Beastborne

by James T Callum

  You gain [Stygian Iron Helm].

  You gain [Stygian Iron Breastplate].

  You gain [Stygian Iron Gauntlets].

  You gain [Stygian Iron Greaves].

  You gain [Ring of Bitter Dreams].

  The words flashed across Jacob’s vision and vanished with a mental confirmation. All of Sal’s effects were contained in that wispy orb of blue fire.

  It was one of the quirks of this new post-apocalyptic reality.

  One of the very few benefits of the Collapse was the inventory system that provided everybody with a [Boundless Box] that seemed to hold an impossible number of items without weighing them down.

  Any item you had on you – or within your [Boundless Box] – would be contained in your wisp. Unlike monsters, the wisps of people stayed at the site of their death. Long after a person’s body turned to ash, their wisp would remain in place waiting for somebody to collect it.

  Simply touching a person’s wisp allowed you to gain all of their usable items and in rare cases, it might contain a fragment of the Souls they had collected in life.

  Jacob turned to Caleb, or rather the blackened blasted stone where Caleb had once stood. All that remained of Caleb was a glowing azure wisp that hung in the air above the charred stone.

  Caleb had gone out on some secret mission almost two months ago. They all thought he was dead until the scouts saw him and the horde of Vacant on his heels an hour ago.

  Unsurprisingly, the man had little left. But aside from his equipment, which Jacob collected and would give to Alec, there was another item. One he had never seen before.

  He summoned the [Ember of Probability] he collected from Caleb’s wisp. He watched as shimmering images played out like a kaleidoscope from within the tiny glowing mote in his leather-clad palm. Every so often it vanished, the only trace it was still there was the comforting warmth it spread even through his armor.

  With a shrug, Jacob put the item back into his [Boundless Box]. He’d seen stranger things in the ten years since the Collapse. He made a mental note to see Doctor Jasieux, she was the one who sent Caleb out after all.

  After the Collapse, a lot of strange things happened. The laws of the world faltered and were superseded by those of a new and obscenely popular game, Pyresouls Online.

  Players who managed to survive the First Wave found they had stats outside of the game. Spells and abilities that were impossible just a few days prior were suddenly commonplace.

  The bystanders were the first to die en masse.

  A world of stats, skills, and levels caught them by surprise. Without any frame of reference or instruction on how to utilize these new gifts, most people were helpless against the flood of undead abominations, hellspawn creatures, and horrors without name.

  When they were finished with their grim deed, Kat and Jacob marched up the winding narrow trails to the caverns in relative silence.

  “Sent those monsters straight to Hell, did ya?” George asked, standing beside the heavy gates set deep into the walls of the cave on either side. He threw a heavy lever, the rattle of chains echoed deep within the stone.

  Somewhere inside the half-foot thick blast doors, there was another lever being thrown that would open the way for them into the bunker.

  Kat gave the younger man a tired look. “Can’t very well send them to Hell when we’re already there.”

  Without a word more, the pair passed into the opened doors and the guardroom beyond. They passed through three more blast doors until they reached the heart of the bunker. The mess hall. The whole place had once belonged to some ludicrously wealthy family that was convinced the world would end.

  It turned out they were right.

  Unfortunately for them, money was a poor shield against the creatures that flooded into the world during the Collapse. Whoever they were, they never survived long enough to make it to the bunker.

  Just as well. They probably wouldn’t have been the sharing kind. And with so few humans left, it would have been a shame to kill them just to secure lodgings. They even had a FIVR pod. Too bad there were no games.

  That didn’t stop the few scientists they had in their group from setting up shop alongside the thing.

  FIVR pods were all the rage back when reality was so predictable and mundane. Using them, people could escape - body and mind - into worlds full of violence, magic, and mayhem for fun.

  That all ended the moment Pyresouls turned out to be more than a game.

  The dull electric buzz of fluorescent lights gave Jacob a headache as he mentally dismissed his shield and sword. They vanished into a swirl of ash. He could recall them with another thought easily enough.

  Kat gently punched his shoulder. The clink of metal reminded him that he still wore his armor. Jacob sent that away with a thought, that too broke apart into ash that vanished a second later, leaving Jacob in a sweat-soaked shirt and pants.

  “Gonna grab some grub, you want me to snag you something?” she asked.

  Jacob shook his head. “I gotta talk to the Doc. I’ll see you at eighteen-hundred for sparring though.”

  “You got it, Jake. Think you’ll finally teach me Moon Crests the Horizon?”

  “Maybe,” Jacob hedged, no longer paying much attention. He finally spotted Alec among the fifty or so people currently in the mess hall. With a wave of goodbye in Kat’s direction, he headed toward the only table filled to the brim.

  Alec never ate alone, though it wasn’t out of preference. He had a way about him that drew people to him. It should have gone to his head but it never seemed to.

  There was an empty spot on the bench at the long aluminum table his group was eating at.

  Jacob wanted to leave him alone. He knew the man well enough to know he would prefer to grieve in peace. Alec placed the billions of people’s deaths squarely on his shoulders. He felt responsible for the Collapse that wiped out half of Earth’s population in the first week alone.

  The problem was, it was true.

  After all, it was Alec who failed to defeat the monster he awoke within Pyresouls Online. That same monster managed to get out of the game and create a breach in reality that caused the Collapse. An apocalyptic event that changed the fundamental rules of reality forever.

  Not only that, but he had just lost his brother. Caleb had left on some sort of errand that the Doc gave him. He left with seven others, the strongest and swiftest among them that didn’t rely on heavy armor.

  When the scouts picked up Caleb’s return, he was alone and being chased by a horde of monsters. Alec and Jacob were summoned along with a few others not already on patrols to bring Caleb in.

  They had failed. As they had so many times in the past. Failure was an old friend to the dwindling survivors of the human race.

  Every week their numbers shrank. Even with food and shelter, every death made the next one that much more likely. Many other groups weren’t so lucky. Death came in the form of famine, disease, and even other humans.

  Jacob wanted to give the ember to the Doc. But it somehow felt wrong not to include Alec. Caleb was his little brother after all. If he died to get the [Ember of Probability], shouldn’t Alec know?

  Of all the people Jacob met since the Collapse, he was closest to Alec. He knew Caleb but only in passing. There was a deep wound between the brothers that even the Collapse hadn’t managed to heal.

  “Got a sec?” Jacob asked, standing at the edge of Alec’s table.

  Classically handsome, the blonde-haired blue-eyed man looked up at Jacob and pushed away from his meal without a word. Selfless to a fault, he put everybody else before himself.

  Once they were out of earshot in an adjacent hallway, Jacob summoned the item he took off Caleb’s body, the [Ember of Probability]. “I found this on Caleb, with his effects. Did you…?”

  Alec shook his head. “You keep them. He liked you better than me anyway,” he said with a dark chuckle. “May I?” He tilted his head to the ember.

  Jacob handed it over, watching
as Alec’s blue eyes danced with the shimmering light of the ember. “Do you know what that is?”

  He nodded, something shifted on his features. Fear? Jacob hadn’t ever seen it before. For a brief moment, his best friend seemed weary and tired. Aged dozens of years beyond his mid-twenties. “We need to see Alice.”

  Pyresouls Chapter 02

  Doctor Alice Jasieux shut the door to the once-spacious white-lit room, now cramped with all sorts of tables and devices. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” She snatched the [Ember of Probability] from Alec’s hands. “Do you have any idea what this is?” She had a lilting voice with a slight Parisian accent that grew more intense when she was upset.

  You could tell the Doc was pissed when she began to mutter in French. That was the only warning you’d get to leave the room.

  “Some,” Alec said, leaning against a metal table.

  “Then you should know that either of you two geniuses handling this could instigate a Causal Loop if it binds to either of you.” She raised the ember in front of her round glasses. “Thankfully it has not.”

  “Somebody mind looping me in here?” Jacob asked. Ever since Alec dragged him along to the Doc’s playroom where she spent most of her time tinkering with the FIVR pod and who knew what else, Jacob had been almost completely ignored.

  The Doc set the ember down in a small instrument, a set of thin needles that held the ember aloft. A large magnifying glass slid down in front of it so she could examine it in greater detail. She ran a hand through her long red hair. “You found this, yes Jacob?”

  “Technically, it was on Caleb’s body,” Jacob said.

  As if she just remembered, the Doc turned around and furrowed her brow. “Poor Caleb.” She turned her hazel eyes to Alec. “I am so sorry for your loss. I know you two were not very close but I know how much you wished that was not so. Things will be different this time, you will see.”

  What is she talking about? The way she spoke to Alec was remarkably familiar. Was there something going on between them that Jacob missed?

  “Thanks, Alice,” Alec said, crossing his arms. “Is that it then? Are you done?” There was a hint of hope in his voice.

  “It is the last piece,” she agreed.

  Jacob threw up his arms. “If nobody’s going to bother to explain what is going on, I’m just going to get something to eat because you both are having an entirely different conversation than I am.”

  Doctor Jasieux looked from Alec to Jacob. “I am sorry, you are right. Jacob, come over here please.” She motioned him beside her. When he stood next to her, she stepped behind him, put her delicate hands on his shoulders, and turned him toward the FIVR pod.

  It looked familiar, but then again they all did. “What am I looking at, precisely?” he asked.

  He knew what it was but he didn’t understand the significance. Even if they had a cluster of servers to run a program to dive into, what was the point? They didn’t need an escape from reality. They needed to save it.

  “You know what that is.” Her voice was too close to his ear for comfort. He could feel her warm breath on the back of his neck.

  “It’s a FIVR pod. We used them to play games and stuff.”

  “Correct. When was the last time you entered one?”

  “When I joined the competition for Pyresouls Online.” Jacob motioned to Alec to his left. “We both did. What’s your point?”

  “My point, Jacob, is that this is not your normal FIVR. I have spent every day since the Collapse looking for some way to undo it. There is no way we can rebuild humanity from this point going forward. The population… it is too small. We underestimated the Vacant’s strength. Do you remember the Day of the Dead?”

  Jacob shivered as if she dripped ice cold water down his shirt. He remembered all right. Anybody alive remembered it.

  The so-called First Wave was when the reality of Pyresouls became the reality on Earth. The dead did not stay dead in Pyresouls, it was a recurring theme with the game.

  That was fine for a game but on Earth, the dead outnumbered the living by many orders of magnitude. When the graveyards began to stir with activity nobody knew what to make of it. By the time people understood the threat, it was too late.

  It wasn’t a typical zombie outbreak, the dead didn’t turn another person. Unless you counted their fervent desire to kill all living creatures. But there was no mutated infection. If you died, you turned. Unless your brain or head was damaged significantly.

  Bites from the undead were still dangerous, but they were hardly a death sentence if you had medicine.

  However, the Vacant were driven and monstrous in a way nobody was prepared for. Shooting them with a gun didn’t do much. They were ridiculously resilient.

  Like all of the creatures from Pyresouls, modern armaments were useless against them.

  The largest cities fell almost overnight. Every death only added to the horde of monsters. The lucky ones were out camping or trying to “unplug” when it all went down. Like Jacob was at the time.

  “I do,” he said finally. “Why?”

  “And the Red Plague?” she asked without answering.

  Jacob spun on her and took a step back, trying to understand where the Doc was going with this. “I remember all the horrible shit that happened. Yes, I remember the Red Plague.

  “I also remember the Lowing, the Vile Kingdom’s poisoned promise of safety, the Shadowrend, the Hellgates, and every other horrible thing that’s happened since the Collapse. I still don’t know how I managed to survive it all. Why, what’s the point of asking me?”

  Dressed in a loose-fitting lab coat, Doctor Alice Jasieux plucked the [Ember of Probability] and sauntered to the FIVR pod. She slid back a tiny panel on its side. It was a high-end model, a soft white bed encased in a cylinder with the upper half made of glass.

  She tapped out a sequence on the panel. When she was done, a small receptacle to the side extended out from the pod.

  Unlike every other part of the machine, this looked out of place. Jacob had seen people modding their FIVR pods for illegal dives or to experience things out of spec. The twisted wires and silver traceries that dipped into the hole the size of Jacob’s thumb reminded him of that, except professionally done.

  This was no kid trying to bypass his parent’s sexual content filter with a foil wrapper and some chewing gum.

  She slid the ember into the slot as if it was always meant for it. The silver traces shimmered with light and the machine began to hum with power. The lights in the room dimmed as she slid the panel closed. The receptacle for the ember retracted and vanished from sight.

  The Doc turned around. “What if I told you, all of this could be undone?” She waved her arms with a flourish to indicate the entire world and all its many horrors.

  Jacob chuckled. He’d heard that before.

  There was no shortage of groups claiming they could provide safety or absolution from all the horrors around. At first, it was the typical religious fanatics that thought they were being punished. When it became obvious things weren’t changing for the better, things took a dark turn.

  Many of those people were no better than the demons they promised they could protect people from.

  He looked at Alec, surprised that his friend was taking this seriously. They’d run into more than a few of those groups on some of their earlier mishaps. How many horrors did those people commit under the guise of “the greater good?”

  “You can’t be buying into this,” he said to Alec. Jacob turned to Doctor Jasieux. “Then I’d say you’ve finally snapped because you sound like a cultist.”

  She shook her head and sighed, removing her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Mon Dieu! God save me from small minds.” The Doc took a deep breath, resituated her glasses, and looked at Jacob. “Do you believe that a plane weighing several hundred tons can fly?”

  “Of course. I used to fly all the time.”

  “And do you understand how it would look
to somebody born now – God have mercy on their soul – if you proposed that a metal tube with wings could fly?”

  “But that’s different. They’re ignorant of how a plane works. If they understood the mechanics behind it they wouldn’t think it’s impossible,” Jacob countered. But even as he said it, he was beginning to catch on to what she meant.

  “And do you understand how a plane manages to stay in the air even though every common-sense rule says something so heavy shouldn’t be able to fly?” she asked, tilting her chin up at him.

  “Bernoulli’s law?” he vaguely recalled. A lot of information from his high school days was dusty and shoved into a dark corner with all the other useless information from his life before the Collapse.

  “Principle,” she corrected, “but close enough. And if I told you the underlying theories explaining how this is possible, you would still be skeptical unless you saw it work for yourself.”

  Jacob opened his mouth to object but Alec was at his side in a second placing a hand on his shoulder. “Trust her, Jacob. She’s been at this a long time.”

  “All right,” he said, dropping the matter. Alec was more skeptical than even he was. If he believed her, there had to be something there. “So let’s say that you can undo everything.” He jerked his chin toward the panel she accessed. “Presumably that ember is needed?”

  “So you are brighter than you look,” she congratulated. “Think of it as the last piece to the quantum puzzle. The rules of Lormar are not the same as on Earth, that much I am sure you are aware, yes?

  “Everything we ever thought we understood about the flow of time is distorted in Lormar, the world of Pyresouls. Now that it affects us, we can use some of its quirks to our benefit.”

  Jacob looked from Alec to the Doc, then to the FIVR pod. “And somehow you think you found a way to undo everything with that?” he asked, pointing at the pod.

  Doctor Jasieux patted the curved glass top. “This is only half of the equation, as you say. We need a person to send back.”