by D. N. Leo
“Michael, wake up! Help me out!”
She tugged at the seatbelt again. It didn’t cooperate. She took his face in her hands. “Michael, open your eyes for me.”
People had started to gather when they heard the commotion. She could give up now—surely, they would be able to help. But she was afraid it might be too late for Michael.
She let go of his face, and her hand brushed against something on his chest. The thing zapped her arm. She saw a spark and moved away from his body. There was another spark, and then the stubborn seatbelt broke loose.
Not waiting another second, she grabbed Michael by the arms and pulled his body out of the car. They both fell to the ground. She immediately scrambled to her feet and dragged him as far away from the car as she could.
“Michael! Can you hear me?” She tapped his face lightly.
He lay still on the ground and didn’t answer her.
A small group of people approached and helped with putting out the fire. Some of them were concerned about Michael. They all spoke Vietnamese. She hadn’t learned the language yet, but she could normally make some sense of a language regardless of whether she’d studied it or not.
But not this time. She didn’t understand a word and couldn’t even guess in which direction the conversation was going. She was staring at the car when the reason why dawned on her. Her Eudaizian wrist unit and all the other equipment she kept inside the bag she’d used to fake her pregnancy had all gone up in flame.
Except for her internal microchip, a very basic device she had turned off to avoid being tracked, she had no advanced technology and no way to reconnect with Eudaiz.
“Goodbye, my child!”
She heard a harmonic chant in the air. She looked up and saw three beautiful women with long white hair. They wore long dresses and floated in the air close to where the pole was on fire.
The hair on the back of Lyla’s neck stood up, and she shouted at the women—or whatever they were. “Get down from there!”
They continued to chant. The people around her didn’t seem to see them.
On the ground, Michael stirred.
At first, Lyla worried what would happen when the fire climbed up the pole and reached the women, but by now she was sure they weren’t human, and she didn’t think the fire would do them any harm.
A man began walking toward her.
“Michael, please answer me,” she said, desperation in her voice.
He stirred again.
“Oh my God, come on! Wake up!” She shook his shoulders. There was still no response, so she shook him a little more violently.
Michael grumbled and opened his eyes.
The man was now standing next to her. He looked up in the direction of the chanting women who hovered above them. She wasn’t sure if he could see the women, but he continued to stare into the sky. The women looked straight at him. Then they stopped chanting, and their images dissolved into thin air.
Michael passed out again.
“Oh, no!”
“Let us help, ma’am,” the man said in English.
At that point, Lyla noticed others had arrived with primitive equipment like buckets and shovels to help with the fire and debris.
“He needs to be tended to,” she said. “Please help us.”
Some people pulled up in a cart with two large animals at the front. She knew about the Earth animals called horses—and these weren’t horses. But as long as they moved, she would make use of them.
Two people lifted Michael onto the cart. She climbed in and sat next to him. The vehicle—if she could call it that—started to move. I could walk faster than this, she thought to herself.
“Where are we going?” she asked the man who had offered help a short time ago, the only one there who spoke English.
“To our shaman in God’s resting house.”
“Oh, no, no. He’s injured. We need to go to a hospital or a medical center. With all due respect, we don’t need God now. Can we go to the place of worship later?”
The man shook his head. “The shaman is the only healer we have. To get to a place like you want, it will take twenty wet towels.”
“What do you mean?”
“You take a wet towel and hang it on your shoulder, and you walk. When the towel dries, you get another wet one. Do that twenty times—and then you will get to a medical center.”
She looked at Michael and the slow-moving animals. “We’ll accept help from your healer then.” She pulled some loose fabric and hay she found on the cart around him and sat, waiting patiently for the group to travel into the darkness of the night.
Chapter Twelve
Michael awoke, confused and disoriented at first. He looked around, his eyes finally landing on Lyla. She was asleep in a corner. She sat on the floor, leaning against a cube made of tribal fabric and decorative embroidery, her head tilted at an awkward angle. Her long legs were folded at the knees. She was exhausted, he could tell. He had failed spectacularly in his mission to protect her.
Her striking gray eyes were closed now, but he would love to see them smile at him later, giving him some sign that she was okay and that regardless of what they had been through—and would go through—she would retain some part of her innocent mind.
Ciaran had asked him for at least that much. Prolong her period of innocence so she could remain her father’s princess for a little longer. She was born to be a leader, but this had come way too early for Ciaran’s liking. In human age, she wasn’t too young to take on important tasks. If his calculations were correct, she would be in her late twenties here. But in Eudaiz, her experience was the equivalent of a child’s, and facing thousand-year-old demonic creatures in the multiverse was a grave mission.
He looked at her perfect oval face and thick lashes that always made his stomach do a somersault when she blinked. He wanted to give himself a sobering punch in the head right now for that train of distracting thought, but he simply didn’t have the energy to do so.
What had happened?
It was time for him to take inventory. He recalled the sensation of being trapped in his own hallucination, and then the spinning of the car in the air.
But then what?
He was sure he had suffered some injuries, which explained the pain he was feeling.
Was Lyla injured?
He closed his eyes, flexed his muscles, and detected several external injuries and a small amount of internal bleeding in his body. He didn’t have the ability to heal himself the way Eudaizian commanders—especially those with Silver Blood eudqi—could do. But as an Iilos citizen, and with his current rank and privileges, he healed a hundred times faster than any other creature in the multiverse.
Lyla stirred and opened her eyes. Seeing him awake, she rushed over. “Are you okay? You scared me, Michael. I wanted them to take you to the medical center, but they said it’s too far away. They had a healer look at you. He wanted to feed you some liquid that had been boiled in an animal skull. He wouldn’t tell me the exact ingredients, so I didn’t let him give it to you—”
“Lyla…”
“Yes.”
“I’m fine. Just need to rest. Are you hurt?”
“No, not at all.”
He smiled at her. “Good. I’m sorry about the road trip.”
“Do you need some food, Michael?”
“What about you? Are you hungry?”
Her stomach gave a grumpy growl in response.
“I’m sorry, Lyla. I’m the one who should be taking care of you.”
“There’s no need. I can take care of myself. I just don’t know what we can and can’t eat here. We’re in a place they call the Highland.”
Michael chuckled. “I don’t think it’s a real place. Give me a bit of time. When I can move, I’ll survey the area and get us out of here. Any movement from Gale?”
Lyla shook her head. Then she picked up the stone charm on the chain he wore around his neck. “What’s this?”
“My moth
er gave it to me.”
“When you were stuck in the car, and I couldn’t free you, it flashed a bright light and freed you from the seatbelt.”
He frowned, looked down, and noticed that he was shirtless. A fire in the corner of the room did a lot more dancing for show than producing heat to warm him up. He shuddered.
“You’re cold.” Lyla grabbed a few pieces of fabric she saw lying around and covered him. “Better?”
He nodded. “Can you make the fire a bit bigger?”
“I don’t know how, and it could be dangerous. I’m a fire hazard.”
“The Shadow burns people. It wasn’t your fault they died, Lyla.”
“No, I mean I really am a fire hazard. When we were in the car, and it was spinning through the air, fire shot out of my fingertips. It stopped the car’s motion, and then we landed on the ground.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. And you haven’t answered my question, Michael. I think you were attacked before the car crash. Do you mind telling me about that? It’s no longer just about you. Suddenly you have this urge to protect me—for whatever reason. Isn’t your vulnerability to the Shadow a safety hazard to me?”
“I hallucinated. I saw soldiers. And tribal people. That was it. I don’t know why I had that vision.”
“The Shadow can’t attack you based on that. That’s not your emotional weakness.”
“But that’s all I know. You wanted to know what happened before the car crash, and that was it. Now you’ll have to answer your own questions because I don’t know what else to tell you. And protecting you isn’t about urges…”
“It has to do with my father, doesn’t it? Something happened when he picked you up when you were a kid. Something happened in the tunnel…something that had to do with your mother.”
“I’m tired and cold, and I need to rest.”
“You can’t rest when the Shadow is still actively hunting you to get at my family. You let yourself be a weak link.”
“What?”
“Yes, I believe your weakness has something to do with our family, and the Shadow is using you to get to us. So keep your secret if you want to…”
He sat up, looked into her eyes. “Are you sure?”
She locked eyes with him, as always. Lyla never shied away from a stare-down.
He nodded and pulled the fabric up over his shoulders. “Before my mother died, she said she had been granted a wish, and she gave it to me in this stone charm. She told me to use it wisely. I could wish for anything except for her life. I didn’t know much—I was only eight. But I knew hatred. I hated everything, including my life. I blamed my stepfather for her death. And if I couldn’t wish for her to live, I could wish for him to die. I wasn’t a believer, and I wasn’t convinced the charm would really work. But that night when my stepfather killed my dog and stole the stone to sell it, I used my mother’s wish. I wished for him to die, soaked in his own blood and gore. And that was when your father came for me.”
He gazed into her eyes, hoping to get some kind of signal, but he saw nothing save for their striking shade of gray. “What are you thinking?” he asked. “I know that what I thought and did was disgusting.”
She inched closer, reached out for his hands and held them. She looked into his eyes. “If I had been in your place, I would have done something much worse.”
He shook his head and withdrew his hands. “You don’t know even half of what I did. I’m not after your sympathy. I’m going to tell you this because you want to know. And also because if you think my vulnerability for an attack puts you in danger, I’ll lay everything down right here.”
She nodded and smiled at him. “There is that. But just so you know, if I don’t buy what you say, you won’t get my sympathy no matter how tragic your situation. So have at it…do your worst.”
“My stepfather got what I wished for him. Ciaran killed him to save my life. But for Ciaran, it’s not so simple. It was a recursive spell, and the blood debt will rest on the shoulders of the next person to execute it. If someone from my stepfather’s side knows this, they could curse Ciaran and his family. I’ve been doing some research. My stepfather no longer has any living relatives. But you can never be too careful. If anything happens to your family, anything at all, it’s on me. And the more important your family has become, the greater the responsibility for me.”
“Have you killed during this process? To make sure no one knows of or can use the curse?”
He nodded. “Twice. And that makes me a—”
She wagged her finger at him. “It’s not for you to judge. I don’t believe you owe my family that much. If you keep thinking that way, it will truly serve as your emotional baggage.”
“It’s something I’ll carry for the rest of my life. Nothing will ever change that. But as I’ve laid it all out for you now. If your theory about the Shadow is right, I wish him luck with his emotional baggage strategy. You family isn’t baggage or any kind of liability to me. Protecting your family is my life’s mission.”
She smiled at him. “I like that.”
He lay back down. “I really do need to recharge.”
That night, as he shivered with cold in the dark, he felt her body pressed against his, warming his skin. It was a million times better than any fireplace.
Chapter Thirteen
Gale opened his eyes and immediately registered his strange environment. Earth. He didn’t know how he knew where he was—he just knew. He had never been to Earth and had never interacted with humans in the multiverse. But somehow, the knowledge that he was on Earth seemed to be available in his system.
He sat up on the bed and glanced around the room. His senses perked up. He could feel Lyla. He stood, scanning the room with his eyes. She had been here. His computer equipment was arranged neatly on the desk of the room, which was obviously a temporary shelter or what they called a hotel on Earth. Other computing accessories were stashed in a nearby case. He had to have done it himself because he never let anyone touch his technology. Nobody else could arrange it just the way he liked it.
But he couldn’t remember taking the equipment and departing the Daimon Gate.
He vividly recalled the explosion and his condition when he was under the water. He remembered seeing some kind of computer countdown behind his eyes, something warning him that his system was shutting down.
But what system?
He remembered nothing after that. Wait… Some hazy pieces of memories were coming to him. But they didn’t seem to be coming from him. It felt like someone was trying to help him remember. He heard voices through static. The voices spoke encouraging words to him, asking him to try harder and be himself.
Why would they say that? He was being himself, wasn’t he?
The images flickered in his mind. Flickered. Flickered.
In the middle of a meadow carpeted with wildflowers that merged with the horizontal line of blue sky, Gale stood, smiling with satisfaction.
He had won the hologame!
After spending such a long time honing his skill in the multiversal hologames, he had finally won the last battle at the highest level. He’d gained the ultimate trophy—a world of his own creation.
He looked at the blood pooling on the green grass and kicked at the monstrous two-headed space dragon one more time to assure himself it was really dead.
A hologame wasn’t a reality—but neither was it completely a simulation. It was a whole new dimension of the universe, created by the game council to provide players with a version of reality. The in-game battle wasn’t real, but the investment in the bet and the consequences of the game were real assets in reality across the multiverse. The ultimate winner of the highest-level battle could realize his hologame rewards in his reality. He could take what he wanted, and he could take from his defeated opponents.
And for some reason, this meadow, this world of rolling hills in the Irish countryside was always Gale’s ultimate dream.
Adrenaline surged in wa
ves through his mind and body. He was still drunk from the sensation of his unexpected victory. The gate opened for him to enter his dream universe, but as he approached it, a daunting feeling weighed heavily on his chest. Something was wrong.
A group of Xiilok mercenaries waited for him at the gate, but they did not give him clearance to exit. In the middle of the group stood an eight-foot-tall creature in human shape. It had the face of a human male in his thirties and broad shoulders with crooked bones sticking up from them, perhaps the remnants of broken angel wings. The creature was a formidable sight. He looked at Gale with a half-smile.
“Gale Brody, I’m glad you like your almost-reality trophy.”
“Who are you? And what do you mean? There’s no such thing as ‘almost-reality.’ I won. Either I have the trophy, or I don’t.”
“My name is Kanan Lanham Edwin Lord the Third. I am from Xiilok. You may call me Kan.”
“Nice to meet you, Kan. What do you want from me?”
“My trophy, of course. And I don’t think you’ll be too pleased to know that would be your life. Neither do I think you will voluntarily give your life away to honor the rules of the game.”
“Are you saying I lost to you?”
Kan nodded. “And how many times have you seen the losers of hologames getting away with not paying the price?”
“Zero. But even if we played against each other, I would never bet my life or anything of equivalent to it in a game.”
“You’re not an addict then?”
“Never was and never will be. But right now, I’m too busy to have a leisurely chat with you about a game that never happened.”
“Let me help you with your memory. You weren’t playing just for a puppy. For the trophy you wanted, you would have played a higher caliber game. The highest level of battle. Am I correct?”
“Yes. But like I already told you, I would never bet my life or anything of equivalence…”