by Prax Venter
He was smiling.
Detrious stood rooted about ten yards away from the Power Droid, and his massive magical wall protected him from anything Sasha was doing with her bombs. A wave of frustration reached them from the airborne abyssal horror as she realized that her high-damage spell couldn’t target his mind while his shimmering barrier was up.
Mark was behind Sasha as she splashed across the river and through the drops of water; he saw their enemy clutching his bullshit amulet. That damn thing had prevented his True Sight ability from reading the other man’s mind, and it must also be protecting him from Abby’s imaginary spell.
At least she hit him with the slow Mind Crush, and the Vines seemed to be effective as well. They would hold him for a full thirty seconds, but it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t touch him with his barrier up. With nothing to lose, both he and Sasha ran past the lifeless, glossy battle droid to take up position between them.
“Excellent!” Detrious said, his lips pulled back into an insane half-sneer half-smile. Then, while he was still held by the Vines, he barely lifted his amulet and an inferno completely engulfed his beloved ex-personal assistant standing by his side.
The seared flesh along his whole left side from the proximity did nothing to distract him from Sasha’s screams as she burnt to death. She tried to deploy her metal plates and use Static Escape to reach the river, but the flames stuck to her no matter what and after several very long seconds, Sasha’s connection to his heart was violently ripped out, dropping Mark to his knees. Two reflective metal legs and bits of scale plates were all that remained of his loyal succubus.
He’d foolishly thought he was mentally prepared for this possibility.
Detrious chuckled from his side of the barrier. “What now, toothless Lover?”
Mark spoke through hatred that burned hotter than any sun. “We will fight you for eternity if we have to.”
“That’s the spirit!” the vile man said as he rubbed his amulet again. “Even a God needs new playthings.”
Mark’s oozing burned flesh just began to demand his full attention when he felt another stab of terrible pain come from Jezebel. He glanced up over his shoulder to see the Druid centaur become engulfed in flames as well.
Abby was burning along with her and leaped off her back away from the inferno. His beloved strawberry-blonde was ripped from his heart as Abby shattered both of her slender legs from the fifty-foot drop.
This was not going to work.
Mark pushed off the ground and limped away from the cackling mad man who was now free from Jezebel’s Vines before the ability’s full duration.
“Run, pitiful mortal!”
The cool, crisp waters of the river barely helped the growing agony from his flash-seared flesh and the knowledge that both Sasha and Jezebel would return tomorrow was similarly ineffective. When he reached the blistered, broken, and barely conscious pile of Abby, he almost lost his sanity.
Calling on this virtual universe to obey his single-minded will to end her pain, Mark held out his heart ring as he lurched forward and forced open a rip in reality. Through this white shimmering tear, a beam of glittering light burst forth and struck the ground where his quivering abyssal horror lay with such a concussive force that it echoed through the canyon.
Abby’s burnt and shattered form hovered limply off the ground within the light before a flash of curative energy made looking directly at her impossible. Where normally Mark had to individually try and restitch each patch of skin and knit every broken bone, Abby’s whole body simply snapped back to perfect condition before she gently descended back to the ground.
Mark tried to make a mental note to control his abilities better as the mid-air rip vanished and the lightshow faded. The more emotion he felt, the stronger his heals, and he wondered what his true limits were. If they continued to influence the rules of magic from inside the system, maybe there weren’t any.
Abby hopped up to her oversized boots and ran to meet him.
“Your flesh…” she said, hesitantly reaching out one of her appendages but stopping before she touched his raw and throbbing arm. He looked down and saw that his thin silk shirt had fused to his skin from Detrious’s indirect magical flames.
“I know,” he said, gritting his teeth against his own growing pain. Now that Abby was restored, and the fighting seemed to be over, his adrenaline was subsiding. “Let’s get back to our cave and talk about tomorrow.”
The two moved together in silence and when they were about halfway there, Mark’s healing ability became available once more. With no hesitation, and with a much less dramatic effect, Mark restored his melted flesh.
He looked down and saw that half of his shirt was gone so he just ripped the rest off and tossed it to the ground. His left pant leg was missing as well, but he didn’t feel like being totally nude for the rest of the day, so he just dealt with it.
“I don’t wish to experience this ever again,” Abby said, coiling a tentacle gently into his fingers. “Losing their bonds… is far, far more intolerable than I expected.”
“I agree,” Mark said in a flat voice.
When they arrived to their fallback position on this side of the river, he noticed that the tree Sasha had obliterated with her finger sparks experiment was standing tall once more, and the void both she and Jezebel left in his heart expanded to near-unbearable.
Abby felt this through him and used both of her long appendages to wrap herself tight to his bare chest. With her pressed against him, there was no way he could continue walking and they remained in the shadow of the cliffside as the gentle warm breeze rustled the forest around them.
It was so impossibly quiet without the others- inside and out.
“Is this emptiness what everyone felt when I died?” she asked, turning her big yellow eyes up to his.
Mark sighed. “Not to sell you short, little one. But losing two bonded Enthralled is apparently worse than one. If I’d lost you too…” He stopped to swallow back his anger at their situation, and she pressed her cheek into his chest. Mark tilted his head down to kiss the top of her smooth silky hair and finished his thought. “Even though I know they’ll be back in a few hours, if I lost you too, there is no question that I would walk right up to that stupid fucking power droid so I could skip the torture of sitting here alone.”
They stood for a moment longer in the comfort of each other’s closeness before moving into the shadows of their shallow crag in the canyon wall.
“That barrier would block any level of my damage spell,” she said quietly. “It’s as if he no longer possesses a mind and is not a valid target. I was correct; spending our mass of points yesterday would have been foolhardy.”
He nodded. That meant either trying to recruit some of the Visitors to help or trying to get the droid to fight on their side with trickery. Since the air elementals had started zipping off before Mark could ever find them in the sky and no one else had any special abilities that would do any good, that didn’t sound as if pursuing that strategy would add much of an advantage. But if getting the death-bot to fight for them was as simple as typing a code and issuing the first command…
Mark made sure no one was around before he leaned down and whispered into Abby’s small green ear.
“Tomorrow, I want you to vanish and watch him input that fucking code.”
He didn’t think anyone was around to hear them, but there was no sense in taking any chances. Abby narrowed her eyes and nodded, her absolute focus and understanding resonating clearly along their private connection.
“I do not wish to sit,” she said, turning away from him and heading back out into the forest along the canyon.
With nothing left to do but wait for over eight hours to drag across their minds, simply sitting here in the dirt did seem like a terrible idea. The abyssal horror saw he was following and slowed until he caught up before she began to stroll alongside through the wispy grass. The foliage that could thrive under the lush, colorful canop
y was stretched long and thin, and they fluffed against his shin as they walked. To their left and on the other side of the small forest was the river sparkling in the sunlight between the tall white trunks. A pleasant breeze caressed his bare chest and reminded him once more that one of the first things they needed do when they escaped this place was get some new gear. Especially if he could no longer rely on his energy for weapons or any type of-
Mark looked down to his hand and realized he’d neglected to pick up Exor’s sword on this loop. He shrugged to himself. It didn’t really matter- there was always next cycle.
That mode of thinking felt good and some of the stress on his mind faded a little, but he realized it would be a dangerous mindset to get into. They had infinite lives, but not infinite time.
“I wish I had a physical form of attack as well,” Abby broke the silence as they walked away from the wreck. “My imaginary attacks have limitations.”
Her coiling tentacle tips caught his eye, and he wondered what would have happened if she took a different class when he Enthralled her.
“Abby,” he said, “I’m getting the feeling like we are on the verge of some type of breakthrough. I’ve been seeing some weird, next-level shit lately. I fixed Sasha’s code with magic, then I fixed your code. I watched the Kalorplast Druids unlock an ability in Jez, then I gave her back her wings. Yesterday, I could have sworn I was inches away from learning Arc Bolt for myself. Maybe I could root around in you and try to unlock other abilities.”
She stopped walking, and he turned to face her.
“I willingly submit to your administrations.” There was a twisted smile on her face then it faded before she added, “We may never have as much privacy as we do today for such meditative experiments.”
Mark tilted his head suggesting they keep going, and Abby began moving her boots through the wispy grass once more. They strode under the trees for a few minutes intending to put plenty of space between them and the wreckage behind when they both heard someone shouting, “Collector!” from far away.
They froze and spun, searching for the source of the familiar voice echoing off the canyon walls.
“Mark!” the voice called again and then he saw Chorra’s vibrant feathers above the trees. He briefly wasn’t sure if they should hide or call out but ended up waving his hand over his head. If she had information, he wanted to hear it.
“Down here,” he called out.
The bare-breasted harpy locked her sharp eyes on them and then swooped down to land near the clearing around the river. Her wings were at least ten feet across when she had them fully extended and he noticed bits of leaves and sticks blasted away from the force of her landing.
“What is it?” he asked as she approached through the trees on her talons. His magic eye was dialed to eleven as he actively probed this creature’s mind. Despite the new focus of her emotions pushing out her previous fear, Mark felt physical attraction as she noticed his exposed, toned body. She easily put it out of her mind. Chorra had witnessed something that had fundamentally changed her.
“Meegon approached Detrious to try and talk to him,” she began. “I hid and watched as the mad man snuffed him out almost immediately. After he was gone, Detrious yelled out to inform ‘any naughty little birds nearby’ that as punishment for such heresy he would murder him every morning until his inevitable godhood.” She blinked back tears and forced herself to remain in control of her emotions.
“I want to help you fight him. This is no longer our Sanctuary.”
“It never was,” Abby said.
The bird-woman narrowed her eyes. “You are wrong, morsel. I heard your Collector say he will fight an eternity for freedom. I feel within the hollows of my quills the urge to fight for this spiritual place. I belong here. Meegon belongs here. He’d always felt this strongly, but I’d never spent the worry on the subject until I witnessed him stand behind his words. Whatever else this cycle is, this is our Sanctuary.”
The intensity beaming from Chorra reverberated through his blind eye as absolute truth, and not for the first time, Mark thought of this harpy as a good person.
“Walk with us,” he said before turning and heading deeper into the forest. After they started moving, he turned to her and laid it out plainly. “You are correct in that we are fighting Detrious for our freedom. When we succeed, you and Meegon will be left in here to face his wrath and disappointment for that eternity you mentioned. He tortured Exor until that ancient solider decided he’d rather endure an existence of nothing but repeatedly stabbing himself in the heart.” Mark paused and turned to face her as they walked. “Is that what you want out of Sanctuary?”
“Of course not,” she said, the small feathers on her neck ruffling upward slightly. “But I will endure- have endured. I’ve flown from selfish monsters my whole life. Never again. We have time, and we will find a way.”
Abby nodded. “I understand now. You and I are more alike than I realized. We intended to come back and possibly break this curse at a later date. Now, I do not wish to break your Sanctuary, but I would return to help you deal with Detrious, if needed.”
“Okay,” Mark said, looking forward again. “We have several cycles of attacks planned out to test his reactions to our strategy. Anything you or anyone could do to pull his attention to the stern side of the wreck would help us long enough to strike him from the other side.”
Old Mark would have told her their real target and their real plan, but there was absolutely nothing to be gained by being overly honest. He felt a minor pang of pride in not spilling the beans this time.
“I am not afraid of his flames,” Chorra said with a solid line of certainty running through her words. “If I cannot claw out his eyes, I will flutter in his face and force him to deal with me.”
Mark gave her a small approving frown and a nod. “That’ll work.”
They walked through the calm, colorful, alien forest for several minutes before Chorra spoke again.
“Will this Lady Maliah truly grant him godhood?”
He sighed. “I doubt it, Chorra. There is a good chance that she will pull the plug on the entirety of existence when she gets here.”
The bird-woman angled her beak toward him and tilted her head.
“The plug? As in, this world is in a cosmic bathing tub and she will drain the water emptying everything into the void?”
Mark let out a short laugh. “Hm, not exactly what I meant but that’s not an inaccurate way of looking at it. Maliah has a grudge against us and- I’ll be honest with you; mistakes were made and she’s not completely wrong for holding that grudge. But she has no love for this world and will stop at nothing to prevent us from gathering the Crystal Heart shards, including the end of everything you know. Yes, it’s the opposite of what she said in her message but trust me. If Maliah gets free first, there is no telling what kind of damage she will do. It’s a race. Both of us got stuck where we are, and if we get free first, we can stop her.”
Mark remembered that Jezebel herself intended to shut this simulated multiverse down when she was done with it, but he knew that had changed recently. They had made a lot of good friends in here and there was no way to tell them apart from “real” people. As far as Mark was concerned, he would do everything in his power to keep this world running.
He sighed to himself. So many layers of escaping to do.
“Put a stop to my questions if they go too far,” Chorra began, “but I find that I’ve been startled awake from a long slumber. Before, there were many things I simply ignored. Detrious breaking the curse, Maliah’s mysterious message, the reason for this unique group of Enthralled and their unique Lover becoming new Visitors… all of this was behind the glass of Sanctuary and meaningless to me. The certainty of this repetitive cycle can lay eggs that hatch lethargy.” She shook out her shoulders, and Mark saw some of her fluffy white inner feathers float off with the breeze. She continued.
“My next question is this, how does the creator of the universe
get stuck anywhere?”
Abby answered quickly. “She is not the true creator, Jezebel is.”
Mark grimaced. He wasn’t the only one here who was brutally honest.
“Is that… She is?” Chorra stammered as they walked. “What does that make you two?”
“Look,” Mark said, holding up his palms, “fate and self-determination played more of a ‘creator’ role in the content of this universe than either Jezebel or Maliah. Feel free to ask questions, but most of our situation is going to be impossible to explain correctly. I’ll tell you this, we know it’s better to have friends over enemies. Killing dangerous monsters and completing quests for those in desperate need of heroes has a measurable effect on our abilities and our success. And it’s just the fucking right thing to do.”
“Feel fortunate we are on your side,” Abby added with a genuine beartrap smile lighting her face.
They walked in silence for a while longer before Chorra asked another question.
“Are you headed somewhere specific right now?”
Their plan was to explore Abby’s mind today, and he wondered if he should just send her away, but then the Vulpath painter named Audra popped into his mind. During her sad tale of how her Collector abandoned her, she’d told them about her harpy she was bound to and their ability to create recall charms… An ability Mark had wanted to abuse the shit out of.
He stopped and the two exotic women stopped with him.
“Is it true that all harpies can create Recall Charms?”
The bird-woman looked down to her dark pink talons and squeezed them into the sandy earth.
“To a point, yes. Some races are more skilled than others. The Zenith Clan are the smallest of us. They can create one around every ten minutes. I’m of the Shadewing Clan, the largest of the harpy races, and I can normally create one about every three days- um, after the conditions have been met.”