by Sam Ryder
Why would mentioning a marmot make her think of the timid giantess? Duh. Of course, the answer was obvious. “Marmots are on Primo?” I asked.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Beat said.
“Who?” Eve said.
“No one,” I said. “Look, Eve, the Three want me to go with you on your next Find. We have to bring back a marmot.”
“What? No. That’s impossible.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. I’ll speak to them. I’ll talk some sense into—”
“Airiel woke up,” I blurted out before she could run off and do something stupid.
“What? She did?” The news took Eve by surprise. I wondered whether she’d expected the third goddess to ever wake up.
I nodded. “I spoke to all Three. They’re sleeping now, but agreed to a plan where two Warriors will wear ooze armor—”
“Ooze what?”
“Sorry, I’m going too fast.”
I told her about my idea. When I finished, she said, “Smart. It might just give us a chance, so long as the Three can keep up and still produce enough ooze to Level up new recruits and heal injuries. Which brings us back to the ridiculous mission they want us to go on. Like I said, it’s impossible. For one, if we try to bring back a marmot, we won’t be able to bring back any Outcasts. For two, capturing a marmot is the maddest idea I’ve ever heard, and that includes all of yours.”
“For the love of the goddesses,” Beat said. “Will someone please tell me what the fuck a marmot is?”
“In words you will understand…” Eve said. “A big-ass spiked elephant with a stabby thing instead of a trunk.”
“Thank you,” Beat said. “That explains everything.”
~~~
The next Black was upon us, but I wouldn’t be around to take part, either as a combatant or as a member of the sit-by-the-demonfire group.
Still, I wanted to see them off, especially because two of the Warriors were wearing my new, awesome armor. Well, technically it wasn’t my armor, but I still felt like it was.
The first wearer was Uva, the dark-eyed human woman. This would be her first Black. Given her attitude the previous Black, I was surprised to hear that she’d decided to join the other Warriors. As inexperienced as she was, I wasn’t worried about her. She knew how to handle herself. Still, it made sense that she wear the ooze armor. The piece the Three had provided her with was beautiful, a light-style armor encrusted with glittering gemstones that covered her vital areas and a portion of her arms and legs. There was even a helm, though it had no faceplate.
I wondered what magical properties the armor had, but quickly dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t its purpose now. Instead, I could see the edges of the cocoon material that peeked past the metal rims. It was wet, soaked with ooze.
This could work, I thought.
Lace wore the second set of armor, which was bulky and clearly the property of a strong, large individual previously—likely a male. It would fit Beat like a glove, but Lace had insisted it be her to use it. Why? Because she liked being a special snowflake. I couldn’t argue with the decision, however, because the cat-woman was also one of our most formidable fighters. If I had to choose between her and Beat, I would give the edge to Beat only because there was no risk of her biting off one of my fingers.
“It’s time,” Eve said, by my side. It was strange: It felt natural having her there, like we were on the same Level. When I’d first met this woman, I wasn’t much more than the gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe, but now…now I was kicking ass and taking names.
Idiot, I thought, chiding myself for my own cockiness. Confidence was good in this place, but only to a point. I needed to remember I wasn’t invincible. Defying death so many times didn’t mean such an outcome was inevitable; it only meant I was more likely to die the next time.
That sobered my ego up in a hurry. “Open up a can of whoop ass on those demon muthas,” I said to Beat, who was rallying her Warriors.
“Thanks Austin 3:16,” Beat said. I wasn’t surprised she’d understood the reference. With that, she kissed her fingers and smacked them on her ass and then turned away. Such was Beat. I was about to say something to Lace as well, but she growled at me so I thought better of it. Apparently she was still pissed about me rejecting her proposition.
I followed Eve back up the hill and slid into the gully. With the shadows deepening, the canyon was almost night-dark already. Eve’s body was a slightly darker slash, the whites of her eyes reflecting just enough light to stand out. “You ready for this?”
For once, I felt truly ready for something. All the waiting around had made me antsy as hell. “Hell yes,” I said.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. My life meter is full.”
“Which means…”
“Eight hundred.”
“Whoa.”
“What?”
“You’re like…almost a goddess.”
“Key word being almost. And anyway, even if my life meter ever reached a thousand, it would still drop at a faster rate than the Three. As I age, it will go to zero eventually, with or without a heart in my chest. I’m not immortal. If the Three have their hearts, however…”
“They will live forever?”
She nodded, her white eyes bobbing. “So like I was saying, my life meter is eight hundred. One jump usually shaves off—”
“Jump?” I’d tried to hold back the question so as not to interrupt her—again—but my curiosity was something I’d never been very good at assuaging.
“What you might refer to as teleporting,” she explained, being remarkably patient with me.
“Wicked,” I said.
“In a way, yes,” she said. “But probably not in the way you’re thinking.” I tilted my head, trying to decipher what she meant. She continued: “So one teleport usually knocks about a hundred points off my life meter. That’s why I can only recruit four or five newbs at a time.” I did the math. It made sense. Losing five hundred points would take her down to three hundred in a hurry and she needed to save a hundred for the return trip. Plus, she probably wanted to keep some life points available in the case of emergencies, like when she’d been attacked during—
“Oh shit,” I said, realizing something I’d been too dumb to figure out before. The marmot lived on Primo. The same planet she’d been attacked on during one of her previous Finding missions. She’d managed to escape, barely, but had still almost died despite us getting her into an ooze bath.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, probably going through the same thought process as me.
“Because you’re Leveled up now, right? A Level 3 Finder which is like a Level 10 for everyone else or something, yeah? You can time travel. We’ll just head over to a Primo from a hundred years ago. It’s the present occupants we need to worry about, not the past ones.”
“No, Sam,” she said.
“No? Why not?”
“The marmot were only created recently.”
“Created? Like in a test tube?”
“Something like that. The giants on Primo aren’t exactly geniuses, but the tribes of lions and lionesses are quite advanced. They genetically engineered the marmot to perform heavy labor for them, to build their cities.”
“So the big-ass elephants with the stabby things for the trunks are tame?” I could hear the relief in my own voice.
“More or less,” Eve said, using a cliché I’d always found ridiculous. Which was it? More or less? “The Three want us to untame one.”
“Oh. Oh.” I didn’t like the sound of that. The rest of the dots connected in my mind. “So we can’t grab a marmot from the past because they didn’t exist until recently.”
“Exactly.”
“And the current Primo residents might be waiting around watching for you, ready to jump us as soon as we”—I used her own word for teleporting—“jump onto their planet.”
“That about sums it up. Are you still in?”
I sw
allowed. “Yup.”
“Good. Now give me your hand.”
I started to reach for her but then stopped. “Wait. Why were you telling me about how many life points you’ll use to jump to Primo? If it’s our only stop on this trip, you won’t get anywhere close to zero.”
She didn’t respond to that, and it took my sluggish brain a few seconds to catch up to hers.
Eve was expecting a fight.
This time, she didn’t wait for me to reach out. She grabbed my hand. “Don’t let go,” she said, and the world began to fade.
~~~
As Eve had alluded to, teleporting was wicked. Bad wicked. Very bad. It was like being in complete darkness on the world’s most poorly constructed rollercoaster, jerking and snapping about with no headrest to keep your skull in place, all the while thinking you were about to tumble off the rails and fall to your death.
Multiplied by a hundred. A hundred thousand. The “jump” felt like it lasted forever. It was all I could do to grit my teeth together to keep from biting off my own tongue. My hand remained locked with Eve’s like a vice, squeezing to the point where I was worried I might crush her fingers. Don’t let go, she’d said. As I was whipped and flung around I pondered why she’d said that. What would happen if our fingers were torn apart? Would she continue to our destination while I lived out whatever short time I had left in this darkness, my body eventually broken by the powerful forces wrenching me to and fro?
I wouldn’t wish such an experience on anyone but the Morgoss.
Everything stopped moving. It was still so dark I couldn’t see my own hand or even the glow of my hammer. Which was disconcerting. Back on Tor, my hammer even glowed through the Black. And my new Seeker eyes could always see something, even if only a faint outline. This place was even darker, like the shadows were a shroud that doused all light.
My head was pounding, worse than any migraine I’d ever had. My body trembled slightly, spasming.
“Breathe,” Eve said. “The worst is over.” Her voice was calming, gentle. Tender. It was a side of her I’d never really experienced before.
I realized I wasn’t breathing, my chest aching from lack of oxygen. I wondered how long I’d been holding my breath. I gasped as air flooded my lungs, burning my throat. Slowly, slowly, my body stopped trembling, though everything ached. And by everything I mean everything. I swear to you my fingernails hurt. My eyelids. Things that shouldn’t hurt, hurt. My nerves were so overloaded by all the pain alerts that my mind couldn’t figure out which to focus on, making it impossible to concentrate on anything but the fact that I was in agony.
I groaned.
“Fun, right?” Eve said. “Want to apply for a position as the next Finder?”
“No,” I managed to get out, the very act of speaking hurting my jaw. Well, hurting it more.
“Teleporting is only exciting to those who haven’t experienced it.”
“How are you…okay?” I asked, my voice strained and raspy.
She squeezed my hand. Which hurt. A lot. “You get used to it. That’s the amazing thing about our bodies—they adjust to whatever we inflict on them. Usually. Of course it helps that we’ve been Leveled up multiple times. If you tried to jump with me as a Warrior…you’d have broken into a million pieces.”
“If you’re trying to be comforting…epic fail,” I said.
She laughed. How the hell did one laugh at a time like this, when laughing hurt? Then again, I’m the one who’d made a joke. “Can you feel it?” she asked, changing the subject.
Feel what? I almost asked, still finding it hard to focus on anything but the pain. But then I did—I felt it. Movement. We weren’t hovering in blackness like I’d thought. We were still moving, just not in that herky-jerky way that had made me want to stab myself in the brain and end things. Now our movement was smooth, like being in an airplane on a cloudless day with a zero-turbulence factor. You could close your eyes and feel yourself hurtling along at hundreds of miles per hour, marveling at how easy it felt.
The pain was dissipating. It still wasn’t really tolerable, but a helluva lot better than before. It was like my torturer had decided I’d had enough, moving on to his next victim.
This level of pain felt awesome. If the pain ever went away completely it would be nirvana.
“Sam?” Eve said, and I realized I hadn’t responded to her.
“I’m here,” I said, which was a dumb thing to say. She was holding my hand—of course she knew I was here. What I really meant was I’m alive.
“Close your eyes. The light will be a shock to your system. Open them gradually when I tell you to.”
I obeyed without question. I was way out of my element and she had decades of experience under her metaphorical belt.
Even with my eyelids closed, I could see the light. It was just a halo at first, but then grew and grew until it was so blinding I jammed my eyes shut harder just to make certain they hadn’t opened by accident. My eyelids seemed useless, like those sheer curtains that did almost nothing to keep out the morning sunshine when all you wanted to do was sleep in.
And then I was on the ground and covering my eyes with the hand that Eve had released, tucking my face into the crook of my elbow. Everything was spinning, though I knew we’d finally stopped moving. We’d landed, so to speak.
We were on Primo.
Another planet.
The third I’d ever been on. Earth. Tor. Primo. Three of the Eight planets, seven of which people back on Earth didn’t even know existed.
Take that Neil Armstrong!
I still had a headache, but it had eased considerably. The light wasn’t helping, but my arm was shielding enough of it that I was no longer blinded. Still, I kept my eyes shut, remembering Eve’s advice.
“Slowly open them,” she said, “but keep them shielded.”
I didn’t really want to, but I’d trusted her this far…
I cracked them open, but immediately jammed them shut again, my senses overloaded by the brightness of the new world I found myself in. It was like coming out of a dark movie theater after seeing a Sunday matinee and into a bright summer’s day.
“Try again,” Eve said.
I did. My eyes adjusted somewhat better this time, and I was able to keep them open a crack, blinking faster than usual to keep them moist. For a minute I couldn’t see anything but that blinding light, but slowly my arm came into focus. Along its edges was even brighter light that I couldn’t look at directly.
“You all right?” Eve asked. I felt her hand on my shoulder. The truth? I felt kind of helpless. If we were attacked right now, I’d be killed and Eve left on her own. I felt like a child.
After so many days and weeks of being strong and capable, I hated this feeling.
I pulled my arm away from my head and faced the light, wincing.
Closing my eyes. Opening them partway. Blinking furiously. Repeat. Slowly this new world appeared.
Tor was a desolate, arid wasteland. Primo was a lush jungle. Mighty trees grew on all sides. They didn’t look like the trees I was used to, but the label still applied to them. They didn’t grow straight up, for one thing. Many of them started out growing sideways along the ground, the base trunk sprouting smaller trunks that shot skyward, twisting and turning at odd angles that seemed to defy gravity.
And there was gravity here, a heavy dose of it from the way my body felt heavier than usual. Tor’s gravity had always felt about the same as Earth’s. Primo felt like it was at least ten percent stronger.
The more and more my eyes adjusted, the more I marveled at the vibrancy of this planet. The plethora of colors made Earth’s landscapes seem mundane and ordinary. The strange trees were a rich, deep blue at their core, lightening as the protruding branches thinned, until all color leeched to their bright white leaves. Actually leaves is probably the wrong term. They were more like flowers, but bigger, the size of dinner plates, with big nut-like buds in the center. The buds were fiery red and I could almost imagine
them burning, the flames licking at the petals. A botanist would have a field day in this place.
The sky above the jungle, at least what I could see of it between the huge leaf-flowers, was piss yellow.
“You allri—” Eve started to ask again, but her question was cut off by a thunderous boom.
The ground began to move beneath our feet.
~~~
I know what you’re thinking, but you’d be wrong. It wasn’t a giant or a marmot. It was a giant riding a marmot. The strange curving trees bent and cracked and broke before the raw, brute strength of the duo. The marmot led with its spiked trunk, which pierced the forest like a longsword stabbing through flesh. The giant on its back snapped a whip at the base of its snout, making a sound like “Gah! Gah!” I half expected to find myself in a Lady Gaga video where she suddenly appeared giant-sized and singing “Ooh la, oh Gagaaa!”
Instead I found myself half-blind and about to be trampled to death by two creatures that would probably scratch their heads and shrug before thundering on.
“Shit,” Eve said, which pretty much summed up the deepness of the situation we were in. “Go!”
She grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. I took a stabbing blade of light in the eye which reflected off one of those too-white leaves. I cringed but didn’t stop, allowing myself to be pulled hard to the side. Though it would’ve been dramatic, we didn’t pull any of that Indiana Jones crap where he tries to outrun the thing—in his case a massive boulder—trying to crush him. We headed straight to the side, trying to get out of the path of the charging beast.
It was hard to run straight, the ground beneath us bucking and writhing under the mammoth footsteps of the beast and the added weight of its bulky rider. The powerful gravity didn’t help either—each step was a major effort even for our Leveled-up bodies.
In my peripheral vision I saw the marmot closing in, plowing a path through the forest.
Eve yanked my arm so hard I felt a pop and then searing pain. I didn’t even have time to contemplate whether my shoulder had been dislocated because—
We dove, tumbling together in a tangle of arms and legs. The marmot tromped past, five times taller than me, bigger than an eighteen-wheeler. I could feel the whoosh of the displaced air as it stomped by, still not fully past because of how long it was. On my back and glued to the forest floor, I swiveled my head to watch its majesty, marveling at the sheer size of the creature, which made elephants look like children.