Gods of Myth and Midnight: A LitRPG Novel (Seeds of Chaos Book 3)

by Azalea Ellis

  I kept an eye on him with Wraith so we could respond instantly if anything went wrong.

  The shopkeeper didn’t seem particularly excited to see him, and, after gathering some of the supplies, Sam stood awkwardly at the counter for several moments, shifting from foot to foot as he waited for the other man to ring up his purchases. “You got everything?” the man asked, finally.

  “Err, actually, I was hoping to rent a couple snow pods, too, and maybe find a hotel to stay at, if you could point me in the right direction.”

  “Got one snow pod, but the inn’s closed this time o’ year,” the man said, shaking his head.

  Sam didn’t seem to know what to say. He settled for “Oh.”

  “What you need a snow pod for, anyway? Ain’t nothing out there ‘cept tundra.”

  “I’m…with a research group. We want to study the fungi at the north of the island.” Sam only hesitated a little, and I was proud of him for coming up with an excuse boring enough to stop anyone from asking further questions.

  The man snorted. “Ain’t nothing alive at the north of the island. Even funguses are too smart to try and grow in that dead zone.” But despite his derision, he grabbed a key off the wall and tossed it to Sam. “Snow pod’s out back. Ten thousand credits and you return it before the light comes back.” When Sam nodded, the shopkeeper stared at him for a second, and then spoke again. “My sister’s got a cabin, empty this time o’ year. It’s a little isolated, but it’ll keep you cozy. Thirty thousand credits.”

  Sam accepted all of it, carefully paying with the link Adam had given him, which was pulling the credits from random accounts all over the world, as well as corrupting the data from the payment console so that nothing could lead back to us. If I were more morally upright, I might have felt bad about using unknowing and innocent peoples’ credits like this. But I knew their links had insurance against fraud, and since I had not one, but two worlds to save, I figured they could deal with the hassle of getting a refund on my behalf.

  I drove the cross-terrain snow pod to the cabin, letting Zed drive his own bike for once. The cabin was small, but well insulated, and the wood-burning stove's exhaust pipe wove through the walls, keeping the place warm enough to sleep through the night without shivering.

  The snow pod was too small to carry everyone, so Torliam, Adam, and I rode out alone to search, while the others stayed behind to rest.

  When we reached the northern sea, Torliam frowned, looking down as if he could peer into his own heart. He lifted his head, and turned to me. "I believe we have passed it," he said.

  Adam rolled his eyes, legs twitching as he fed little motes of electricity directly into his muscles, a way to keep them from completely atrophying. "No, really? Does that observation have anything to do with the fact that we just ran into the Arctic Ocean? There's nowhere for us to go forward."

  Torliam's jaw clenched. "My Skill's direction is still vague. However, the 'tug' inside me is pulling the other direction, now. We have passed it."

  "I didn't sense anything," I said, checking our location against the map. "Maybe we were too far away. My Skill only extends a couple miles at best. Maybe searching in a grid pattern would be best," I said. "We can use both Torliam's Skill and my own to narrow down the location."

  Having found no hint of the lost god, we returned weary and discouraged to the cabin. “We cannot expect it to be easy,” Torliam said. “If it were, he would have been found long ago.”

  When we entered the cabin, Zed was laying in the corner with a wet cloth over his face.

  “He had some more VR chip glitches,” Sam said. “It gave him a headache. I checked, and he’s technically fine, he’s just resting.”

  Adam pulled up the news on his link, and we sat down at the crowded wooden dining table to watch.

  This time, instead of some fluff story, we saw a real update on the state of the world. My throat tightened as I watched distant views of the city we’d escaped from, ships flying overhead and smoke rising up from the decimated streets.

  The meningolycanosis had spread, despite the Estreyans’ efforts to kill all the infected. They couldn’t catch everyone, and it seemed like the virus had already been loose at multiple points before the screaming crowds had drawn attention to it.

  A ton of people had made it out in the meantime, despite attacks on the roads and the invaders’ attempts to keep the city’s residents from leaving, but the escapees had nowhere to go. Many of the nearby cities were refusing to house refugees, either because of overcrowding, lack of resources, or because they were afraid of the new plague spreading through their own cities. People were divided. While some believed the diseased people would cause another quarantine if brought to a new city, others thought that it was actually biological warfare from the Estreyans, meant to wipe us out. Either way, they were afraid to help.

  So the Estreyans brought in another destroyer and quarantined the city again, except this time the barrier extended way past the city limits. It caught almost all the displaced refugees that had managed to escape but didn’t have anywhere to go or a way to get there.

  This time, they didn’t ask for the sick. Their warships just kept burning things to the ground, while ensuring no one else could escape.

  The rest of the team took turns going out with Torliam and me to search for signs of the god as we meticulously covered the entire island with a grid strategy. Travel across the wilderness was slow. We found nothing. When we weren’t searching, Torliam and I were speculating, trying to come up with some idea to help us solve the seemingly unsolvable.

  Both his Tracker and my Wraith Skill grew stronger with constant use, but we were obviously missing something. The vague ‘tug’ of Torliam’s Skill would often change direction after hours of searching, sending us back over terrain we’d already scoured. I even tried to spread my awareness over the entire island one day, thinking that perhaps the god’s presence was just so dispersed I was missing it. That earned me a migraine so bad Torliam had to take me back to the cabin for Sam to look at, and a scolding from everyone when they learned the reason for my condition.

  We even sent Sam out to ask the locals about any rumors of magical beings or deities native to the area, but he didn’t learn anything, and had to dodge a few awkward questions about why a biologist was so interested in the local myths.

  Torliam’s Skill grew slightly more specific as it strengthened, but he still couldn’t pinpoint what it was trying to lead us to, only alert us a little more promptly once we’d passed it.

  We returned to the little cabin long enough to sleep, and then headed out again into the endless night, crossing the island in long lines of boredom and frustration.

  Jacky kept trying to activate Struggle in the absence of real danger, but only managed to do so a couple times out of hundreds of attempts, one of those times being while she was having a nightmare.

  Adam took the time to give everyone—except Torliam—a bracelet of shield tattoos. Then, he gave the kids a couple small symbols which would create a harness-type construct that would enclose them in a bubble, and then use spider-like legs to skitter away at top speed with them safe inside. When he was finished with that, he threw himself into working on a secretive tattoo project for himself. “I’ll do more shields and some custom ink for everyone when I get the chance,” he promised.

  For the first few days, Zed’s VR chip kept acting up, giving him synesthesia and bombarding him with Windows full of gibberish until he grew nauseous. There was nothing we could do about it, since none of us had the confidence to try and remove the chip via brain surgery. One night, he woke the rest of us up with a shout.

  I rushed into the room, to find him staring into mid-air with amazement while waving his arms about and wriggling his fingers with fascination, like they were brand new. “What happened?” I snapped.

  He turned to me with a huge smile. “It wasn’t glitching out.”

  “Did you have a nightmare?” Jacky asked from behind me, rubb
ing her eyes sleepily.

  “My VR chip!” He explained, waving his hands around in excitement and stumbling over his tongue as he rushed out an explanation. “It wasn’t glitching. It was updating! The nanites are all programmed to follow the orders of the principal guide, except that was NIX, so they haven’t been receiving any new orders since we escaped. But they’re not completely mindless. They were made to emulate the Seeds, right? I think they’ve been doing more than that. I think they’ve been learning from my Seed organisms, and since the Seeds are monitored by the VR chip, the nanites decided they should be, too!” He took a deep breath. “I have access to all my nanites now.”

  My heartbeat slowed in the absence of immediate danger. “What does that mean, exactly? What can you do with access to the nanites?”

  Some of the excitement slipped away, and he rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “Ah, well, actually I’m not too sure. I know what they’re doing. Maybe I’ll be able to give them orders, or…something?”

  Jacky snorted at him and moved aside so Sam could get into the room to examine Zed.

  Sam, who apparently hadn’t been asleep, again found nothing wrong.

  We stayed up for a little while longer while Zed played around with the new function of his VR chip to make sure nothing went wrong. He was fascinated at being able to see a “galaxy” of nanites circulating around and augmenting his body, but nothing actually happened.

  In the morning, Jacky and I sat blearily eating breakfast at the dining table.

  Kris walked in, her little wooden puppet following along behind her. She grabbed a bowl of sloppy oatmeal and sat at the table to shovel it into her mouth, eyes half closed. She was hungry all the time now, a subtle sign that the Sickness was growing stronger within her.

  Beside her, the wooden puppet hopped onto its own chair. It looked at her, seemingly curious, and then turned to the table. It was so short it had to stand rather than sit on the chair, but it reached out into the air and pretended to grab something, then began to imitate her, shoveling invisible oatmeal into its mouth.

  I pinched my nose and tried to breathe through it to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I elbowed Jacky till she looked up through the tangled halo of her short hair to see what was going on. “Kris,” I said. “Are you making your puppet do that?”

  Kris stared at me, and then looked over at it.

  It stopped pretending to eat and looked back at her.

  “Nah,” she said. “It’s just imitating me.”

  Jacky and I shared a look. “It decided to imitate you on its own?” I said, keeping my voice neutral.

  “Yeah. My Skill’s getting stronger, I think, giving it more power to work with. I’ve kept the same spirit in that body since I first made it, so it’s learning some things.” She returned to eating, as if this was no big deal. “Didn’t you notice by now? It’s always following me around.”

  I looked at Jacky. “I’ve been gone most of the time. Did you notice?”

  She pursed her lips, avoiding my eyes. “Well, I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought she was just playing with it. An imaginary friend type deal, yeah?”

  Kris frowned at her. “I’m not a little kid! I don’t have imaginary friends anymore.”

  “Does your puppet…have a personality?” I said. “Its own thoughts?”

  Kris’ eyes widened as she understood my thought process. She turned to the puppet as if seeing it for the first time. “Well, maybe a little? Its original spirit was kind of…playful? In a nice way. Spirits aren’t the same as humans, so it’s hard to explain. But lately, it’s been acting kind of like a person. It could just be because it’s imitating me, though.”

  Jacky smiled at the puppet and waved her hand. “Hi, little one.”

  It waved back at her, then turned away and jumped off the chair, running to the corner where a pile of wood shavings and some spare puppet parts lay. It sat down and fiddled with a piece of wood, seemingly having forgotten about us.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Kris nodded at the sentiment. “Yeah. I think I’m going to name him Pinocchio.”

  One day, during one of the rare times I was actually at the cabin—because the migraine from overusing Wraith put me out of commission—I struggled blearily with the Oracle’s third gift while listening to the news in the background.

  People were panicking, and the government had officially blamed the meningolycanosis outbreak on the Estreyans. The invasion itself was enough to disrupt the lives of the entire planet, but the plague brought out whole new levels of fear and despair in people. People wore a face mask to go outside, industry had pretty much shut down with employees refusing to go to work, and society was crumbling.

  On the other hand, recruitment numbers for the military had never been higher.

  I threw the puzzle ring into my lap, squeezing my eyes shut in frustration. I had searched the whole island, and I still couldn’t find even a trace of the Champion who could fix all this. I’d gotten out of the snow pod and screamed out to the dark for him, demanding and pleading that he answer us, but still nothing. That’s when I’d pushed Wraith too hard again and ended up back at the cabin with what felt like an icepick jammed into my brain.

  Sam, eyes shadowed with the evidence of Black Sun’s partial activation, turned off the link playing the news. “It’s nothing new. Don’t you think it’s time we do something different? It's not working, Eve. You have no idea where this god is. You've gridded out basically the entire island by now, and you're no closer to finding him than when we arrived."

  My head swirled dizzily. “We’ll find him.”

  Sam rolled his darkened eyes and walked out the door, ducking past Torliam, who was entering.

  I knew that Sam wasn't completely correct. We had a broad idea of where Torliam's Skill was leading us—a large, vague circle drawn on the map. But we had indeed passed over the whole island, specifically that circle, multiple times, and I hadn't felt even the glowing outer penumbra of a god's power.

  Torliam stepped more softly than a man of his size should be able to, the swirl of cold air from outside following him and making me shiver. He moved to my side and handed me a steaming thermos of the local tea.

  I sat up gingerly and accepted it with a nod.

  "Sam is skeptical," he said in a low voice.

  "They all are." I let out a long sigh, closing my eyes and leaning against the wall.

  "I am sorry," he said, then paused for a long moment. "My people have searched for the Champion for thousands of years now. Though I will admit I thought for some reason that I would be different, I did still feel some trepidation that even this Skill bestowed on me by the Goddess of Testimony and Lore would not be enough. It seems that may indeed be the case."

  "I don't think your Skill has just failed," I said.

  He let out a humorless huff. "And what if it is impossible to lead us to the God of Shaping and Molding? Perhaps my Skill is in fact directing us to some ancient relic that is just another cryptic clue toward finding him, and is buried out there under tons of rock and ice?”

  I took another sip of bitter tea as I tried to think of what to say, and then my eyes snapped open. I closed them again quickly, wincing against the spike of pain that caused. "Torliam!" I said, my voice tight with excitement. "What if that's it?"

  "My Skill leads us to a clue, rather than the object I seek?"

  "No!" I refrained from shaking my head. "What if this god is buried under the ground? My Wraith Skill travels best through the air. I’ve been looking for caves and things, but I haven't been pushing deep into the ground. What if the god is buried? How much dirt could accumulate on top of something over the last few thousand years? That would explain why we keep passing him over and over again, and I can't seem to sense anything!”

  “We must go out again!” Torliam said, standing up quickly enough to knock over his chair. “Perhaps with this new revelation, one of us will be able to find him.”

  I nodded, but the mot
ion made me dizzy and nauseous again.

  “After you have rested,” he amended, putting a hand on my forehead to keep me still. “If he has been hidden for so long, he can stay hidden a while longer. Sleep.”

  I lay down again, though I didn’t think I would be able to sleep past my excitement. Despite my skepticism, I drifted off within minutes, and didn’t even wake to my VR chip notifying me of my increased levels of Perception and Stamina. Those had become a common occurrence throughout our futile trips across the barren tundra.

  Chapter 24

  I’ll sift through the ashes

  an search of the spark

  that ignited my mind

  and lit up my heart.

  — Christy Ann Martine

  After our mini-revelation, spirits rose again amongst the group, and we returned to our search with renewed energy. Once again, however, neither Torliam nor I found anything of significance.

  I pushed myself to delirious migraine day after day, forcing my awareness down through the frozen dirt, ice, and rock, deeper and deeper in hopes that if I stretched far enough, we would find what we searched for. My efforts remained unrewarded.

  The others began to train with a certain level of desperation, as if trying to reach levels of exhaustion similar to my own. The complete lack of sunlight only made things worse.

  Jacky’s Struggle Skill came easier, but, from the dark circles under her eyes, I wondered whether it was because she was getting control of it or if she was just closer to the edge of helpless desperation than she had been.

  Zed started meditating, trying to increase his Perception from the tiny base of Seed material he had to work with, because his Veil-Piercers Skill required him to be able to sense the rips in the fabric of the world to use it, and some of them were too subtle.