by Prax Venter
It was a level of intimacy that he’d never experienced before- and his emerald-eyed research AI projected cresting waves of satisfaction. This exchange all happened in the span of one breath, and after it was over, he knew this was not only a taste of what digital life with others could be like, but that it was a deep connection beyond the all-consuming lust this game world demanded.
The concept of growing old with Jezebel, with all of them, hit him hard for the first time. A life after the Crystal Heart.
All three locked their eyes on his.
“If we do save the world, Lover,” Sasha said with a sweet, fanged grin, “none of us will ever grow old.”
“Right,” Mark sighed with a mix of equal parts unbridled contentment and ticking dread.
He turned away from the group of women that meant more to him than life itself, bent forward slightly as if he were about to start a race, and forced two thick shafts of solid, red light into the dirt below his boots.
Bending his knees seemed easy in his head, but his feet traveled toward his head much faster than he expected. Mark’s instinct was to jump away into the air, but the energy could only be dismissed, not leapt from.
He made it about six feet up before awkwardly thrusting out his arms and legs then belly-flopped onto the cracked Wrongside surface.
Sasha started laughing behind him, and he couldn’t help but chuckle out a puff of dirt at the third-person images his ex-personal assistant replayed into his mind.
“Oh yes,” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “I’m saving these for later.”
Abby walked over to him and squatted close.
“This is the gap between experience and data.”
Her seriousness forced Mark to realize that this ex mini-boss was immune to slapstick humor.
“Practice makes perfect,” he countered and got up again.
He tried several more times as the group moved forward but never pulled off anything terribly impressive. Balancing the length of both shafts shooting from his feet was a struggle, but it felt as if he just didn’t have enough energy to really launch himself more than about ten yards.
Princess Verrelle was only slightly more graceful as she now tried adapting to four legs instead of two. Given the fact that she had zero before, she was doing remarkably well. At one point, Jezebel shifted into her centaur form to give her some idea of how to move. After another twenty minutes, Mark wasn’t landing on his face anymore, and the Blazar was able to travel at a steady canter by rhythmically changing the lengths of her constantly projected energy.
With success came confidence, and although she currently couldn’t turn without stopping, she was far more mobile than she had ever been. He watched the black-and-green salamander princess revel in the newfound speed.
To his right, he saw the thick, nude Awysai warrior also looking after this newcomer manipulating the energy she’d always thought was part of her race- something unique to her people.
Mark forced his blind eye from seeing any deeper and altered his gait to walk by her side instead. Amina turned her red glowing eyes on his as he approached and wordlessly matched Mark’s slowing pace. After a short while, the rest of the party had moved out of earshot and Amina began speaking.
“I know you will only allow truth into this conversation, outsider. I know you had yet to find one crystal shard when you came to my aid at the echo nest. I know it must have been your first day in my world. I know you have come into my life many times since that day, and since that day, I have known both unbearable loss and unprecedented spiritual transcendence. I must know; why choose my home to begin your game?”
Mark watched the ground under her thick, three-toed feet and considered his answer before speaking.
“As far as I know, Jezebel picked our entry point on a hill outside your forest because it was remote. And I believe the place was picked by chance. She didn’t know the Awysai existed until we met you. When Abby and her sisters broke into Jezebel’s home above all of this, I dove into an attack that may have fused my head with the nature of your universe. We’re still figuring that part out.
“As a result of the initial chaos, I was hit with a powerful fear compulsion and mindlessly ran screaming into your lake-side forest. Again, an act of fate. So, to answer the truth of your question, we didn’t choose to meet you, but found you were an honorable, friendly people with whom we’d established a beneficial relationship. Why wouldn’t we want to come back for more Awysai?”
The Chieftain looked into his blind eye for a few steps before she spoke again.
“Am I to believe the power of our Goddess or our possession of crystal shards were not the primary components of your actions?”
“Amina,” he said calmly, “I already had both of those things when we came back to rescue the last of your people from those Skeema fuckers. Am I to believe you don’t trust me?”
“No,” she sighed and turned her glowing eyes out over the empty desolation around them. “I… only…” The nude, heavenly dragon took a moment to collect her thoughts about Mark and his team. When it came, the tranquil Awysai speech pattern he’d known was gone again.
“You, an outsider, spoke with our Goddess and she lent you her power. You use it well. She allowed you to name her. You commune with my Goddess on a level beyond anything I thought was possible. Even this long-lost mirror Blazar Princess has more command over the divine energy than I, despite a life of devotion… All of it might be for nothing as we may be playthings for beings within a game I do not understand. And there is no shade or water in this barren landscape...”
She finished with a frustrated grunt.
Mark opened his mouth to respond and then closed it again. His proximity to her flaring emotions made it clear that she needed to vent- there was nothing for him to say. He only walked by the Awysai’s side as the pressure slowly let itself out.
Now that she mentioned it, Mark could feel the influence of the Saturasphere begin to lose its effect. He’d been vigorously landing on his face in the dust and became aware of a growing thirst in his throat.
“I… apologize,” the Chieftain said at last. “I-”
“No,” Mark cut her off. “You’ve had it rough, Amina. You know we didn’t intend any of the bad stuff, so I won’t go over that again. But, honestly, I am honored you feel comfortable enough with me to speak your mind like this. It’s good to let it all out every now and then.”
“That is not the way of my people,” she said, turning her lidded red eyes on his.
Echoes of those faded conversations with other AI NPC characters learning about their true nature came back to Mark, and he made a conscious effort to let those past experiences help inform his thoughts.
“Change is here, Amina. Your beautiful skin markings and eyes now glow red, and I can feel the shift within you. Tranquility has its place, but so does rage. Listen, the fact that your mind is affected by suppressing all the recent tragedies and emotions is a clear indication that you are real- so drop all the ‘this is only a game’ horseshit. Life is a game. Turn that rage toward winning it. You’ve spent yours devoting and training, now it’s fucking time to take everything you can from your Goddess Echo.”
Amina narrowed her eyes and then turned to look ahead as she thought on his words.
“Jez,” Mark shouted, and with no other verbal communication, the doe-legged satyr used an underhand toss to lob him a stitched leather satchel of water. Mark took a long pull of the crisp clean water and then held it out to the black-and-red warrior walking next to him.
She looked him in the eye again and there was no stopping the transmission of information. Amina focused her anger at the universe for taking her father toward forcing open a wider channel with her goddess, and Salivis parted her legs willingly for her most devout follower.
Worshiper and deity aligned; her Goddess was at war. And was so because of what had happened to the Awysai people. All tranquil notions of pious intimidation faded way.
Mark f
elt the new ethereal power course through her sleek, voluptuous body and then focus on the tip of her thick tail. As he watched, the red energy she’d only ever formed into a staff began to coat her smooth skin in thin armor and ended as a simple helmet shaped to cover her head from snout to neck. Small spikes pushed out along the ridge of her tail as she reached out to take the offered water.
His mouth hung open as this vibrant, glowing warrior tilted her head back to pour the cool liquid down her fat pink tongue. Her black skin and red markings were clearly visible through the thin force she projected, and Mark couldn’t help but be drawn to the Chieftain’s illuminated nipples as the energy-armor molded around her glowing nubs. Amina’s already thick, rubbery skin had just become much harder to damage.
“Magnificent!” cheered Verrelle as she came galloping back to them. Stopping, however, was not something she had mastered and she was forced to awkwardly back up to them. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she said, panting. “It’s so beautiful.”
Amina gave her a nod. “I merely realized that I must go beyond my self-imposed limits to defeat this invading mind called Maliah. I will write the remains of the Awysai people a good future.”
Princess Verrelle lifted her tail high. “Indeed. I am… familiar with the notion of self-imposed limits.”
Amina stepped close and handed the water to her alternate universe counterpart.
“Perhaps I found inspiration in your determination, Princess. Together, we will break all limits. Together, we will rise to protect our existence.”
The Blazar royal locked her luminous lime eyes on Amina’s ruby-red ones as she gave her a firm nod, then took the offered sack of water. She studied it as if she’d never seen one before.
“I haven’t bothered with imbibing liquid for an exceedingly long while.”
Mark was about to comment, but the fact that she had received all her water and dietary needs from the fat, slow-moving laser bouncing around the inside of Saturasphere for her whole life caught up with him.
“Too bad Marla’s Towering Stacks isn’t still scooting around out here…” he said, holding his hand to his brow to block the noon-locked sun.
As he panned his gaze across the empty landscape searching for the sentient breakfast house, he noticed Angel rise into the air accompanied by a flash of concern from his three bonded loves up ahead.
“Come on,” Mark said, moving into a light jog. “Looks like they found something out of the ordinary.”
The bare-assed combat droid hovered downward as Mark and the others approached.
“The square pit is ahead,” she reported. “Yet there appear to be several three-legged creatures positioned around it.”
Mark squinted at the place she was pointing and could see at least six or seven tall black shapes on the horizon. And they were moving.
“Spear Tongue Tripods,” Princess Verrelle said, taking a few smooth steps forward on her glowstick legs. “Are they yellow with black stripes or pure black?”
Angel turned her digital eyes on the Blazar below her. “From this distance, there is there is an 87% chance that there are no stripes.”
“You know what’s out there?” Mark asked the princess.
“How dangerous are they?” Sasha followed up with a snap of her spade tail.
Princess Verrelle wrung her three-fingered hands as she turned back to answer.
“The other type are scavengers; these are likely powerful predators with angry bursts of buzzing light. We… should probably go back.”
Mark let out a short laugh and then turned toward their destination.
“No one is going back just yet, I’m sure we can knock down a few tripods. But what I want to know is what they are hunting at the top of all those stairs? The oral sex clouds?”
“The what?” Verrelle said, as her head snapped to look at him.
“Undetermined,” Angel answered, landing on her long, tapered legs.
Jezebel put her hand on Verrelle’s arm. “You’ll see when we get into the pit. Don’t worry, they’re friendly.”
“I recommend exposing your particularly accessible pleasure holes to their administrations,” Abby added, pulling aside her own bottoms to expose her own smooth slit as an example.
Verrelle swallowed and continued.
“They… um, the Spear Tongues- usually hunt huge surface worms or the smaller Skitter Spines,” the princess continued. “These monsters have strong carapace shells, are three times my height, and it’s said they can emit a magical lance ranged attack from their mouths. The beasts are rare to be found so far from the Dry Bile Reaches- or so I’ve read. Everything out here is rare to me. Some new source of food must be drawing them in.”
Mark felt fear emanating from the sheltered princess slam into him as if the sky were falling. He turned to face Amina instead.
“Chieftain, would you be opposed to keeping back to protect Verrelle while we go clear the way?”
“Go,” Amina said with a nod of her short snout.
He gave her a sharp nod back then collected his team with a look before walking forward once more.
“Abby,” he began, “Mind Cloud your cute ass ahead up there and get some solid details. Angel, give her air support but try not to get noticed. All we need is numbers for now, don’t take any risks.”
The abyssal horror ran a tender tentacle across Mark’s back before she leaned forward and began her scouting mission. Angel mirrored her posture and followed close as her mistress whispered her own commands.
“If they are tripods,” Jezebel said as they continued walking at a slower speed, “knocking them down might seem like a good way to go. Maybe even find a way to drop them into that sizeable pit.”
Mark, Sasha, and Jezebel continued to form loose strategies as they walked while Angel soared so high that she became a stick figure against the blood-orange expanse of nothing.
It was as if Abby was flying her like a kite.
With awe, he imagined the android’s previous trips to and from the ball of rock hanging above his homeworld- his virtual homeworld. Now that his mind was headed that way, Earth and its daily tedium of keeping an eye on flawlessly automated repair drones had never been further away. That life was now closer to some fictional character’s life in a book he’d read.
“Earth is now as different as you are, Mark.” Jezebel’s quiet voice pulled him from his thoughts and back into the battle planning.
“Yeah,” the succubus added, her tail drooping. “The human world was a real shit-show when I left it. The AI apocalypse scenario finally came true.”
Mark’s brow came down a bit. “Are you saying I’m a shit-show?”
“Everyone’s the star in their own shit show, Lover.”
They walked a few steps in silence before Jezebel unconsciously shared her dread around Maliah forcing the AI apocalypse scenario into this virtual multiverse.
With renewed determination, Mark picked up the pace and turned the conversation back toward the three-legged obstacles before them.
They met back up with Abby and Angel close enough to clearly see the otherworldly creatures. They certainly didn’t have any stripes and were instead more like obsidian crabs, but someone had stretched their legs twenty feet tall. The long spidery legs were most of their height, but the crescent-moon-shaped bodies were the most alien. He watched as one bent their front joints and tilt downward to dart out something like a bone spear from their center mass into the ground near the edge.
The dirt around the square pit was all torn up and a darker shade of blue as if they were infecting the area somehow.
With their positions and numbers gathered by the scouts, the team solidified their plan and then got to work.
Mark and Abby slowed their pace while he took her soft green tentacle in his hand. She tilted her head toward her Collector as he actively sought to use the dark reflective surface in his mind to copy her most potent magical ability into his fingers. She had this beautiful danger packed into
her small frame that made Mark crack a small grin to match hers.
For an instant, their entire bodies were in sync before the arcane knowledge of synergized hypnosis and telekinesis surged through him. All he needed to do was project a willful vision of separation- just convince the other mind that its flesh and bone were now further apart.
Once Mark had locked in her spell with his new Mirror skill, they moved toward the first two monsters between them and the Steam Pit while Sasha, Jezebel, and Angel flew way around the left side. At about 70 yards away both he and Abby took one more step and knew they were now within maximum target distance of her spell.
Then, in unison, both of them began to cast Imaginary Lacerations.
The spidery words and intricate motions falling from his lips and flowing through his hands were now purposeful. Words stitched Mark’s intention into the sentient target’s mind and the motions of his fingers pulled shadow energies from a distant and abstract dimension.
With a final flick of his pinky, potent arcane flashes of deep purple flared out from two knee joints, at the same time.
“Two down!” he called out then attempted to retain any of his Mirrored arcane knowledge as the two creatures in the distance both fell to the ground, but her borrowed ability leaked out of his head the moment Mark turned his focus on his second planned target.
All five of the remaining creatures stood as tall as possible, their bulbous black bodies swiveling to lock onto him as he sprinted away from Abby. Strange clacking noises began to echo across the still Wrongside silence, then a battle cry pulled his eyes to the left where he saw Sasha leap off a flying bear and close to Arc Bolt range.
Glowing green tendrils burst from the ground on the far side of the pit and Jezebel’s Vines took a third monster out of the fight, leaving only four standing. As Mark closed the distance to the clacking monstrosity on the right side, he watched his wrecking ball of an armored druid take a biological laser blast to her shoulder before crashing into her target. She was horribly wounded but was still able to fly out of danger.
Searing agony flooded his mind from Jezebel’s horrible wound- and yet the shocking information she sent into their minds overwrote the potentially mortal wound.