by Prax Venter
Once their things were stored, Mark followed the owner of One Copper Jerky to his stash of Recall Charms. Nalo passed him a plaster carving of an ornate portal, and a stray thought hit Mark. His brows came down as he studied the small magic object.
“Why are they so worried about security in this place if people can just teleport in and out?”
Nalo shrugged. “Don’t tell Loa I said this, but Skeema Trees are not exactly known for their smarts. Good at tearing shit up and drinking with, though.” Mark smiled and closed his fist on the Recall Charm. The game world was crackling with powerful magic, and instant teleport objects were handed out like candy.
“Why don’t more people abuse these for trade?” Mark asked.
“For starters, they’ll often overload when moving bulk goods. Charms are usually for Collectors, and treasure hunters. It’s usually not worth the tradeoff in profit unless you have small, valuable product. Like what Loa is doing now. Otherwise most bulk trade is done through the airship hubs.”
“I see,” Mark said, thinking they were still over-powered.
Nalo cleared his throat. “Uh, thanks, by the way. Loa is the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”
Mark didn’t have to look too deep to see that they were both happy.
“Hey, it’s nothing,” he said and then summoned a glowing one-handed club with a rounded top. “I got this out of it.”
The wolf-man shook his head. “You are a unique Collector, Mark- and with an even more unique battle harem.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling as he turned to look back at his Enthralled. Abby was currently rapt by whatever Sasha was saying, and Jezebel nodded along, sagely.
Mark couldn’t help but think he had to be the most unique Copy out there.
- 20 -
The few four-armed giants watching over the designated Recall zone in Reoc’s Hold were more interested in chatting with each other than Mark and his Enthralled. He was on high alert as they moved through the city, positive they were being followed or that someone would shout, ‘there they are, get them!’ at any moment. Darkness had fallen, and most of the foot traffic had dwindled down to a trickle. He felt more exposed than ever.
Sasha was not happy with her wings tucked in tight and covered by Jezebel’s blue cloak. His sultry succubus adored drawing eyes and being seen, and now she looked like a hunchback with horns.
Nothing happened though, and anyone glancing their way focused on the stunning lime-green woman with tentacle arms wearing a skimpy bathing suit.
The giant portal grew closer with every step, and they made it to the enormous open space around it without anyone accusing them of murder. The magic doorway in the center stretched higher than any skyscraper he had ever seen. The shimmering energy that made up the surface bathed the whole area in the eerie flicker of wrong-colored arcane brilliance.
A contingent of Skeema Tree guards stood loosely clumped in front of the portal, and one of the four-armed warriors approached as Mark’s group drew close. He wore the same chain mail the rest did, but he looked a bit older than any of the tall variants he had seen before. Thick black stubble covered his face, broken up by the bare, pink scars of past battles.
“Headed to the Wrongside, Collector?”
“That’s right,” Mark said. “Anything you need doing while I’m there?”
The towering guard let out a deep chuckle and grabbed the hilt of one of his four swords.
“Need killing, you mean? Sure. Talk to General Koy. He’ll fill you in on current targets out on the battlefield.”
“Will do,” Mark said with a nod and stepped toward the portal with the same outward apathy on his face as when heading to work in the morning. Internally, his heart was thumping and he only wanted to get past these guards as quickly as possible.
With only a moment of hesitation, Mark held his breath and stepped past the threshold of the glowing magic membrane.
A blood-orange sky hung over blue, cracked earth, and directly ahead of him was a barrier of stone walls. Mark blinked. Why had he come here? He was in the middle of doing something important but what it was had slipped right out of his head. Frustrated, he looked around, trying to remember what the hell he was doing. Nearby he saw three monster-woman supermodels with equally confused looks.
“That was unpleasant,” Jezebel said, putting a hand to her head.
Then everything came crashing back, and the rest of his mind caught up with his body. Mark spun in place, searching for any threats in the area and noticed the dry heat filling his lungs.
“The interdimensional aperture is smaller on this side,” Abby said, pointing a tentacle at the house-sized gate behind them. Mark was beyond such surprises.
The military fort on this side of the portal was made from gray, stone bricks and crawling with Tree-type Skeema and every building he could see was oversized. Maybe the Stones never came over to the Wrongside.
“Come, ladies,” Mark said taking a few steps on the dusty, indigo dirt. “Let’s find this General Koy and see if he knows where the shards are on this side.” He spun to face them as they walked and added, “Maybe they have all four in a box somewhere, just waiting for us to pick up.”
Jezebel gave him a cute grin. “What fun would that be?”
After asking around, they were directed up a set of stairs and to a large room with three towering Skeema and a giant map.
A soldier with a blue slash on his chain armor spoke as they entered.
“What is it, Collector?”
“We were sent here for Wrongside quests.”
The Skeema who must have been General Koy let out a sharp laugh and turned his gray eyes up to Mark. This soldier appeared to have survived many battles as all four of his arms were covered in scars. He appraised his Enthralled and then came back to him.
“You want a quest? Kill all the Guts you can.”
“Guts?” Mark asked.
“The Wrong Ones. The Monsters. The foul, all-consuming Guts. Leave the gates and head in any direction. They have us surrounded and have unlimited numbers. The fight is there for the taking. May you find gore and glory.”
“Got it,” Mark said, disappointed there wasn’t something more elaborate. “Before I go, I am searching for The Crystal Heart shards. Can you tell me where the four here are located?”
“Heart shards?” he repeated, frowning. “Those are bad luck. Best stay away.” He waved two of his four arms in a shooing motion at Mark and went back to studying the map spread out over the table.
“Bad luck or no, I’d like to know where they are.”
The ten-foot Skeema soldier with uniquely marked armor kept his head down as he turned his impatient eyes back up.
“And I’d like you not to.”
Mark crossed his arms. “Is there something I could do for you to earn this information?” Everything was a damn quest here.
“Fine. Since disturbing those things could lose us the war, how about you destroy, oh I don’t know… let’s make it ten thousand Guts, and then I’ll consider letting you access those classified documents. Now, will you please go do some damage with your battle harem?”
Maybe there was some number of these Gut creatures they had to kill before earning enough reputation with this faction, but Mark seriously hoped it wasn’t ten thousand. Maybe they were easy to kill, and with infinite enemies, they’d have a place to farm infinite essence. He looked back at his monster-women, smiled, and without a further word, they exited the war room. They headed back down the stone stairway and found themselves standing on blue, sunbaked dirt. The red ball of fire beat down on them from the highest point of the orange sky, and Mark was glad they didn’t bring the extra gear. They were going to get roasted here.
“Ready to do some damage?” Mark asked, catching the eyes of his Enthralled.
Jezebel nodded. “This will give us a chance to see how we fight together as a full team.”
“Right,” Mark said. “Abby, you ready to fight?”
The small abyssal horror coiled her arms over her slender stomach and dipped her head once, her determined yellow eyes never leaving his.
“I will work within our collective.”
Between whatever dark magic Abby brought, plus Sasha’s powerful Arc Bolt and her new Shock Bomb, they were going to blow shit to pieces.
“Let’s move out,” Mark said, then started marching toward the enormous, iron portcullis blocking the main gate.
One of the four-armed warriors near the gate directed them to a small, side door and Mark noted how relaxed everyone seemed for being surrounded. When they stepped outside the fort’s walls, he saw crumbling, blue brick ruins in every direction. If he squinted, he could see much taller buildings farther in the distance. Before the soldier closed the door on them, he offered some advice.
“The main skirmish is straight ahead, but I know most of you Collectors can’t resist exploring. Just kill a bunch of those mouthy bastards on your way to wherever it is you’re headed, and don’t get surrounded. Gore and glory.”
The door closed and they were left to fend for themselves on this Wrongside warzone.
Mark turned to his Enthralled. “I’m guessing there are X number of these things we need to kill before that General becomes friendlier. Besides, if the enemies here are endless, I might be able to collect endless essence for you guys.”
“If that doesn’t work, we could always ask them,” Jezebel said, pointing to the distant buildings as they walked toward where the guard indicated the main battle was being fought.
“I did catch a good peek at their map,” Sasha said. “There appears to be a ring-like city on the other side of this wreckage. It was labeled with the uncreative name of ‘Ring City’.”
“Awesome,” Mark said, scanning the destroyed buildings and half-standing walls for any movement. “If killing Gut monsters doesn’t pan out, we’ll try Ring City.”
They crept through the rubble for what felt like thirty minutes and they hadn’t seen another living thing. Distracted by the monotony, Mark looked down at his black boots and noticed that the blue dust from the dry, cracked dirt never permanently clung to him. His white silk vest, and pants should be stained with sweat and grime… even blood, by now, but they were as fresh as that day he woke up on the grass with Jezebel. He looked over at the sweet face of his green-eyed satyr and watched her scan the battle-scarred ruins for threats.
She caught him looking and smiled. “What?”
“Besides the bottomless stomach trick, did you also make it so we can’t get dirty- or smelly?”
“No, that was part of The Crystal Heart’s original coding.”
“The human world is so bizarre,” the abyssal horror said. “How you sacks of water accomplished anything under such physical and temporal restrictions is unfathomable.”
Mark frowned. The real world seemed so far away at this point and his old life only a distant memory. As he thought about that last day, riding home to get into his new deep-dive hardware, he again noticed unnatural fuzziness surrounding the memories. These time-worn, yet recent events served as objective proof that he was missing a large portion of his life.
“What the fuck is that,” Sasha said, breaking him out of his inward focus.
He snapped his eyes up to where she was pointing to see a giant, impossibly round creature bent over near one of the piles of rubble. It was naked and with thick black hair covering its back. There was no way that this ball of flesh was human.
Mark’s group stopped in the middle of an intersection between the ruined buildings, all turning to face the creature as it rummaged for something in a pile of blue bricks. They’d never seen one of these Guts, and he wanted to be sure this was a threat before they started ripping it apart. Mark spoke his plan quickly and quietly, never taking his eyes off it.
“I’m going to yell out. If it’s hostile, Abby, I want to see what you can do. Then Sasha and I will…”
It was then that the ball of flesh turned to face them, and Mark’s words died on his lips. The monster standing only about forty yards away hadn’t been bent over, it had no head. Instead, its stomach split open to reveal a huge human mouth- teeth, lips, tongue and all. Above that was a thick black mustache and a bulbous, oversized nose. Where the ball-like monster’s nipples should have been were two long-lashed eyeballs.
Its terrible mouth curled into a grin before it made a series of chomping noises with its yellowed and broken teeth. Mark assumed this had to be what they had come to kill, and all doubts were erased when the thing scrambled its relatively stubby legs in the rubble as it rushed them.
“Abby! Show us what you got!” But as he said the words, she was already weaving her long, green appendages in hypnotically fluid movements. Even her short black tentacles lifted into the air, adding their own small, yet intricate patterns to her spell.
Gauging perspective was still rough for Mark with only one eye, and it was worse when things were farther away, but the unsettling creature had to be as big as a Skeema Tree and weigh over a thousand pounds.
The monster chomped its terrible mouthful of teeth as it lurched onto the street, drawing closer… and Abby was still drawing glowing runes in the air.
Mark summoned his club and was about to say something when the abyssal horror spoke in a strange, shadowy language.
The instant she finished casting, a huge gash appeared across its nose as if struck by a massive invisible axe. Mark could see exposed bone and blood gushing freely from the seemingly mortal wound, yet it only stumbled a little and continued to press forward.
Its pink-skinned, human feet made it onto the blue dirt road, and Jezebel held out her hand, invoking glowing vines to ensnare the monster’s stubby legs while Sasha confidently strode forward to finish it off. The wounded face-monster’s mindless desire to reach them was apparently strong enough to snap the vines, and it was once again stomping toward them.
Mark ran up next to Sasha and Jezebel appeared on her other side soon after, shifting into her bear form. When its disgusting face was in range, the Techno Succubus Destructor held up her palm and blasted it right between the eyes with a cracking burst of raw electricity.
After the flash faded from Mark’s vision, he saw the blackened monster on its back and struggling to get up.
“Die already!” Mark yelled as he rushed the prone enemy. Without really thinking about it, Mark swelled the size of his club into the shape of a sledgehammer. The moment he did, the monster’s whole hairy body began to glow the telltale red. He cast his eye down at the giant ruined face of the thing called a Gut, its small hands reaching for him. This twisted creature wanted only to consume every living thing it came across. There was absolutely nothing more behind this visceral force of flesh and teeth. Knowing its nature, Mark felt no remorse as he bashed the thing’s horrible, giant face in.
It took three swings, but with his ability to unsummon the heavy weapon only to bring it back when his hands were over his head, the three swings were devastatingly fast.
Mark had hit some damage threshold, and the vile monster stopped moving. Then, the whole creature faded from existence. Something so hard to bring down should have held a lot of essence… but Mark felt nothing after its defeat.
“It should not have continued to stand,” Abby said, stepping up next to Mark with an angry frown on her dark green lips.
“No shit,” Sasha said, her tail snapping behind her like a whip. “These are going to be tough.”
Mark nodded, unsummoning his glowing weapon. “It gets worse. I don’t think these things are real. They don’t leave bodies, and I didn’t get any essence.”
“None?” Jezebel said, after shifting back into her armored satyr form. “That is disappointing.”
Mark looked out over the rubble of sunbaked warzone and thought the distant buildings in the horizon might be a better idea.
“Let’s avoid combat if we can,” he said, turning in place and searching for the closest part of the city. If they veered lef
t, it appeared like they would get out of the warzone faster. “This look like a good way to go?” he asked, pointing down the street.
“Not if you intend to avoid combat,” Abby said, her big yellow eyes on his. “We should be pressed against that side of the street, not down the middle, and we should check intercepting paths. I should also scout.”
Mark was about to disagree and suggest they stay together when Jezebel spoke first.
“You can turn invisible?”
Mark looked up, confused. Who was she talking to?
“No,” Sasha said, squinting. “Just transparent-ish. I can see her outline if I look for it.”
Mark held his hand out toward Abby, confused. “I can see her just fine.”
Jezebel sighed. “You sure can see a lot of things for being half blind, Mark. Also, Abby, why didn’t you tell us you can disappear like this?”
“I thought you were aware of my innate mental clouding ability, although I’m not sure why it does not affect Mark.”
She reached out one of her tentacles to him, looping the tip to make the vague outline of a hand. He took it with his and smiled.
Jezebel crossed her arms. “Can you choose not to cloud all our minds?”
“No. I exude the effect, or I do not.”
Gazing into her big yellow eyes, Mark saw that she craved his skin on hers. Abby was pushed to the edge of sanity under horribly cruel pain and suffering, and then Mark came along, healed her, and scooped her up into his arms. It was a moment she would never forget. She tucked the small tip of her tendril out between his fingers, and he had to admit, her smooth skin held a special magnetic tingle for him as well.
“Okay,” he said, squeezing her and letting go. “Abby scouts a bit ahead. You never leave my sight. When you see a threat, I’ll signal to-”