It is obscured by fire and smoke.
There is a knock on the door. It opens, revealing Mr. Irr and a troop of doctors, at least five of them including Dr. Barrimore. Dr. Barrimore is smiling like never before, his eyes sparkling. It seems his part in this incident has not gone silent.
As they surround me, he claps me on the back. “Leave it to Markus to figure out how to use my potion not two hours after taking it.”
I do my best to grin. “Yeah. My hand turned green, and then as I was sliding, I turned into a papaya…”
Dr. Barrimore makes a strange face. “Let’s not tell people about that,” he murmurs.
I nod. I like how things turned out — there’s no use speculating. Besides, I couldn’t really remember what being a papaya felt like.
“Markus,” says Dr. Irr, “you realize what you’ve done, right?”
I shake my head.
“If the aptitude test we are going to give you turns out how Dr. Barrimore predicts, it may prove his hypothesis.”
“The one everyone rejected as nuts.” Dr. Barrimore seems to want to drive that point home.
Dr. Irr tugs me towards the door. “We can’t waste any time. We have to evaluate your new powers as soon as possible.”
I agree completely.
In the gigantic testing room, two of the polite Men In Black guide me to the room’s center. A whole host of objects, looking like a high-tech obstacle course, is arrayed around the room.
“First,” says Dr. Irr, standing with the other doctors inside the glass observation box, “we need to reevaluate your physical characteristics. Please step into the judging device.”
I step into the same tube-like device that scanned me the first time I was here. The long arm rotates around me, filling me with a strange kind of magical warmth. After about a minute, the machine stops and I step out.
There is a long silence. The doctors in the observation room discuss something.
Then Dr. Irr looks back down at me. “Thank you. Now, would you please project your spirit manifestation towards the calibration device.”
A wall with a mounted television covered in wires lights up underneath a spotlight. I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do, but I imagine myself projecting something. To my surprise, a ball of blue light extends from my hand and arcs at a glacial pace towards the wall. It strikes the wall with a heavy thud. I am somewhat disappointed at that. I had imagined my new power to be something like Esla’s, but it appears my projection, whatever it is, is a slow-moving kind of power.
The doctors in the observation room discuss amongst themselves for another few minutes. Then a new series of spotlights lights up a platform about a foot off the ground. “Stand in the center of the testing platform.”
I step onto it.
“Generate as much material as you can in sixty seconds,” says Dr. Irr. “You may begin.”
I hold out my hands. At first, nothing comes out. Then my hands grow those red cracks I noticed when I first gained my new powers. The cracks get bigger and bigger. A blob of bluish-green jelly leaks out of my palms. My arms and then my whole body gushes out this wet, sticky substance. It is not disgusting, but it does make me feel kind of tingly. After sixty seconds the whole platform is covered in the gel. Rainbows that resemble the ones on oil slicks crisscross the floor.
Again, the doctors take a long while to discuss. Then the spotlights direct me to a series of pillars arranged in a circle. “Attempt to knock down these pillars,” says Dr. Irr.
I step into the center.
“You may begin.”
“What was that goo that came out of me?” I ask.
There is a silence. “We will debrief you after the testing has ended. Please continue to comply.”
I hold out my hands and imagine lightning shooting out of my palms and knocking over the pillars. Instead of lighting, though, that same thick, viscous goo slops out of my palms and collects in a pile on the ground.
For a split second I have a flashback to the hours of training I spent on the shooting range. The goo coming out of my hand takes shape, forming into a copy of my favorite bow. For all intents and purposes, it is a perfect copy. I form several arrows out of goo, aim them at the pillars, and release them. The arrows explode into jelly when they hit their targets, spraying the platform with bits of blue-green ick.
I get an idea. I form the goo into a sledgehammer. It is heavy in my hand. I swing hard and smash the pillars, one after the other. By the end, the hammer dissolves into goo, but I have destroyed all the pillars. I stand in the middle of a pile of icky blue-green substance. “Sorry about the mess.” I say.
There is a long silence. “It’s fine,” says Dr. Irr. “We will clean your Anima excretions later.” The spotlights illuminate a track with a cube on one end and a wall on the other. It runs the length of the room, approximately half the length of a football field.
“Stand where designated, facing the cube.” With Dr. Irr’s words, a red spotlight puts a circle on the wall end of the track. After I step into position, Dr Irr says, “You are to stop this cube using whatever method you can.”
<
br /> The cube starts towards me at the pace of a walking human.
I form a long metal pole out of my Anima excretions and use it like a pike to stop the cube. It is surprisingly easy.
The cube pulls back to its starting position.
“We will now increase the power of the object,” warns Dr. Irr. “It will approximately double each instance of this test. The test will end when the cube touches your body.”
I nod. I reform my metal rod into a thicker, more powerful one. The second test comes easy, but not as easy as the first. The third is quite difficult. By the fourth instance, I am unable to stop the cube with my initial approach. I get the idea to use friction, and toss a glob of my goo onto the ground in front of the cube. I then turn the goo into a cement wall block.
The cube stops at the block, unable to break through.
The fifth instance begins. The cube travels toward me at the same walking pace. This time, my concrete block does not stop it. Thinking fast, I tie a web of my goo, formed into steel wire, to two pillars on either side of the track. I extend the web across the path of the cube. The cube is stopped, though the steel is straining. This approach won’t work next time.
The cube returns to its position. At the signal from the observation platform, it starts moving.
I can’t think of any way to stop it. I simply watch it approach me, waiting for it to touch my body. It stops at the red line right in front of my feet and gently presses against me.
“The test is now concluded,” says Dr. Irr. The doctors in the room have another long discussion. “We have decided to give you this next test because of your performance on the standard gauges. Walk to where the spotlight points.”
The spotlight points to a bare circular platform near the corner of the room. It doesn’t look like it has been used much, its edges crisp and the paint new. I step onto it. A piece of paper slips up out of a small slit on the platform. I pick it up — it is some kind of blueprint.
“Please follow the instructions.” Dr. Barrimore takes Dr. Irr’s place. “I have developed this test specifically for your case. Do your best.”
So that my theory can be recognized, I hear his tone implying.