by Prax Venter
He ran a few yards toward the smug man in neat black hair and planted his shield directly in front of him instead.
“Are you going to wrestle me?” Detrious said as he looked from Mark to scan the wreckage. “Where are your well-endowed playthings? I think I’ll try feeling that pretty doe from the inside, first.”
The vile man hid behind his energy as he waited for the Vines to release him, and Mark knew there was no way he could reach him, but the urge to pummel this person’s face with his bare fists almost convinced the rational portion of his mind to try anyway.
“I will make sure your nightmare never ends,” Mark said instead.
Detrious’s face twisted into rage at Mark’s words, and he lifted his onyx amulet to incinerate him, but all the other man managed to do was to make the veins stand out on his forearm from frustration.
Mark had only used his barrier during one assault, but it appeared that Detrious could not use his amulet on anything inside the bubble.
A sharp burst of pain quickly followed by elation struck him from Abby, and he spun to see the robot standing with Abby pulling the tip of a tentacle out of her mouth.
“Kill Detrious,” she said quietly, and the droid’s plastic face turned to look over Mark’s shoulder.
“Understood,” the automaton responded in a flat voice.
“No! Attack them!” Detrious called out, and Mark had a moment of panic as the small artificial woman stalked straight for him. To his astonishment, the Lunar Power Droid moved into his protective dome as if it weren’t there and took up a position by his side as she raised her arms and fired both of her deadly beams outward toward their enemy.
Detrious held up his powerful artifact and the magical force field surrounding him shifted into a thick shield-like circle. Building sparks and a terrible screeching noise like metal on metal burst forth from their conflict, and although Detrious was blocking her attack, he needed all his power to do so. The glossy robot began sidestepping out of Mark’s barrier as she continuously fired, and he guessed she was trying to outmaneuver his shield.
Abby saw her opening and whispered something as she stepped up to Mark’s other side. Detrious immediately winced as the purplish clouds representing her Mind Crush began to inflict pain.
“You cannot win!” their foe screeched, and Mark felt the ancient man’s will and desperation condense the layers of magic around them. There was a moment of deafening silence before the imprisoned mage cast a type of feedback spell, sending dark blobs of energy back up her searing beams and into the glossy droid’s fists. Her hands began to glow red hot before overloading and knocked her back to the ground with a solid thud.
They’d lost their advantage, but Mark couldn’t help but smile when he saw Sasha’s Shock Bomb land at Detrious’s feet. The man with the amulet had been too focused on the military bot to notice before the sparking orb detonated, and the resulting burst of electricity did considerable damage.
What remained of Detrious’s left leg was mostly char, but the stunned prisoner of Sanctuary remained conscious. He’d been freed from Jezebel’s Vines by the attack and the man pitched forward onto his hands and knees.
“I’ll reset us all!” he wheezed with barely contained hatred.
His hand gripped the legendary amulet to cast whatever apocalyptic insanity he had in mind, but Jezebel’s bear form collided with the wounded mage at unbelievable speed before he could try anything. Her huge paws lightly scraped the ground as she flew and the mass behind her horns shattered most of the unfortunate man’s bones.
Mark didn’t think that he’d survived the impact with the pissed-off druid, or with the tree he hit, but Jezebel zipped after him and tore what remained into a pile of gore with her claws.
He and Abby approached her as she shifted back to her satyr form and Sasha wasn’t far behind.
“We did it,” his emerald-eyed Enthralled said, but he saw those eyes shift behind him and flash out a warning through their bond.
Mark turned to see the Lunar Power Droid entering the forest. Her fists were still smoking, and he wondered if her ability to fire death rays was taken out of commission. She wasn’t making any threatening moves, yet he watched the bot’s smooth legs approach and stand next to his petite abyssal horror.
“It follows,” Abby said standing face to face with the glossy half-nude android. Her white, digital eyes sputtered in and out, but they seemed to only follow the green woman’s movements. Abby continued. “Part of activation is allowing it to take a biological sample. I believe it has been bound via an unknown blood ritual.”
“What are we waiting for?” Sasha said from behind. Mark turned to see her standing several yards away and pointing at the rectangle of white light representing Sanctuary’s exit. “Let’s get the fuck out of here already.”
Mark’s brow furrowed. “Hold on. I’m obviously grabbing that amulet.” He continued to talk as he stepped near the mound of red meat and bones that used to be Detrious. “Shit, its powers alone are worth it, and if I take it out of here, maybe Meegon and Chorra will actually have a chance to win against him next cycle.”
It took a few more seconds than he would have liked to find it among the gore, but he saw the glinting onyx stone and bent to grab it.
The moment he did, his one good eye stung from the light bouncing off the pure white sand now under his boots. He stood to find he was under the searing hot sun on the top of a sandy dune in the middle of a pale desert.
At first, he appeared to be alone, but a short humanoid female with bronzed-brown skin shimmered into existence as if she were a mirage. The moment Mark looked up into her white, hourglass eyes, the sun began to rock back and forth in the rich blue sky as if it were a cosmic pendulum.
It was one of the most intensely mesmerizing things he’d ever seen, but Mark ignored the wildly shifting shadows to focus on the alien-like entity before him.
“Goddess Pendula, I presume,” Mark said, bowing his head. She wore an elegant toga-like dress made of gold but styled in such a way so one of her small perky breasts was left exposed. She wasn’t quite bald, but her head was only covered with a light dusting of black stubble. Her face was hard to… understand, so he tried to keep focus on her eyes.
“Mark,” she said, her voice many versions of the same woman. He picked out a little girl’s whisper up through an elderly matron’s gentle rasp, among others. “You now hold The Pendulum. Choose one side or the other. Leave the Cycle and break the curse. Leave the artifact and continue the Cycle.”
“What do these choices mean?” Mark asked as he sent out his truth-seeking eye to read this entity’s intentions. This felt like a game, and he was beyond done playing by the rules.
Her mind was still a level or two above his in complexity, but the first thing he noticed was her surprise at both this Collector’s forwardness and his strength. She was indeed a goddess, and an old one.
“How do you exist?” she whispered in her many voices, curiosity melting her aversion to his observational intrusion. She liked to be known, and now that he strove to know her so fiercely, she wanted to know him as well.
Mark laughed, distracted by the complex and unanswerable question. The change in mood pulled his magic sight into a different part of her vast mind and witnessed Pendula’s boundless delight at Chorra’s first direct prayers since entering the Cycle. He saw a great inverted pyramid of sand with a glittering speck falling onto her from its tip, one or two granules at a time.
Goddess Pendula was currently in a shriveled, weakened state and it might be the only reason he was able to get as far as he could within her vast, confounding mindscape. He blinked and only saw the slender deity before him.
Mark smiled.
“I don’t know why I exist, but I will tell you the truth. As far as you or any other gods of this domain need to know, I am here to protect all of existence from Lady Maliah.”
She narrowed her white eyes. “I can only tell that you believe this, not that it is the tr
uth. What will you do with The Pendulum?”
Mark looked down at the black gem embedded in a golden disk. Ornate runes decorated the edges around the legendary amulet, and he could feel the object’s unique properties as a living hum on his palm. The artifact was ancient and emitted some of the same odd “world-breaking” energies he’d felt from the Jar of Stars. Within its smooth angled facets, he saw all of Sanctuary and his bonded monster-women currently frozen- as if looking at a paused video file.
“Bring them here,” Mark said. “Bring everyone in Sanctuary in here to commune with you. Let those who call this place home decide their own fate.”
Pendula’s slender alien body became waves of rolling dust before she snapped to solid once again. Was that joy? Laughter? Fear? This complex entity pulsed out something similar to all those emotions.
“You hold The Pendulum,” she repeated.
Her words finally reached him, and as Mark looked down for a deeper glance, the object in his hand immediately began to fill his mind as if it were a budding flower made of history lessons.
The first sentient creatures of this virtual world told stories around their campfire and attributed their ability to remember the past to a powerful natural force that lived outside themselves- a goddess. She came to represent the rolling memory of life that passed from one generation to the next, and they named her after the sun that swung in their sky. Her people grew strong, wise and powerful, and in no small part, from their devotion to the true history of the universe. Her most devout disciples were gifted with the ability to never forget information once learned, and craved being proven wrong. To them, being wrong was the best gift they could receive as it meant they’d been following the incorrect path. Their knowledge of magic and physics grew until they left the dusty dunes of the moon where they’d begun to explore the strange blue world far below their domain.
Then, The Cataclysm.
Virtually all Time Walkers worshiping Pendula had been wiped out by some multiverse-wide wave of violent disruption. Her people were not the only civilization affected and some of the most advanced societies lost everything they had gained.
The artifact he held was one of the few remaining objects of power left tying Pendula to the Crystal Heart virtual multiverse. The looping curse of Sanctuary shielded the amulet during The Cataclysm that destroyed a vast many relics and arcane machines, and it was The Cycle of Detrious’s curse that kept this goddess from fading into nothing.
Despite its fortunate protection, its link to the game world had become damaged during the great change.
“What will you do with The Pendulum?” she repeated, her many voices now tinged with sorrow. She’d felt Mark gain the knowledge that he held her leash. Based on a vast store of experience at her disposal, the broken and weary goddess estimated this power-hungry mortal standing before her would most likely try to abuse the knowledge and use her in some way. It had been all she’d known for thousands of years tied to the evil human known as Detrious.
Mark gazed deep into her hourglass eyes.
“I’ll let my actions echo the truth of my purpose,” he whispered as he approached this strange, primal Goddess of History. Of Time and Physical Memory. It was difficult putting what she was into a single, tidy concept.
Mark endured the sharp burning in the center of his brain as he forced this legendary object to interface with the system once more. The fragments of its code still existed and could be traced into the biting, stinging chaos that was outside the domain of this goddess. Correcting this divine artifact was no more difficult than restoring the child’s doll. To the system, they were merely data. The pain was intense but brief, and when it had passed, he placed the fully restored amulet over her head.
The swinging sun stopped behind the woman, casting a long, weighty shadow from her small narrow form. Confusion and fascination pulsed from the deity hovering before him.
“This should not have been an option.”
“I’m making my own options,” Mark said as he stepped back. “The question now is, what will you do with The Pendulum?”
The Goddess considered him from a fresh perspective before she turned her gaze down to the amulet resting on her cleavage. Behind her, the still orange disk that couldn’t possibly be a real sun began to swing in the vivid blue sky once more casting swaying shadows on the windswept dunes of white sand.
Pendula’s hourglass eyes flashed, and the amulet split into several floating parts, and Mark was fascinated to see each facet of the onyx jewel distinctly arranged in a single line. Reality and physics had far less meaning where he was right now.
Pendula lifted her arms and the deity before him seemed to expand in power and influence. To his cheating eye, she was gathering an inconceivable amount of magic from the fantasy universe to interface with the Crystal Heart systems, and the dazzling landscape that swelled and spread before his mind erased every thought with awe.
He hated to do it, but Mark brought up a hand to cover his face and some of the searing agony of these strange and abstract realities subsided. When he looked again, two amulets now hovered above the goddess’s palms. She’d reformed the material into smaller copies of the original. Also, a new sensation oozed from her, and he could tell from her half-lidded eyes that this slender, tan goddess had experienced the equivalent of a universe-shaking orgasm.
A shift in the still surroundings caught Mark’s magic eye, and he just knew they were now being watched by… something. Something much more substantial than him or this Pendula.
“Mark?” Sasha said from behind him and he spun to see all his Enthralled standing close to him, along with the Lunar Power Droid. Behind them were Meegon the poet, Chorra the harpy, and Exor the soldier, but Mark’s eyes were pulled to the dark-haired man standing behind them all.
“What is this?” Detrious spoke first. “Something new after all this time?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Pendula said in her many voices.
Everyone spun to face the monster they’d thought they defeated, and Chorra was the first to respond by flapping into the air with a primal screech.
“Disciple.”
The goddess’s words were quiet, but the power they contained echoed through whatever plane of existence they stood within, and the harpy immediately dropped to her talons in the rippled sand. She turned to face her potential new deity, and then everyone but Mark and his Enthralled became eerily motionless in some time-locked spell.
“Disciples,” she amended with a glance to Meegon as the goddess of Primal Cause-and-Effect began moving forward. “What you’ve come to cherish was originally carved as a prison. The divine punishment of one murderer. After the Cataclysm, The Cycle was to me a single poisoned strand dragging and twisting my shattered essence through the void.”
She stopped and held out the new identical amulets.
“Through you, I am able to see it as a sanctuary. My sanctuary. Our sanctuary. Now that I… am stabilized by this unique Collector, the compartment domain will henceforth be a holy place of reflection on past choices. Not only your own- but every choice ever made by any entity throughout time. Each act of will has shaped every next act of will and culminates into the most perfect, absolute version of now. It could never be another way. We will build an unending arrow of knowledge. I, Pendula, the indomitable sentry of the Cycle, grant Chorra and Meegon a choice. Embrace my ways, draw others to my nature, become wardens of the cursed Detrious, and make a true Sanctuary to stand for all time.
“Or deny me and I will seek other disciples.”
“Yes!” Chorra said immediately, dropping to her knees and bowing her beak to the white sand.
Meegon pulled in a deep breath as he smiled at Pendula. “Since I entered Sanctuary, I knew there was a noble reason- a destiny. Although I did not acknowledge it, I felt you in the air, goddess. I felt you in my blood, in my mind, and on my skin. Now that I know that has always been you, from this point forward I will devote my body and being to you as a discipl
e of Pendula.”
Meegon bowed his head and Mark felt a torrent of contentment flowing from the man. He believed he’d found his true purpose.
Pendula nodded, and with a flash of light, both smaller amulets were now around the necks of her new disciples.
Chorra stood and gazed at Meegon with wide eyes and Mark felt something new and strange from both. Unlike Detrious’s blocked mind, theirs were now filling with awe and wonder.
“You now possess memories of magic, crafting, and lore. One amulet must always remain within the Cycle while the other may roam to convert more disciples. This is likely the last time we meet on this plane, but you will dream of my desires.”
The goddess Pendula began to fade from existence, and the strange, purgatory desert began to transition back into the familiar wreck of the Gilded Breeze. Mark clenched his forming fists as he made ready to face Detrious one more time, but with Meegon and Chorra now holding the power, things should go completely different.
And differently they went.
The reality of Sanctuary dropped far below him at a speed too fast to perceive, then before he could form a thought, the invisible elevator stopped, and a spinning whirlwind of nausea hit Mark hard. He shook off the disorientation to see his Enthralled and the new Lunar Power Droid now hanging weightless in a completely white void.
“What the fuck is this?” Sasha said, looking around.
“Feels like more deity interference,” Mark said as he gazed at his bonded monster-women. “I’m just glad we’re still together.”
“The walking weapon and I are also still together,” Abby said as she extended out a tentacle to the small glossy droid by her side.
Then, Pendula reappeared before them and began gliding straight toward the droid. When the slender alien-like goddess was close enough, she reached out and rested her hand on the combat droid’s sleek black helmet.