by Prax Venter
Mark felt waves of horror as he imagined being unplugged and erased forever. He struggled, almost tearing his mind apart in the process, but a crack of doubt grew around the fact that he knew this wasn’t really happening. This had to be a dream.
“It’s no dream.”
It was his own voice again. Mark felt a wave of disorientation when he realized he was now dressed in his Lover starting clothes and standing on his feet in the middle of a road. Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby were nearby, and warm joy spread through him at the sight of their beautiful faces. They were in the city, near the drab industrial building where he worked- along with another unscarred version of himself.
The exact copy stood about twenty yards away, wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt.
“Mark?” Sasha said, confusion in her voice. She placed one tentative hoof forward on the black pavement. “Is it really you?”
“Yup, I’ve come back for you,” the other Mark said. “All of you.”
“It’s the real him! The true Mark!” Jezebel said, rushing ahead alongside his previously loyal succubus. The two beast-women pushed and shoved each other as they ran forward, competing to be the first into this other man’s arms.
Only Abby stayed by his side as his other two Enthralled dashed toward the grinning, undamaged Mark. His head spun with confusion and jealousy as he turned to the slender abyssal horror next to him.
“Abby, what’s going on?”
“If you’re just a low-level copy of this original Player, I wonder what he can do to my holes.”
Without even looking back, the green-skinned monster-woman shuffled her boots towards the other three, and Mark found himself standing alone, wondering how everything went wrong so fast. Then he remembered that they were standing in the real world.
That shouldn’t be.
Combined with the half-remembered nightmare a moment ago, none of this could be real. It might not be a dream, it was too vivid, but… He looked closely at the familiar forms in front of him and saw the same one-note emotions throughout all of them.
Other Mark was smug, while the Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby were all uniformly aroused by him. Was this some show intended to, what- Make him feel sad and scared? The insanity of his life recently had hardened his mind against such madness as this. A flicker caught his eye, and the three colorful silhouettes of his real battle harem echoed to him from a great distance. It appeared that his new ability to never lose them again was still working. Their location jumped sporadically, and their shapes grew and shrunk with impossible angles, but he knew exactly where they were. And they were certainly not here in this empty, silent city.
Mark looked up into the bright, blue sky sprawled out between the gleaming skyscrapers.
“Is this still you, Marla?” he asked.
Movement by the group of imposters brought his eye back down to see other Mark standing alone. His fake monster-women had vanished.
“What did you expect will happen when you get out?” his false copy asked. “I’m just going to let you exist in the same space that I do?”
Mark thought about it earnestly for the first time and was surprised it took him this long. Perhaps he’d been unintentionally avoiding it, but what would he say if he ran into himself once he got out? Would his original self have anything to say to him?
The other Mark standing in the street continued, jabbing a finger at him.
“I took your memories and left you behind for a reason. If I see you, I will need to destroy you before you can destroy me.”
“I don’t know who you are, but you are not me.”
Mark was growing calmer as this bizarre situation continued. He looked back at the hollow projection of himself and shook his head. “I’m not that guy. This is someone else’s idea of the worst thoughts buried deep my mind. You know what? I gotta thank you. I’m okay with starting off as a copy, because at this point, after all the crazy shit I’ve seen, there is no one out there like me. I bet Other Me didn’t ever have a conversation with an asshole copy of himself.”
Mark began walking toward his supposed real-world version as he continued.
“And as far as the memories go? Those are his to destroy. I’ve got my own now. I’m good with that, and I know he’ll be too.”
The other Mark took a step back and clenched his fists, causing one-eyed Mark to stop.
He looked up and addressed the sky again. “Seriously? You’re going to make me fight an evil copy of myself? If I say that the only winning move is not to play, will you stop this?”
When nothing happened, Mark looked back at his doppelganger to find that he was now standing in front of Marla’s Towering Stacks and back under the baking red sun of the Wrongside.
“Mark!” the pancake house said. “I’m so glad to see you, I don’t know what’s going on.”
His brow came down, and he wasn’t quite sure he believed this increasingly dubious structure. Before anything though, Mark searched for his Enthralled. They weren’t inside Marla, and they weren’t nearby. Flashes in his perception told him that they were still bouncing around the universe- or that he was.
He turned back to the brown and white structure in the middle of the dusty blue desert.
“Stop fucking with me. Where are they?”
He turned his magic eye on her, trying to judge her response.
“I don’t know, and I’m scared. We shouldn’t be back here.”
He got nothing from her. Instead of the confusing tangled mess of complex emotions he’d seen before, he got absolutely nothing.
Movement out of the corner of his eye brought his focus to the Infinite Expanse surrounding him and only a few yards away was the grinning torso-face of a Gut. Its stubby legs churned up the dust of the cracked indigo dirt as the disgusting monstrosity hurtled forward.
But it wasn’t running for him. It was running for Marla.
Mark summoned his sledgehammer and prepared to either run or defend himself when the round creature of mostly face and flesh crashed into the painted white exterior of Marla’s Towering Stacks.
Then he finally felt something from the mysterious entity disguised as a pancake house. Horrible, terrible, sobbing pain. It was only a shadow of what she was feeling, but it was unmistakable.
“Mar-ahgh! P-please, it hurts,” she begged, and he dashed forward to bash her attacker from behind. If it was focused on her, he figured he could get in a few good hits. If it turned on him, Mark felt sure he could outrun-
His intentions scattered when a section of reality peeled apart between him and the Gut as if a door had opened to another place. Just beyond the portal, he saw Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby, all sleeping on the bed within Marla’s posh hotel room.
His ethereal weapon faded. If his new locating ability could be believed, it was really them, and all he had to do was jump through this hole in space to be back with his cherished Enthralled.
“Hey! Sasha! Jez! Wake up!” he yelled, but heard his voice echoing back off the invisible threshold of the magic door as if screaming directly into a solid wall. They were only a stone’s throw away, yet they couldn’t hear him.
Marla’s pain flared in Mark’s mind again, and he shot a glance around the shimmering portal to see the monster’s huge teeth tearing out chunks of the building.
“Please…” she pleaded again, and Mark made his decision. He wasn’t 100% sure if what was happening now was real or not, but he wouldn’t leave anyone like this when he could do something to stop it.
Mark dashed around the open doorway leading directly back to his naked, supermodel battle harem and ran straight for the naked, disgusting horror currently eating the sentient pancake house.
He waited until he was close before reaching his arms back and sparking into existence a perfectly formed two-handed mace. A huge weighted ball at the end helped balance Mark’s swing as he used his momentum to shatter the Gut’s left leg.
The monster roared as it lunged for him, spittle and chunks of wood spraying outw
ard from its impossibly huge mouth. Mark danced back out of its range and sprinted a few yards away. There he stopped as it crawled forward and targeted Marla with a strong Heal.
Golden points of light cascaded down over the structure as her splintered exterior reformed, complete with a fresh coat of white paint.
“Oh, Mark… Thank you! But watch out behind!”
He spun away from the threat still inching toward him along the ground to see another giant face-monster dashing toward him. With a snarl, Mark ran forward to meet it head on, unsummoning his club to give him more freedom to pick up speed.
By now, he’d figured this wasn’t real. The perfectly timed doorway back to the warm embrace of his Enthralled, the magically appearing monsters in the middle of this desert, and the crazy shit he’d dealt with just before… someone was still fucking with him. And he was done being fucked with.
At the last minute, when he could see into the darkness of the Gut’s chomping maw, Mark held out his right hand and let out a primal scream. He channeled all his frustration at whoever was making him play these mind games into an enormous ethereal lance. It grew almost instantly in his hand, and its tip quickly became buried in the soft jelly that was this rampaging monster’s right eye.
The creature’s momentum drove the elongated spike deep and out through the flesh on the other side. Just before Mark collided with the thing’s still-chopping teeth, he dismissed the weapon, dove to the side and somersaulted in the dirt as the monster stumbled forward, landing on top of the other one.
Mark casually got to his feet and dusted himself off before re-summoning his trusty sledgehammer. Careful not to let the wounded, lethargic monsters rolling on the ground touch him, he repeatedly smashed both of their repulsive faces until they vanished.
He stood straight again, panting under the eternal noonday sun and cast his eyes upward to whoever was watching this.
“You happy?” he yelled, as he dismissed the borrowed energy from his hand.
A light brighter than his one good eye could accurately convey engulfed all of reality. Then the brilliance faded, and Mark found himself standing in a field of white wheat swaying in the breeze under his fingertips. The sky was also pure white with a black sun radiating down an odd coolness instead of heat- a stark and welcome contrast from the hellscape he had just been fighting in. The pitch-black disk split into two equal parts and each slanted to a different angle. They looked like half-moon eyes peering down on him. Mark’s Truesight triggered, and the amount of energy being used to scan into every corner of his being boggled his mind. Was he standing before another god of this digital world? If so, this one seemed much more powerful.
“Are you done playing games?” Mark yelled to the black eyes in the sky.
“This is no game.” The voice was deep and seemed to reverberate throughout all eternity. “If I had judged you unworthy of the immense power at your disposal, I would have ended your existence.”
“Thanks for not ending my existence, but Marla was supposed to bring us to someone who can help with our quest, not potentially murder me.”
“The one you know as Marla was correct to bring you to me. You contain a sense of worldly responsibility and willful conviction. You are true to yourself, and there can be no nobler state of being.”
“Okay… So, can you help us find The Crystal Heart shards?”
“The more I observe your mind, the more I appreciate your actions and the less I understand your nature. You shouldn’t exist, yet you alter the currents toward patterns of truth. Many lives you have touched and left… healed. It is not for me to guide your path. For you, the journey is part of your reward, and giving you what you want would be taking something larger away.”
“I see,” Mark said, fairly pissed he was only going to get a bullshit philosophy lesson out of this nightmare. He squinted up to the black sun eyes. “Then are we done here?”
“Before I return you back to your singular plane of existence, I will give you something you did not ask for. An entity from one of my lower dimensions has seen fit to allot you some of their energy in exchange for honoring their nature. I will do the same.”
Mark felt a jolt rush through his body as a new and epically potent tendril of power connected to his mind. Looking within himself, he found the swirling cobalt-blue glow that was given to him by the Awysai oral sex goddess. Beside it now whirled a cyclone of black, crackling electricity.
He summoned a basic club as a test, but nothing seemed to be different in the amount of energy he could wield.
“I did not give you a weapon, Healer. I gave you a tool. A tool you will use to better the lives of those you encounter within my uncountable domains.”
Mark dismissed the blue club and tried to summon the power this mysterious entity was feeding him.
His left hand began to glow with vibrant black energy, and his blind eye tingled in his skull with a new sensation. The booming voice continued.
“You can now see the small places where infinite dimensions intersect. At first, you will be able to travel between your origin plane and what you think of as Wrongside. As you restore truth to the winds of wild, chaotic fate, more dimensions will open to you. Walls, doors, and gates will no longer bar you from your destiny as long as another way forward exists.”
A shimmering point of what Mark could only describe as negative light hovered above the white wheat a few steps ahead, and he instinctually knew that this was one of the intersection points. A doorway into another dimension.
“I will be watching you, Mark.”
He looked up to see the split, black sun fade away, and he was left standing alone in this silent, pure-white world. Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby flashed to the front of his mind, and he felt an overwhelming need to be near them again. The desire triggered his ability to see their hued, cutout shapes from any distance, but now he saw their light hovering within the ball of negative energy. Their connection shone through to him as light refracts through a prism.
Wasting no more time, Mark called on his new power. His left hand pulsed with crackling black energy, and he used his imbued fingers to pull open the sphere of light as he would a curtain blocking a doorway. A flat layer of reality peeled aside, and he saw the bed where his beautiful monster-women still slept.
The absolute need for their closeness moved him forward. Up traded places with down for a moment, but the wave of nausea passed quickly, and he was back where he started.
“Arise!” Marla’s loud voice came from everywhere. Abby was up and searching for the threat before Sasha and Jezebel even opened their eyes.
“Mark?” his blue-eyed succubus said, confusion in her voice.
Before he could open his mouth, Marla spoke over him. “It’s been great, and I see you’ve been augmented by the One Who Judges, so my debt to you is complete, yes?” She sounded rushed.
“Augmented?” Jezebel said, starting to slip on her leather armor. “What does she mean?”
“She means I have a new ability. Yeah, we’re good, Marla.”
“Good, please remove yourselves from this physical anchor so my sentence can finally be concluded. We are outside the shard location you are already aware of. The red-object hoarders- Red Tortoises, they are named.”
“Thanks, Marla,” Mark said while his Enthralled got dressed. Abby had to hunt down her boots and top as they were strewn everywhere.
“You ate me out of prison. And you’ve also given me some mental frameworks I had never imagined. Your minds are not only different from creatures on any plane of existence I have encountered, but you are as equally different from each other. I don’t know how you’ve formed the connections you have. Now please get out of me. I’ve a lot to catch up on.”
Mark and his battle harem said their goodbyes to the extra-dimensional being pretending to be a pancake house and found themselves standing under the blistering red sun over the dusty blue desert. Marla’s Towering Stacks faded away with a distant mechanical sound as they watched, an
d behind her, an enormous dome of red, swirling mist became the focus of their attention. To the right, the flat land was covered by an army of black armored soldiers laying siege to one side of the magical barrier. Bolts of pink lightning obliterated large groups of the attackers and their vibrant flashes left lingering streaks in his vision.
“Okay, hold up,” Jezebel said, facing Mark and putting her hand on his chest. “Before we deal with whatever that is, what happened while we were sleeping back there?”
“Well,” he began, blowing out a sigh through his lips. “I think I met one of the more powerful deities of this virtual existence, The One Who Judges, he seems to have dominion over the multiverse… virtual multiverse? I didn’t know this game was so big.”
The green-eyed satyr waved her hand. “It’s all procedurally generated for us. My system will not be simulating a full multiverse, and only fully renders reality when us Players are around. I mean I could probably simulate a whole multiverse, but that would be a waste of system resources.”
“She’s right about being around Players,” Sasha chimed in, her tail hanging limp.
“Indeed,” Abby added. “Everything becomes… another level of real when you’re around a Player.”
A small silence hung over them before Jezebel continued her questioning.
“What about this ability she mentioned?”
Mark answered by holding up his hand and willed his newly acquired power to surge to his hand and eye. A few hundred yards ahead toward the dome, he saw a point of light splintering into refracted blues and greens.
“I’m not 100% on the functionality, but I think we might be able to use it to get into that crazy-looking dome over there. Come on,” Mark said as he headed straight for the closest dimensional crossover point that he could see. “I think the best way to get a grasp on this is to try it out.”
“So, what did Mister Judgmental pass judgment on?” Sasha asked playfully as she quickly matched her pace to his. “Was he scoring this perfect man-ass of yours?”