The Heart of a Necromancer

by Eddie Patin

  Cold dread bloomed in Jason's stomach. The meat sizzled on the grill, and he suddenly couldn't stand the smell of it.

  "Um yeah, I remember. But you ... went there? Here? Up the street?"

  "Yesss!" Jason 1241 replied, drawing out the end of the word in a dramatic hiss. "Dan and Tonya Clayburn. They have two kids that the minotaur killed: Tim and Jennifer. Jennifer's on the girls' volleyball team at her middle school. Did you know that, Jason fucking 934?"

  In that moment, Jason felt terrified that his second self had made a scene with his neighbors here on u934. He was worried about alienating them, or having the Clayburn family suddenly be afraid of him. Then he felt guilty for feeling that about this poor guy.

  "No, I didn't know that."

  "But don't think about it, right, Riley?" Jason 1241 spat. He glared around. "Eh ... fuck this shit. Riley Wyatt," he said, jabbing a finger into the soldier's chest. Jason suddenly felt afraid for Jason 1241; that Riley would reach out like lightning and break 1241's hand. He was relieved when Riley didn't. "I wish I never met you, Riley Wyatt—whichever Riley you are or whichever I fucking met back on my world, wherever it is! I wish you never left that fucking infinity crystal outside my front door." He withdrew his finger and glared at Jason 934. "You know what infinity means, 934? It means that nothing means anything. And what's worse: everything means everything! It's all a big fucking joke. A terrible, cruel fucking joke!"

  With that, Jason 1241 turned and stalked off back into the house, immediately skipping the kitchen and heading straight to the living room and out of sight.

  Jason and Riley stood silent for a moment.

  The meat sizzled.

  "Steaks," Riley said suddenly, jolting Jason out of his shock. "The steaks, man!"

  Jason jumped to the grill and shoved his spatula under the dinosaur meat, dislodging it from the rack where it was briefly burning. They looked done enough. He picked up the cooking pan he'd lined with foil and pulled each slab of meat off of the fire, letting the beautiful steaks plop into the pan.

  "Shit, sorry," Jason muttered.

  "That other Jason is losing his shet," Riley said. "I'm a little concerned. He could cause us trouble."

  Jason sighed. "Just take it easy," he replied. "You know, that Jason lost his old life and his world, and he saw his neighbors die."

  "They were your neighbors too," Riley said. "You're not falling apart."

  Jason stared at the grill flames, then turned them off. "You know? I don't know why," Jason said, and he was telling the truth, "but I guess it's not affecting me the same way. Maybe it'd be different if it were my neighbors from this universe that got killed. But it kind of feels like they're not totally real. I met my parents again back in the Wilderlands, and it wasn't totally right either. I just ... I don't know what I feel about it yet."

  "If I were you," Riley said, "I'd just keep your head down and not try to wrap your mind around that stuff. Planeswalking is fruking weird. It's best to just—"

  "Not think about it?" Jason said.

  "Yeah. Don't think about it."

  Jason 934 drove up to the bar and parked on the street close to it.

  It felt surreal driving his crappy, old car again. So mundane. The street was pretty dry except for the last of melting ice in the gutters and when Jason turned off the engine—suddenly in silence by himself—he wasn't quite sure whether or not he should bother bringing his cane. He didn't need it anymore; that was for sure. But being back in a piece of his old life before planeswalking—in front of the sports bar where he'd met Ben just a few Fridays ago and across the street from what used to be Amanda's apartment—it felt weird to not have it.

  Next to Jason on the passenger seat was a bag from Sports Warehouse. Inside it were two brand new and rather expensive IR illuminators—the same kind of gun light that soldiers used with night vision to see in utter darkness without revealing their presence to the naked eye. Jason had never used one before—he hadn't even touched one—but he'd never had an image intensifier before now, either. From what he'd learned on YouTube, night vision like the device in his right eyeball would let him see in really dim light like a cat—or like an Elf from DnD—but it would still be hard to use in total darkness. If he were to use an IR Illuminator however—an Infrared LED light—then he'd be able to light up the darkness as if with a flashlight, but in a spectrum that would only help him, and still be invisible to the naked eye.

  Jason couldn't wait to try out the new toy. He'd just bought two of them—one for his pack or belt, and one to put on his rifle.

  A cold breeze blew in from the rear driver-side window that Nargog had shattered.

  Jason unhooked his holster from his pants and put his Glock 26 on his seat. Normally, he'd just throw a jacket on top after disarming before going into a public place to drink alcohol, but now, with the broken window, that made him nervous.

  He was mighty tempted to just carry anyway. He knew that he wasn't going to get tipsy or anything. But it was still illegal for him to be concealed carrying while 'under the intoxication of alcohol', which was a very subjective term. Maybe after being exposed to the meaninglessness of the infinite omniverse for a while longer, he wouldn't care anymore. This time, however, Jason stuffed the gun deep under the seat. He didn't want to possibly upset the laws of his state of Colorado just yet.

  He did bring along the bag from Sports Warehouse, though.

  Jason pulled his key out of the cylinder, stepped outside into the brisk night air, and closed the car up, holding his cane and his shopping bag. He touched his jacket pocket to make sure he'd brought the second Infinity Charger. It was still there.

  Stepping into the bar was like going back in time. Jason felt like such a different person now. The music of an 80's rock ballad hit his new synthetic eardrums. Warm, stale air delivered the smell of beer, fried food, and dusty, old carpet. Just inside, out of the night, Jason looked around and spotted Ben sitting in approximately the same place they'd sat last.

  "Jason!" Ben exclaimed from his barstool, turning and smiling, his white teeth gleaming in front of his dark face.

  Jason returned the smile and walked up, feeling weird about leaning on his cane. He hopped up onto a stool next to his last remaining DnD buddy.

  "Hey, Ben," Jason said, shaking the man's hand. The bar was actually pretty busy and most of the stools were full. A lot of the tables were taken and people were playing on two of the pool tables nearby. The Halloween decorations were all gone now, and the people drinking around them mostly watched the TV's behind the bar. There was a car auction on one screen and a basketball game playing on another. Jason put his Sports Warehouse bag onto the bar next to him and flagged down the bartender.

  A chubby older woman with bleached hair walked up.

  "What'll it be?" she asked out of the side of her mouth.

  "What IPA's do you have?" Jason asked. For as many times as he'd been here in the past with Ben, he couldn't remember.

  "Heineken for me," Ben said.

  "We have Compass," the woman replied.

  "Okay, that's good," Jason said. "And a water, please."

  "Make that two," Ben replied, hitting Jason with a little Deja Vu. His friend turned to smile at him again when the woman walked away. "Dude," Ben said. "You look different! You look healthy, man. What's different about you?"

  Jason ran his hand through his hair and tried like hell to avoid scratching his USB port. "Uh ... I got a haircut."

  "That's right!" Ben exclaimed. "It's short now. I like it."

  "Thanks."

  "There's something else, too," Ben said. "You look ... have you been losing weight? Maybe you're more tanned?"

  "Yeah, probably."

  "What have you been doing these last two weeks?"

  "Has it just been two weeks?" Jason asked with a laugh. It was possible that it had only been two weeks. Time moved differently in different universes—especially in the Wilderlands. Jason really had no idea, and he hadn't been keeping track o
f the days.

  Ben cocked an eyebrow and laughed. "Well that's a weird thing to say."

  "I've been, um..." For some reason, Jason couldn't bring himself to just spill everything. Not yet. It was just too damned crazy. What a crazy, freaking journey it had been so far! "I've been traveling."

  The bartender returned with their drinks. Jason took a sip of the bright yellow beer in his glass, loving the cold mouthfeel and hoppy flavor.

  "So what's this?" Ben asked, nudging Jason's shopping bag. "Is that 'business idea' of yours in there?"

  Jason smirked. "Oh, no, that's just some flashlights I just bought and didn't want to leave in the car. My business idea..." His mind grasped at where to begin but Jason had no freaking idea of where to start. He was suddenly inspired to call off the whole thing; to tell Ben nothing and scrap the idea of the Infinity Charger business. Maybe Riley was right. Hell—he probably was right. But Ben was an adventurer like he was—at least he was in DnD. Jason wanted his friend to know. He just didn't know how to tell him without looking totally, incomprehensibly insane.

  "Jason," Ben said then laughed. "You're being really mysterious, dude. What are you, a drug dealer now?"

  Jason chuckled in response and drank more of his IPA.

  "Okay," he finally said. "I've been involved lately in something really wild and crazy. I ... um ... I built this." Jason reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the Infinity Charger, Prototype Mark II. He placed it on the bar close to Ben's elbow.

  "What is it?" Ben asked.

  Admittedly, it sure must have looked strange: a bunch of wires and junk hooked up to a motor and external phone battery with the blue infinity crystal on prominent display.

  "It's something I call an Infinity Charger. It's a phone charger—a USB charger actually—that can charge anything. It's really just the charging stuff hooked up to this special stone and a motor that constantly activates the stone with a portable battery to act as a capacitor and stuff."

  "Uh ... infinity?"

  "Yeah. That's the special part," Jason replied. "That blue stone is something called an 'infinity crystal'. It's ... um ... really, super rare. It's a piezoelectric crystal capable of putting out more electricity than it requires to activate it to generate more."

  Ben stared at the device for a moment then sat back, taking a swig from his green bottle. He sighed and smiled as if about to address a child. "That's called a perpetual energy machine, Jason. That's impossible."

  "It's not impossible," Jason replied. "The thing is ... this hasn't really ... um ... existed here before. It's something that no one has ever seen. I have a source of these stones, and I was thinking that you might want to look into the ... you know ... numbers and whatnot and see if it might be a good business opportunity. But Ben," he said, lowering his tone and feeling a little silly and melodramatic. "You should check into what would be involved in manufacturing the machine without the crystal itself. Maybe find a place that could build some sort of chassis with the charging parts, motor, and battery all nice and neat and professional-looking. But don't let anyone have it. Don't let anyone take the crystal from you. Don't, you know, ruffle any feathers about this. The government and whoever else would probably make a big deal out of—"

  Ben laughed and cut him off. "Come on, Jason, really. I thought you really had something."

  "I do! I'll leave this with you, man. Check it out. Experiment with it—you'll see. Just please, Ben, don't let it fall into the wrong hands or let the information get out, okay?"

  "Where do you get these?" Ben asked, picking up the device. "Where's your source?"

  The Wilderlands, Jason thought. Another universe along the ninth dimension full of dinosaurs and reptilian cannibals. There's a big alpha minotaur living there now, and Jason had to kill an Ettercap and a freaking wyvern to survive back when he was accidentally stuck there for two weeks, which turned out to be more like two days in real time...

  Jason swallowed his desire to spew out all of the crazy stuff.

  "How about you see what you think of it first, and I'll tell you more later if you're still interested, okay?"

  Ben looked down over the little device, turning it around in his hands. He touched the infinity crystal with a slender forefinger then jumped when a tiny, blue spark zipped across his fingernail from within its murky depths. Then Ben opened his laptop bag—which was sitting on the bar to his right—and carefully slipped the Infinity Charger into the front pouch.

  "Okay, Jason," he said. "You've definitely piqued my interest."

  Jason smiled, feeling entirely unsure about what he'd just started, then took a long sip of his beer.

  Chapter 9

  Jason stood wearing his Merc armor and backpack but wearing no weapons other than his Glock 26, which he carried even though Riley had warned him to never, ever draw his gun in the Market.

  The fiery orange rift spun wildly in the garage, roaring and sputtering and casting sparks all over. The three Reality Rifters stared through the shimmering window into the hazy world of Churn. The dim, pink atmosphere of the desolate planet was even darker within the walls of the great obsidian pyramid of the Market.

  Jason had opened the portal to the bookmark he'd saved, titled 'Rendezvous', which was a fair distance down the street from Dave Baylor's shop and in an isolated alleyway off of the main streets.

  "Gliath," Riley shouted about the spitting roar of the whirling rift. "Can you hand me the bag with the wyvern eggs? Careful now..."

  "Yes, Ranaja," Gliath replied in his low, rumbly voice, tall and black and sleek in his warrior form. The leopardwere picked up the bag from the table and handed it to the soldier.

  They stepped through, Jason 934 in the lead.

  As soon as Jason was on the other side of the rift, he felt the cold of the Tabula Rasa world, always just a little above freezing. He took a deep, chilly breath and released the rift when Riley and Gliath were through. Its brilliant, fiery light swirled around the sandy alley as it collapsed on itself then disappeared with a pop.

  Some interdimensional creatures walking by in the street nearby stopped to watch with weird faces and eyes that Jason's brain couldn't fully comprehend, then, they moved on. Behind those entities passed a group of humans in black Merc armor, all bristling with a variety of weapons.

  "Jason," Riley said, bringing his attention back to their semi-private space standing in the pink sand. The dim light permeated the entire Market like a dark house lit only by the sun shining through pink curtains. "Try out your image intensifier."

  "Okay."

  It wasn't the first time he'd tested it. The night before, after having a few drinks with Ben, Jason had wandered around in his house in the dark, marveling at his ability to see in the quiet night as the others slept. He'd even tested out his new IR Illuminators in the bathroom—where there was no window inside—with the door closed and the lights off; as close to pitch-black as he could get it at home.

  Seeing in the dark was awesome. Jason's right eye picked up more light than he anticipated and the IR LED lit up the house wherever he shone it like a freaking flood light, yet still was totally invisible and dark to his normal left eye. Using the image intensifier bathed everything in his right eye in shades of pale green, just like in video games. When Jason had mentioned it, Riley told him that most night vision across many worlds tended to settle on green colors because it was easier for the human mind to discern and interpret.

  The whole night vision thing was fascinating.

  Jason reached down to his left hand and pressed the subdermal switch.

  The dim world of the Market that had always been shrouded with a shadowy pink haze the last several times Jason had visited was suddenly illuminated. The natural pink light of the world was pretty dark, but it was plenty for Jason's new eye tech to work with.

  He could suddenly see everything!

  "I think he likes it!" Riley said to Gliath with a smirk, elbowing the leopardwere. Gliath's feline panther-face made no expres
sion; just watching with pale cat eyes that almost shined in Jason's new, enhanced sight.

  "Cool!" Jason said. "Gliath's eyes are almost glowing!"

  "Let's go get your jacket," Riley said, clapping Jason on the shoulder.

  Walking the streets among the many bizarre forms—groups of people from other worlds and sort-of-people like the cast of the Mos Eisley space port from Star Wars—was less scary now that their freaky shapes, faces, and appendages were more than just shadowy, tentacled things in the darkness. Jason saw tall, scaly green people with furry manes and reptilian faces with glistening black eyes as big as softballs. He saw a team of thin humanoids that somewhat resembled naked bats with fours eyes and mouths full of fangs on heads wreathed with wide, fleshy ears. The bat people wore armor a lot like his and Riley's. Two really weird men walked past him—paying the Earth man no mind—with albino-like hair and thick beards but with odd pig-like snouts and empty black eyes that looked like voids open to the hollow interior of their heads. When Jason looked into the eyes of one of them, he felt a chill fly up his spine and hustled to catch up to Riley. There were also much stranger creatures; things that seemed to warp and wobble and exist in multiple forms layered on top of each other. Most of them hurt Jason's eyes to contemplate. He figured that they must be multidimensional lifeforms—existing simultaneously over multiple universes and/or dimensions.

  Before long, Jason found himself following Riley into Baylor General Provisions. The first thing Jason noticed were the extremely bright lamps here and there, almost blinding in his right eye.

  Riley greeted his friend as Jason turned his night vision off. When the inside of the tent was suddenly a lot darker than he expected, he turned the image intensifier back on and just tried to avoid looking at the lamps. When Jason heard Dave call his name, he exclaimed, "Hi, Dave!" and turned back to watch the crazy variety of entities wandering the streets outside. Now that he could actually see, Jason wanted to see everything! He heard Riley's voice mention the wyvern eggs. Riley asked about healing potions. A few seconds later, the soldier was touching Jason's shoulder again.