by Prax Venter
“And like it or not, everyone in this simulation will change with us.”
- 17 -
Mark was the first one to regain consciousness some time later- how much later was impossible to tell. With the red sun locked perpetually at noon, all semblance of a day-night cycle was out of the question. Eager to get out and get smashing things with this restored energy weapon, Mark only waited for a few minutes before waking the sleeping beauties around him. All except Angel. She’d stood quietly at the end of the bed and kept her sensors pointed at the door.
The first stop was the Saturasphere. As soon as they entered the megalithic structure, Mark felt his need for hunger get erased, and it wasn’t unlike how it had felt before Maliah reinstated their hunger requirement. Had this or some other ancient race figured out how to flip that switch from the inside? Is that what the slowly bouncing beam of light was doing?
Urtanion and Amina were there, both sitting on the floor near the goddess anchor, and several Blazar stopped to listen to the conversation or to interact with one of the three refracted projections of the lusty, red goddess.
“Good,” Mark whispered to himself. The more influence the deity had, the more power he’d receive.
After magically filling their basic needs by standing near an enormous, lazy laser bolt, the group met up with the Captain of the Guard at the East Portal. He’d requisitioned a whole squad of gem-encrusted Blazar warriors to help Mark’s party get through the iris doorway out of the dome, but once he found out they could fly, the egress plan became much simpler.
All the exit portholes opened onto a downward-sloping ramp, and apparently the angry bones of the dead did not bother with the ramps unless someone was trying to go down one.
A Blazar warrior pulled a translucent ruby lever, the smooth plates of gemstone slid apart, and flying centaur-Jez carried everyone but Angel up into the red skies of the Wrongside. The little bare-assed droid flew on her own power and locked herself into an impressively precise formation with the doe-like Druid.
Mark didn’t need to lean to see the millions of bones animated by wispy forms that seemed to wear the partial skeletons. It was an army of random shapes and as they flew high over the army, he began to see these swarming spirits as a colony of ants. A flash of light from the dome drew their attention as pink forks of silent lightning radiated outward and vaporized pockets of undead clamoring to get inside. Jezebel leaned forward and turned on some speed, taking them swiftly away from the Blazar’s Great Dome and the eternal assault to get inside.
Abby was the first to break the eerie stillness of the hot, Wrongside atmosphere and her voice sounded louder than it should.
“The magical entities are wearing the bones as if they are costumes. None I’ve seen match the species.”
“Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “Shouldn’t we be seeing the bones inside the ghosts’ bodies?”
“When has anything in the Crystal Heart made any sense?” Mark asked. He turned away from the horde of undead whatever-they-were and shielded his eyes as he looked out over the desolate blue desert stretching in every direction.
Ring City was visible far to the right and in the distance to the left, he saw a darkness on the horizon that was their destination. The Bone Rain.
Somewhere straight ahead was the hole in the ground that led to the place called the Steam Pit with the mysterious Woman in the Tank. He knew it was in the same place the mountain peak should be in their home dimension, but he couldn’t spot it. It was somewhere he wanted to visit again, and the ancient Vulpath queen’s castle was a good place to cross back over. Additionally, he had a feeling that setting up a Goddess Echo Anchor somewhere nearby might yield some interesting results. Two powerful entities on either side of that multiverse mirror had become linked through her influence.
“That’s a great idea,” Jezebel said, reading his thoughts. “Urtanion is now obsessed. Amina and the whole Royal Family were up all night exploring the archives and the ties between their two peoples. I should have come to bed sooner, but I couldn’t help myself. Princess Verrelle is already talking about crafting additional anchors. She has similar plans to launch expeditions out to establish distant Echo Nests- plans that hinge on our ability to stop this unending flow of undead.”
They all turned their attention down to the army of ghosts and bones. Should he have waited and spoken to the Sovereign about why this was happening before rushing out to smash things?
In the end, he realized it didn’t matter what she would have said. Something was wrong here; he could feel that much through his Truth Seeing eye. They would check it out and decide for themselves.
“I have a question, Mistress.”
Everyone turned toward Angel hovering exactly six feet away.
“Can your Collector communicate non-verbally with his Enthralled?”
Abby nodded. “Yes.”
“It’s like having ideas that aren’t yours,” Sasha added.
The droid continued. “If we can locate Steelrune fiber mesh and an LPD Station with access to high-level schematics, I should be able to install upgrades that similarly synchronize thoughtwaves with my bound mistress.”
Mark considered the ramifications of what the glossy droid just said.
“Wait, so your abilities can be unlocked with a bunch of parts? What is an LPD station?”
Angel turned her red pixelated eyes on him.
“A Lunar Power Droid station may repair or upgrade my physical substrate.”
Jezebel slowed to a stop in mid air so she could pay closer attention.
“More importantly,” Abby said. “Where is an LPD station?”
Angel’s eyes flickered as she dug deep into her mind but came up frustrated.
“I- There has been damage to my historical records…”
“Understandable,” Abby said quickly. “Do not fault yourself for what you are missing. Besides, Mark can take us directly to the moon. That is where we should search immediately.”
“I can?” he asked, shooting her a look over Jezebel’s shoulder.
“Why not? Your new ability can take you places within the same dimension that have been associated with a strong memory. The blue fire and black void where you both freed and bound me is undoubtedly memorable for you.”
“She has a damn good point!” Jezebel said, “You can take us right back to that giant rainbow keypad!”
Mark rubbed his face. “Yeah, Okay. We have so much on our plate right now. We’ll head to the Moon at some point, but let’s focus on one thing at a time.” He pointed to the stream of walking dead below them then continued. “I think we’re far enough away from the Blazar. Take us down here. I want to test how they react to us.”
Their busty steed landed on her black hooves a good fifty yards away from the column. Everyone dismounted and took up a flanking position behind Mark as he led them forward. With a thought, his newly red mace formed instantly in his hand. It was a thing of beauty. There was already more potential energy within his allotted pool than there was yesterday.
The powerful women to either side filled him with such unmatched pride it was hard to keep the smile from his face. He really hoped these ghost things were monsters that needed extermination.
As they drew closer, Mark began to slow his steps. The creatures ahead of him all moved forward at different speeds and gaits. And all the ethereal entities wore random bones as if they were clothes.
As Abby noted earlier, the ghostly white shapes of misty energy underneath were humanoid and animal and many other forms Mark didn’t have a name for. A giant serpent slithered among the group with what appeared to be an equally massive cow’s skull on its ghostly head. A minotaur spirit with silver wing bones caught his attention next.
They were about twenty yards away when some of the mismatched apparitions started to turn their heads toward their direction. Mark held his hand up for a stop and everyone held their position.
In what was the most disturbing parade he’d ever seen, h
ordes and hordes of white spirits wearing something else’s bones marched past. It was impossible to get a good idea of how many there were, but the column had to be at least fifteen to twenty walkers wide. They constantly ran into themselves, tripped, and stumbled as if none of them remembered how to walk, yet some of them were moving much too fast for his comfort.
Keeping his hand up, Mark took one more step forward and a few of the ghosts on the outermost edge broke away from the others.
“Back, slowly,” Mark said, retreating a few steps away and noticed that no new undead turned to chase them other than the three that had already been locked in on him. They consisted of two unidentified humanoids covered in not only whole bones but broken, splintered chunks as well. The third appeared to be an octopus ghost wearing part of an oversized beetle carapace.
The creatures clawed at the air with their ghostly appendages as they reached out for Mark and he allowed his blind eye to read their otherworldly energies for any hint of intelligence.
He didn’t find any.
Right away, Mark was hit with the distant cold rage of a primal mind who’d hated everything and didn’t know why. That was it. They were truly mindless creatures that only followed their instinct. Was this self-sustaining horde of ghosts a natural phenomenon like a dam breaking upstream?
“Let’s take ‘em out,” Mark said as he stopped to hold his ground. “Keep an eye on the others, if they react, we flee.”
Abby instantly cast her Mind Crush on the octopus-beetle monster as it seemed to be the most dangerous. Despite having eight ghostly legs, the creature staggered under the spell’s effect, its speed drastically reduced.
A few seconds later, the other two had drawn close enough for both he and Sasha to meet them with aggression. The Techno Succubus tried out her new Charged Side Kick and completely obliterated her target while Mark elongated his mace at the height of his swing to really crack his attacker square on the True Strike sweet spot.
The wispy white energy that made up their bodies was mostly shapeless, but the bulbous lump that popped up between its borrowed ribcage let out a surprised hiss before his magic weapon tore through it as if it were tissue paper.
At the same time, Abby’s Mind Crush had finished off her target before it could even close the distance. With a clatter of dormant bones, all three had been eliminated.
Mark felt a small rush of essence enter his body from their defeat, but as awesome as that was, he quickly shifted his focus back to the horde.
Some were still looking at them as they passed, even at this distance, but no more stumbled away from the single-minded column. Perhaps if they attacked more of them, they could shift their hatred into another direction. Mark shook his head, dismissing the idea before it could fully form.
That would only be sending the problem into someone else’s lap.
“It appears we can take them,” Jezebel said from his side. “But only a few at a time.”
“I could probably take out a bunch with one Shock Bomb,” Sasha said, her tail flipping once.
Mark shook his head. “Our goal is the tree. Let’s mount back up and follow this army back to where it starts.”
With practiced efficiency, they all climbed onto the doe-centaur again as she whisked them swiftly above the line of shambling ghosts.
“They must have done something to cause this,” Sasha said as they passed over what had to be millions.
After a few minutes of flight along the column of dead, they noticed that the army’s marching formation started to separate, and it wasn’t long until the landscape began to change all around them. The vivid red sky faded to pure black above their heads, and small piles of bones began to litter the ground.
“The hole,” Abby said, pointing at the darkest point near the horizon.
Jezebel soared deeper into the area called the Bone Rain, and the place certainly lived up to its name. Scattered skulls and ribcages over the blue dirt quickly became bone dunes, then mounds, and eventually bone mountains rose up around them. Scattered spirits of the dead milled around on the surface of this nightmare landscape, but every one of them crawled, lurched, or flat-out sprinted toward the Blazar dome.
As they approached the insane black disk of nothing hanging in the sky, a sense of primal frustration brushed up against this empathic antenna, and Mark asked Jezebel to take them toward it.
No matter which way they approached the source of the bones, it always faced them as a perfect circle. Through this unsettling underworld pipe spilled a continuous torrent of unending bones of every type. Among the falling bits of dead were many whole skeletons that tumbled end over end before crashing to the ground and violently flying apart.
“We aren’t going in there are we?” Sasha asked, clinging tightly to Mark from behind.
“No,” he said. “I thought I felt something, but it faded out as we got higher. Jez, take us close to the surface.”
She pulled back from the waterfall of bones and brought them down to a spot that wasn’t overrun by the animated spirits. The source of the negative energy grew stronger as they sank, and he figured whatever this was had to be under the ground. As he scanned the area, he saw that some of the ghosts were wandering out of arch-like caves scattered around the nightmare landscape.
“Yeah,” Mark said as he hopped down onto the unending piles of dusty remains. “We’re going in there though.” The ground was more solid than he expected- as if the bones were woven together. Now that he was standing on them, he was close enough to see black roots under the surface like gnarled fists binding everything into a solid mass.
“The Ghost Ent must be in there,” Jezebel said as she stepped up next to him. “Are we going to just kill it like they want?”
Mark looked over into her emerald eyes. “I don’t know yet. If this thing has been here forever, and it’s only started sending these ghost things out recently… obviously something changed. Still, I’m getting more of a force of nature vibe.”
“You’ve mentally broadcast ‘insect swarm’,” Abby added. “and I believe your concept is correct. The Blazar did something to stir this nest of bone-coated walkers.”
Sasha’s tail snapped once behind her. “I imagine this Ent thing is going to fight against extermination.”
“Danger,” Angel said from behind them and everyone turned to see a formless mass of white energy coming toward them. It might have been some type of half-snake creature in life, but the bones it wore were completely random.
“Can you take it alone?” Abby asked her new pet.
The combat droid widened her stance. “I am limited to physical damage, yet scans have returned the possibility that attacking their-”
Angel ran out of time and cut herself off as she dashed forward. Once she entered melee range, she began snapping the various bones attached to the undead creature one at a time. It reeled back in pain as she sent precise and swift metal fists and glossy legs to destroy more of its body. The half-nude bot was remarkably fast, and her consistently savage strikes tuned her targets to dust.
The monster swung an appendage toward her head, but she ducked the attack and came back up with a rising uppercut that cracked the oversized canine skull glued to its head.
It took a bit longer to do it that way, but the last strike seemed to reach some damage threshold and the ghostly center of this animated abomination faded away. The bones clattered to the ground as the short combat droid landed gracefully on her tapered legs.
“As I was saying… Yes, mistress. Attacking the supernatural exoskeleton will cause the binding entity to lose cohesion.”
“Excellent work,” Abby said with an intense grin.
“Glad to have you on the team,” Mark added and then turned back toward the cave entrance. “We should have no problem with these but the last thing we want is to get overwhelmed. Abby and Angel, you two watch our backs. I have my once-a-day portal to any place memorable in this dimension available to use as an escape hatch if we need it. Probabl
y keep a lock on the Blazar Saturasphere. Sasha and I will take the lead with Jez in between, Vining and providing support.”
They all agreed to Mark’s plan, so he shot them each a grin before carefully stepping through the bones.
“Please revert your eye representations to their original white hue,” Abby said quietly as they moved into the near darkness of bone and root passage.
“As you wish, Mistress.”
“Good,” Abby said after the instant change. “This is your true face.”
Mark summoned his red club as they moved down the twisting tunnel, and he couldn’t help but feel at ease with a weapon in his hand again. The weak luminescence from his magic mace cast the dusty decaying cave in a blood-red glow until Jezebel’s bright wings snapped on and took over lighting their way. His ears strained against the eerie silence and his blind eye tried to penetrate the old bones surrounding them to get a feel for what was happening here.
There were flashes of rage and hatred, but the distant source still seemed primal… ancient. There was an eons-old entity living in the roots that held some purpose at some point, but now those roots clung to the discarded skeletons like gnarled, clenching fists.
“Has it always been this way?” Jezebel asked. “What you see with your eye I mean. So much deeper understanding with everything.”
“And so visual,” Sasha added. “But I suppose that makes sense.”
“I have no idea what you guys are seeing, but sure. A lot of it is visual. I also have a finely tuned emotional sensor array to add another layer to my perception. There’s a lot of rage deep in this bone pit.”
The tunnel curved down until they reached the blue dirt of the Wrongside. There, the path forward met up with other such caves to the surface, and Mark became much more comfortable with the footing. Mismatched bones of every shape and size still covered most surfaces, but the floor was relatively clear.
The group came upon two shambling corpses covered in skulls, so Mark and Sasha both stepped forward and got to work taking them apart. The Techno succubus opened with her Arc Bolt, and he saw her target dissipate with a crackling flash out of the corner of his eye. His main focus was fixated on the red glowing spot between the bones on his target. With his rich new energy forming a dense shield on his left arm, Mark deflected the rushing monster’s charge and then sent all of the summoned energy into his right hand to form a ball-topped mace.