Delvers LLC: Adventure Capital

by Blaise Corvin

  Henry felt a faint presence and realized it was Tony. The farm boy turned adventurer was failing, his life ebbing away. Henry thought, Can’t let that happen. He reached for the young man, stretching the new part of himself he had never felt before. The sensation was like fumbling around the dark for something small, but eventually, he made contact with Tony.

  As soon as his will touched the Ludan teen, Tony grasped the lifeline of Henry’s consciousness and began pulling himself out of the pressure he’d been in. The closer he got to Henry, the stronger his life force felt. Eventually, after what seemed an age, after incredible effort felt through their connection, Aodh reached Henry’s position.

  He couldn’t see anything; the view of the deep darkness, moving lights, and distant flashes of color remained unchanged. However, Henry could feel Tony’s existence. He also heard the boy’s Irish accented voice in his head whispering, “What is this?”

  Henry tried to speak, but nothing happened. It was like his mind worked, but the body it was usually connected to was out for vacation. He mentally narrowed his eyes, and tried thinking his question. He projected, “Are you okay, Tony?” in the general ‘direction’ he thought the kid was.

  “Ouch, don’t yell so loud!” Tony complained. “What is going on? Where did those orbs go?”

  Henry focused on thinking a little softer. It was weird for him. Actually, everything about the situation was weird, even for someone who’d spent a few months on Ludus. “I don’t know. Those lights in the distance seem to be getting closer, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  Henry paused for a moment. The fog over his mind from before was completely gone. He could remember everything. In fact, his memory actually felt much sharper than usual. His mind seemed to be moving faster than it usually did, too. It felt like his thoughts didn’t have any resistance.

  He warily watched the lights approaching and pushed at Tony. “Hey, what was that?” the boy mentally shouted at Henry.

  “Nothing. Probably your imagination. I can remember everything. Can you?”

  “Yes,” Aodh said mentally, his ‘voice’ somber. “Are we dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” replied Henry. “This isn’t oblivion, it’s not what I thought hell would be like, and it damn sure isn’t paradise. I see no golden gates, Valhalla, dozens of virgins, nothing.”

  “Virgins?” Tony asked, his mental voice curious.

  “Yeah, of course you’d be asking that. I saw that blue-skinned hottie earlier. You have a very active imagination, kid.”

  “Uh, it made sense at the time.” Aodh sounded embarrassed.

  “Whatever. She’s hot and seems nice. There are worse fantasies young dudes can have. The lights are almost here, look sharp.”

  The lights approached slowly, spinning and casting brighter flashes at each other. At first, Henry had thought they were all moving together, but he noticed that a large group seemed to be blocking something. Something dark.

  As the lights got closer, Henry began to hear whispers around the edges of his mind. He tentatively thought a question at Aodh, “Can you hear that?”

  “Sort of,” said Tony, sounding scared. “It’s like hearing a bunch of people whispering in the next room. Like they’re facing away from me.”

  Henry paused. He said, “I think they’re whispering at me.” The lights grew nearer, and the whispering didn’t get any louder, but seemed more focused.

  When the lights were closer still, Henry began to hear individual voices speaking in concert. Well, a few groups of them. They weren’t saying anything in any language he understood, but he could grasp the meaning all the same.

  One group was warm, welcoming. This group’s colors were hard, sharp. Another group was curious, determined. This group’s colors were soft and whimsical. The last, a group he couldn’t see, was dark and insidious. Its collective voice made him feel a chill in his soul, and it seemed the other lights were pushing it back.

  What the hell? Henry thought. One time when he’d gotten out of the Army and just started taking some college classes, Henry had gotten really, really drunk at a party and a pretty girl had convinced him to drop acid. Measuring that experience against the one he found himself in now was like comparing a candle to the sun.

  When the lights stopped moving, they began to orbit around Tony and himself. Henry focused on the voices. Despite the strangeness of the entire situation, the first two groups of lights didn’t scare him. They felt somehow familiar. Even the third, dark group he couldn’t see didn’t particularly terrify him. It almost felt like a snake, a viper. It was dangerous, but the harm it could cause didn’t feel personal.

  Eventually, Henry felt his mind shift, his thoughts slightly turning to better understand the voices. The dark group’s whispers didn’t make a lot of sense. Death, destruction, rot, it just repeated some of the same ideas over and over.

  The second group, the light colored, curious group was mumbling offers of friendship, ideas of solidarity. Henry heard, “Friend? Friend? Friend?” repeated under everything else the group said, almost like a baseline.

  The first group he’d heard, the rigid group, was the most interesting and the most comforting. Companion. Protection. Power. Honor. Henry felt his spirit, the very stuff that made up who he was in this place resonating with it. The voices whispered, “Let us help.”

  Henry mentally shrugged and reached out to the jagged, hard lights. His mind almost felt like it uncoiled and tentatively extended the same way he’d touched Aodh. When he made contact with the lights, he felt like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. Pain racked his being and his entire existence became agony. Instead of nerve endings lighting up, in this strange place, he felt his memories flashing, the intensity trying to unravel his mind.

  With the new connection, he heard the whispers, now voices, much more clearly. “Please hold on, Henry!” they begged. For some reason, he knew he could trust these lights. Rather than trying to reject the connection, Henry dug his metaphorical heels in and instead deepened his connection.

  Now it felt like he had all his fingers stuck in light sockets, and some of his toes as well. The agony was overwhelming. Henry dimly heard Tony’s voice in his mind asking if everything was alright. The man from Earth ignored him and channeled every bit of his mind into keeping himself from flying apart. He thought about his mom, how much he loved her, and how much respect he had for her. He focused on how she and his dad had loved each other, on how her heart had broken when his father had died. Henry had just saved his mom from cancer. He refused to die before she did. He refused to leave her without a son, refused to go out without a fight, even if his grave would be on another world or whether he currently found himself.

  Then he thought of Mareen, his sweet, pure-hearted wife. A woman from another world, another ethnicity, another background, another culture who somehow completed him, made him better than he could otherwise be. He knew he made her happy most of the time, and remembering her smile filled him with joy. Mareen was young, and her very youth just made who she was as a person even more amazing.

  They’d been arguing before the battle with the zombies. Mareen wanted a child, and Henry hadn’t thought it was time yet. They were adventurers, after all. Their lives were dangerous. He decided if he survived and found his way back to her, he couldn’t deny her any longer. More importantly, he had to survive.

  Henry would not leave Mareen all alone; he couldn’t break her heart. He had three choices. His first choice was to let the pain take him, let it carry him off to the distant darkness and pinpricks of light. Second, he could reject the lights he was reaching out to, which he somehow knew would still result in his end. His last option was to endure.

  I am me! he thought, shouting his words against the emptiness around him. Henry steeled himself, drawing even more deeply on his connection with the lights. Now the sensation was like all of his extremities were plugged into a hydroelectric dam, like he was riding several bolts of lightning all going
in different directions. He raged against oblivion, barely holding utter destruction at bay.

  After what felt like an eternity of barely holding himself together, maintaining his personal identity amidst a torrent of power and pain, all the agony suddenly stopped. “Well done, Henry!” he heard a strange voice say in his mind. It still sounded like many whispers speaking in unison, but now he could understand it perfectly.

  The voice continued, “Now reach out to the other group! You are amazing! We might be able to save you after all!”

  Henry’s spirit felt dull after the fight he’d just had, but he knew with every fiber of his being that he could trust the voices. It was like he was hearing a part of himself. With a sense of fear, he gingerly reached out to the bright, hopeful group of lights.

  This time when he made contact, the sensation was completely different. Instead of pain, he just felt warmth. At first, the heat was uncomfortable, like standing too close to a bonfire. However, over time, the sensation abated and Henry heard a new voice, like the previous, hard-edged, precise voice, but with more personality now. “Excellent!” it praised. “We might all be able to survive!”

  Henry felt exhausted in mind and spirit. With the new change that had taken place in his consciousness after making contact with the second group of lights, he could sense another group of lights oriented on Tony, lights that were golden and flickered in and out of existence. They whispered quiet, good-natured laughter at him, and he noticed they extended trails of sparks at him, feeding him power.

  He could also sense the group of dark, non-lights staying in place. Now he could hear that voice better too. It was saying, “Mission,” over and over again.

  He tried to formulate a thought towards the voice in his mind, directing his question to the lights with hard edges. “What now? What about the dark lights?”

  “We don’t know,” the voices replied. “We are out of time too. If you remain in this place much longer, you will be lost to us. It was a risk to begin with, one that would not have been possible without the other host’s Dhu cooperating.”

  “Wait, what?” Henry began, but the entire world around him began spinning, swirling wildly like he was caught in a universe was spiraling down a cosmic drain. Once again, his thoughts fractured.

  Eternity seemed to pass. When Henry regained his senses again, he was standing in the field on Ludus again in Tony’s memory. The two orbs looked confused, and the darkness that had fallen before was receding as fast as it’d come before.

  The dark streamers were still coming out of his back, and he saw them wildly waving around out of the corner of his eyes. Something had them agitated. He turned around to get a better look, and when he saw what was behind him, his eyes narrowed.

  Tony fell to his knees, shaking wildly. “Henry, please. Please, we need to get out of this. I can’t do that again. I can’t be in that place.”

  The two orbs began opening their mouths, but Henry held up a forestalling hand. His mind was sharp now. In fact, he felt stronger than he ever had in general. “I think we can ask your orb, her name’s Gellab, right? We can ask Gellab and Mr. Neighborhood over here some questions. I’d also like to know what is going on, and more specifically, what the fuck that is,” Henry said, pointing at the giant, enormous shadow standing a few yards behind him.

  It seemed to be reaching for the lines of darkness coming from his back, and more worrying, the waving tendrils were all trying to reach the shadow too. Henry didn’t know what it meant, but he had a feeling it wasn’t good.

  What it Dhu

  The two orbs began to speak, but were interrupted again by the arrival of two more newcomers. One moment they were there, the next, Henry felt a pulling, a tugging, and suddenly a large, shaggy dog made of metal was standing next to him. Aodh’s shoulder was now occupied by a bright yellow, glowing songbird. Tony stared at it in wonder.

  The two orbs gaped, and Gellab asked, “How did they get here? This shouldn’t be possible. We are in between time and in a mind space!”

  The dog at Henry’s side hissed a chuckle. “We are invited. We have a connection now with the hosts, orb-controller. Check.” Henry felt the talking dog’s voice was oddly familiar.

  Mr. Neighborhood, Henry’s orb dropped his smile for a moment while his eyes looked off into the distance. When his focus came back, he was obviously flustered. “Henry, you have a new skill, Orb Communication (Rank X, 5 points). It has no rank, and has a point cost that you never paid for. This should not be possible, that skill doesn’t even exist. This is all highly irregular, neighbor.”

  The dog chuckled again. “Something freely given is not needed to be purchased.” With a start, Henry realized what he found familiar about the dog. Underlying the strange, cartoony voice, he could hear the buzz, the chorus of the whispers he’d encountered in the void-place, the ones he’d trusted. Despite the overwhelming weirdness of the entire situation, he felt himself relaxing.

  “How did you learn to talk?” demanded Gellab. “Plus, you shouldn’t be here.”

  The dog stood on its hind legs, and the glowing bird on Aodh’s shoulder fluttered its wings, tittering. “Connection!” the dog barked in triumph. “Accepted by the host! Wanted!” It fell back onto all four paws again.

  “Wait a moment,” Mr. Neighborhood implored. “Everyone is very special, but where did they ever make contact with you? Above where, when did they make contact with you? There have been flickers, but we are between moments in time right now. We are also in Aodh’s land of make-believe.”

  Henry mentally groaned at his orb’s obnoxious, half-assed imitation of his childhood hero.

  “They came Home, to the Home Place!” the dog yipped, tail wagging. “The firsts! They are firsts of hosts!”

  “No, they could not have survived in your world,” argued Gellab. The winged woman shook her head. “If they went there, if you pulled them there, they would have died.”

  “Already dying. We not want,” the dog said solemnly. “All attached Dhu help. We make a chance. Other Dhu make things hard,” said the dog, nodding at the shadow thing that was still standing behind them. With a start, Henry realized it’d gotten bigger and closer.

  Henry knew he could sometimes be a little slow on the uptake, but his enhanced mental processes helped him understand what was going on. “You’re my Dhu,” he said, pointing at the dog. “You’re Tony’s Dhu,” he said, pointing at the bird on Tony’s shoulder. “And that thing is probably whatever that crazy witch bitch did before Tony and I got hit with the laser thing.” Henry pointed at the roiling shadow creature.

  "In general, this is right.” Henry’s orb nodded.

  “Okay, fine, but that doesn’t explain what the laser thing was, why we’re here talking to you assholes, or whether we’re dead. I’m tired of interruptions and other fucking nonsense. Talk.” Henry crossed his arms.

  Mr. Neighborhood responded, “The weapon that hit you was of ancient design. It used to be lab equipment, but has repurposed as an offensive device. It sends complex organisms to the Dhu World, a place that is like a different dimension. Everything dies there. Everything,” the orb amended, “until you. You must be very special, neighbor. It seems highly unlikely, but my programming makes me objective, and the Dhu do not lie. It is one of their only saving graces. Telling a lie is bad.

  “On the other hand, it seems odd that Aodh’s orb and I would suspend time, bringing you both here to plan our next move, but then your Dhu took you to the Dhu World anyway. It was hard enough stopping time, saving your body from the death magic attacking it, and preventing you both from being destroyed in the Dhu world. The attack spell was fighting us the whole time.”

  Henry glanced back at the shadow thing, which was even closer now. “So that is gonna kill me, huh?”

  The Dhu dog shook its metal head, “After you die, Henry-host, it kills Aodh-otherhost. Must save. Must fight!” The dog showed its teeth in a friendly snarl.

  Henry decided to name the dog. He liked dogs
. “Okay, Spike, what do I do?”

  The dog shook its head. “It is a thing of us. Of Dhu. You know what to do.”

  Henry thought back to his time in the Dhu world and realized he might understand. “I gotcha,” he acknowledged.

  He began taking a step towards the shadow creature when both orbs cried, “No!” The world began turning grey and Henry’s thoughts seemed to slow. He could feel his mind dulling again, his thoughts slipping away. Fuck this, he mentally snarled. Henry uncoiled his mind the way he had in the Dhu Word and lashed out. It hurt, but when his mind touched the encroaching gray, it shattered and the tableau returned to how it had been before.

  “What is going on, please?” asked Henry’s orb. The orb’s impersonated form was still polite and refined, but his eyes had narrowed.

  Spike, the Dhu dog, hissed a laugh. “Check your skills, orb-controller!”

  Mr. Neighborhood pursed his lips. “Another new skill? Mind Whip (Rank 1, X points)? This skill doesn’t even have a point cost, and Henry got it free again! How are the Dhu even here? This makes no sense.”

  “Henry-host bond with new Dhu, baby Dhu.” The metal Dhu dog said seriously, almost reverently.

  “How could he even access them?” asked the winged orb in the chainmail bikini. “Blank Dhu are in stasis until we activate them.”

  “We help, we save,” replied Spike.

  “This is highly irregular. We need to return you Dhu to where you’re supposed to be. I still need to get to the bottom of all this later, but you are not supposed to be out here,” said Gellab. She raised a hand and the gray started to descend again. And once again, Henry uncoiled his mind and slapped the descending dullness away. This time it was harder, though. It felt like getting stung by a bee in the brain. He winced.