by Prax Venter
Learis and Cel worked closely and nonstop over the next few days and both fresh new leaders had seen enough of the world to know how they wanted it. And it would look nothing like it did before. When Mark saw the spunky Fighter walk into the Thomellia meeting room, he had no idea she’d have any type of actual political power, but he knew that if he got her and Learis together for any length of time, their natures would connect, and it would be impossible for them to not get along.
Regardless, it was chaos in the cloud-scraping mega city of Starglade for the first two days, yet they’d planned the best they could in the time they had. Klax hastily erected an impressive wall of light that was more of a warning than an actual barrier, and Angel/Abby zipped around to violently confront anyone trying to break through it. In the end, the sun did most of the work for them. Many Kalorplast just stood blinking their photosynthesizing eyes upward in a new dimension with a sun twice as nourishing as the one they’d sprouted knowing. After Mark got his magic eye over more and more of the plant elves, he could tell that the blue Lagos sun was physically making them all a bit more mellow, and Mark told his team to keep that particular fact between them for now.
Once the mages were able to restore the broadcast functionality of their battered and broken tree, ex-CEO Channa publicly explained the situation exactly as it had been explained to her, and so Cel of House Nightwater became the new leader of the Kalorplast. Despite Cel’s heartfelt promises among the waving grasses, it was agreed that they would hold a formal declaration of laws between them that they called the Hilltop Accords.
Mark forced his involvement right at the beginning making sure the first law was that the Lagomorph would not hesitate to use the orb, its surrounding tech, and whatever else they had to help protect Starglade if Maliah ever found her way to Lagos, and that the Kalorplast agree to do the same with their natural abilities and cultivated magic.
Once he got the ball rolling, and they both agreed to unconditionally protect each other, Cel laid out her people’s promises as guests once again, loudly, and for every Kalorplast to hear.
Afterwards, Learis accepted and made her own promise not to abuse their offered submission. She also decreed that for now, no Kalorplast (with a few exceptions) were allowed closer to the orb than they were now. Luckily for everyone, The Surface that was Lagos seemed to continue in every direction- forever. And according to Princess Verrelle, the Wrongside did too. Abby and Angel spent a day trying to find the end of Lagos- or even a mountain, valley, wild forests, or any type of ocean. They blitzed forward as fast as they could, even hurtling Abby’s unconscious body through the night sky as she slept. The ancient depots eventually stopped appearing and then the single farmhouses ended, but the grasses, crystal-clear lakes, and stretched dirt columns just kept on going. It hadn’t been for nothing, though. Angel reported that the forced endurance test had increased their joined top-speed to 360 kph.
Jezebel guessed that Lagos was procedurally generated, and that since the landscape was fairly homogeneous, it probably wouldn’t ever take up much space on her hardware.
The end result is that the Kalorplast had all the room they needed. Still, a little over fifty wanted to go back to their home dimension for various reasons. Once a more organized census had come in, the megacity had lost over 30% of its citizens and not a single non-Kalorplast inside the bark of the tree had reappeared. The vast majority of the plant people were simply in shock. Everyone that stayed in Lagos easily stayed on their side of the line.
There was nothing, however, from stopping the native Lagomorph from visiting Starglade. The absolute outpouring of neighborly hospitality from the soft rabbit people who had no concept of what the Kalorplast had done to their alternate universe counterparts was also something Mark would never forget.
Three days after the replanting, those that stayed had been experimenting and found all their mana-storing abilities and artifacts were passively drawing unending power from the orb, despite the distance. It didn’t seem to affect anything else, and the experts believed it was merely a property of the orb, or Lagos’s subsurface cosmic energy harmonizing with their nature-centric alignment, or both working in tandem. Learis was so pleased that the Kalorplast had reported this powerful boon to her immediately, she loosened some of the restrictions and allowed a limited number of their best ‘growers’ to visit some of the most impressive Lagomorph farms. When the Kalorplast had turned one of the strange towering pillars of dirt that dotted Lagos into a vibrant vertical paradise of spiral vine paths and botanical splendor, the native Lagomorph lost their minds from its incomprehensible scale. At that point, the two people had found a common ground in the tender care of nature and their newly discovered kinship only flourished from there.
On the sixth day after replanting, Maliah had finally tried attacking the Blazar Dome on the Wrongside by way of the Skeema portal. The human kingdom in their starting dimension had apparently been lying about neutrality, their King joining her in secret. Mark had just learned of their existence at all, but with the several Harpy and Skeema armies also following behind the mountainous Helper Fairy, she probably felt she had to make her play now before her enemies continued gathering stronger allies.
Maybe Maliah knew and maybe she didn’t, but Mark was with Jezebel on the moon looking at the recorded stories of the Time Walkers when the attack came. Everyone on Mark’s team except Abby and Angel missed most of the battle.
He felt so proud when he learned that the wolf-people, the rabbit-people, and the plant-people all came rushing to the salamander-people’s aid. Then, was so pissed when he heard how the living ocean of Eternal fucking Echo ended up snapping one of Maliah’s wings as it rose up and bashed her back through the portal- he wished they’d waited for him to get there for that.
The Liar Maliah was on the run, and Mark was finally starting to feel as if his full extended team would be able to hunt her down and destroy her.
If only they could figure out this fucking orb instead. The bottom line was that if Maliah had more crystals, she could have figured out a way to hide them, maybe trap them, or even destroy them. No. Attacking her could drive her to do something drastic, and he’d seen into her core when she’d done the splits on his tongue. If truly cornered, she could still cause some serious damage before they fully eradicated her mind.
No. Fuck Maliah’s games. Fuck the 108-shard wild goose chase. He saw it with his own “eyes” within the infinite “toolshed” inside the Jar of Stars. The orb was their way out. The world.anchor.
Klax and Verrelle were currently arguing in front of it now, and Mark stopped daydreaming to refocus on what they were saying.
“…inside the simulation!” the Princess shouted, wagging her finger in Klax’s pumpkin face. “We need to use the magic of the manufactured world around us to get access to ‘real-world’ data streams. It’s a fundamental paradox! Unsolvable, objectively subjective restrictions!” Her magic legs swelled to about double their size when she was frustrated, and she bent close to knock down whatever smart response he had. They often got into heated academic debates in public, but Mark knew Klax and Princess Verrelle had connected instantly and passionately. And that she’d easily converted him into her religion with nightly Salivis offering rituals.
“Anything is possible,” he shot back up at her, “and you can’t prove a negative. And you can’t ignore these odd metal machines poking into the sub-aether realms. What are they doing wedged in there? No one knows what half of this stuff does, and we don’t know why most of it works at all. It can’t be a paradox if we can’t see the whole problem.”
“Both of their logic is sound,” Abby said solemnly to herself as she paced around the center orb plinth.
Verrelle responded with deliberate slowness. “Seeing outside the problem from inside the problem with tools made of the problem is the paradox.”
Mark had heard enough and sent a recall ping out to his heart-tethered team before jumping in.
“Can we all agr
ee it is time to bite that bullet and find the experts for the other side of this Techno-Magic equation?”
“I… I think that might be wise,” Klax said and Mark felt the pumpkin man’s instant disgust for the centaur race come bubbling up. The powerful mage focused on internal unwanted thoughts and blew them away with imagined bolts of magic. He then closed his eyes and willed the concept of working with the Lagomorph to fill his thoughts instead. The old ways were as dead as their old tree. New lands, new ambitions, and new allies with pure roots woven in rich soil.
“Damn fucking right,” Mark said, approving of Klax’s private show of self-awareness and mental discipline. “Both of your peoples fought an unending war over control of this orb for generations, and it’s time to bring them into this new Orb Alliance.”
“We are not calling it that,” Sasha said, pushing off the wall she’d been leaning on now that something interesting was about to happen.
“Jezebel and Angel are on their way,” Abby said for those not connected to their own personal communication channel. Another benefit of the android joining their battle harem was that she had stream-lined their communication from a semi-confusing web to clear channels of pure closeness.
Once his bonded AIs stood ready for their Commander to move out, Mark took two steps and pulled open one of the many cross-over points right in front of them that conveniently led directly to their first search location. Once everyone was through, Sasha and Mark mounted their trusty flying Druid and they started looking.
“Nothing here anymore,” Sasha said from Jezebel’s back as they all hovered over the sprawling Arclight complex. “Not even the vultures.”
“Reports say as much,” their ride said as she took them down for a closer look into the abandoned buildings.
Angel/Abby had pushed ahead to zip around the area and scan for the techno-weasels or any other scavengers that might be willing to trade riches for information on where the cyborg horse people ended up disappearing, but the place was totally dead.
It was looking like they would have to do this with Sasha’s line. He didn’t want to give people who wanted him dead any signal that someone was approaching and from what direction. They’d experimented with her line a little, but Sasha hated using it, and that it inexplicably made her feel dirty- which was quite the feat for a sex demon. Despite that minor unnamable annoyance, they tried a few times with creative phrasing in an effort to find something they didn’t know about that would help get them out of the system, but most such requests led to either the orb or Jezebel. As she was the System Host, it made as much sense as any other reason.
Before he made the call to break off the search, their Power Armored Horror stopped in midair, broadcast her scans of an out of place power source and punched straight though the metal roof of a building to reach it. The united pair continued practically unhindered down through the structure as they brought both telekinesis and indestructible tentacles to bear until they came to the soundproof room that had since stopped blasting “Charge my Love”.
“Someone replaced the battery,” Jezebel mumbled as they all watched through their bond.
The terminal she’d hacked into a jukebox had also been used since they left, and the screen now showed a white triangle pointing to the right.
“I thought you said this place was searched,” Sasha said.
Pegasus Jez sighed. “Not by people who knew anything about computers. They were looking for machine-fused horse warriors, not checking every terminal, which I now understand was a mistake.”
“Hit play,” Mark said and watched as Abby’s armored tentacle tap the screen.
“Collector,” a deep voice boomed from the speakers so loud that Mark heard it from his position in the sky. “If you wish to answer for your transgressions, find us on the islands near the southern lip of the Penultimate Vortex.”
A high-pitched whine started growing from the speakers and Abby/Angel were smart enough to rocket themselves back up through the facility. The triggered explosion only warmed her Angel-encased toes instead of obliterating her- as it did with a substantial portion of the surrounding labs.
“Looks like they heard my speech,” Mark said, a smile growing on his lips.
“It’s probably a trap,” Jezebel said.
“A second trap,” Abby added as she flew up to rejoin them. “The recipient of that message was not intended to survive.”
Mark’s smile faded and then remembered the words of his once-Enthralled Vulpath painter in the Lounge of the Relevant.
“Audra mentioned that she found tech that teleported her to the moon somewhere around that second-best vortex, right?
“Yes,” Jezebel said, her mind lighting up. “That’s how her old team locked in that Recall charm.”
“The charm took us to the mystery box,” Sasha said from behind him. “But there were no buttons or anything that went back to the surface. So, how do we get there?”
Mark answered by coating his hand with the upgraded dimensional door ability, focused on The Four Hooks seaside restaurant where he had shared a delicious quest reward, and pulled open a same-world doorway.
Moving from the sky to inside a relatively small, dim restaurant was disorienting, but not as much as it was for the owner.
“Vello!” Mark said when he saw the man gaping at them from the kitchen entrance.
“Collector?” the portly gentleman said as he tore his eyes off the stunning doe-centaur currently trying not to break anything.
“No time for shrimp steak,” Mark said with a wave as they dismounted, realizing their mount would have to be a satyr again in order to fit through the door.
Jezebel pointed to another human couple enjoying their meal and they simply stared at the super-leveled adventurers with their forks of food stuck halfway to their face.
“We need to bring Abby and Angel back here after we’re done,” she said. “I remember enjoying my first seafood feast quite a bit.”
“Too bad we can’t eat forever anymore,” the abyssal horror murmured as she hovered a bit too close to the gaping patrons.
“Let’s let them eat,” Mark said as he moved for the door. The humidity of this tropical region immediately hit him from all sides and the laughter of children at play drew his eye as they kicked around a ball by the Job Board. He pulled in a deep breath and just let the peace of this small sea-side town wash over him then pointed through the sparse palm trees toward the endless blue water. “Audra said the Penultimate Vortex was here when we helped her with the rare pigment quest, and I’m finally getting to see this thing.”
Mark led his team away from The Four Hooks to go stand on the beach before an unending stretch of salt water under a late-morning sun. Approximately 12,390,000 tiny seashells of every possible shape, size, and color covered most of the ground for as far as he could see into the crystal-clear depths, and it didn’t even bother him that he knew exactly how many there were.
Jezebel rubbed his back. “Turning you into a cold, calculating computer was the whole plan, Lover.”
“And the sooner the better,” Sasha said, as she pressed her curves into his side and spade tail over his heart. “Wait ‘til you see how close we can be once we…”
Mark’s eye started twitching with a lie as his succubus stopped mid-sentence, and Jezebel started nodding as if she knew exactly how to interpret the complex thoughts going through his ex-personal assistant’s head.
“Existing outside of this physical simulation isn’t the same. It’s way better in some ways and worse in others.”
“Inconceivably better than others,” Abby said as she sent out personal memory snips of the twisted and nightmarish horror-themed game world where she was created.
Mark shrugged. “Then we just come back here to retire after we punch that all-seeing cock sucker that treated you and your sisters badly right in his single omniscient eye.”
He felt Angel’s digital confusion as she bulk-processed a mountain of data before she spoke.
“Commander, there can be no doubt you enjoy the act of cock sucking and even worship a deity whose very nature is oral sex. Why invoke a generous gift given to others as an insult?”
Mark didn’t have a good answer for her but sent Salivis a quick ‘you didn’t hear that’ anyway.
“Because humans are insane,” Sasha said through her laughter.
“They are,” Jezebel agreed as her gold-flecked green eyes scanned the distant horizon. “And we self-aware AI spawned directly from that insanity.”
- 26 -
Mark and his bonded team soared out over the endless body of water for about ten minutes before Abby/Angel discovered that if they got close enough, the bot was able to extend a part of her gravity nullification far enough to make a difference. And if the power-armored duo shoved against their sexy mount’s muscular rear end, they could propel everyone faster. It wasn’t top top-speed, but it was about double what Jezebel was capable of with her glowing wings alone and fast enough to drive Mark’s face into the pleasant refuge of his Druid’s wild-strawberry hair. After about an hour of nothing in every direction, a storm the size of a continent darkened the sky, and Mark finally got to see the Penultimate Vortex up close in all its whirling magnificence.
“It’s bigger than I expected for being second best,” Mark said as they slowed down, and the wind became less of an issue.
“Yes,” Angel’s digital voice answered. “But notice the flow of water.”
“I see,” Jezebel said. “It’s blowing out instead of sucking.”
Sasha snorted behind him, but the bizarre motion was too mesmerizing for Mark to add anything to it.