by Jez Cajiao
“Got it!” Bane shouted from beside me and pushed something at me. “Tell it to stop!” He shouted, pushing something into my hands, and I screamed as my movements were interrupted, his grab having broken both the pattern and my already addled concentration, to send the spell backlash roaring through me.
I collapsed to the floor, my hand clenching spasmodically around whatever he’d pressed into my palm, and a screen filled my mind.
Do you wish to take ownership of the ’Fenris Heavy Automaton’?
This control crystal is tied to model 017 and will become soul-bound on acceptance.
Yes/No
I squinted at it, trying to see through the pain of the spell feedback, but as soon as I could read it, I mentally mashed the ‘Yes’ and cried out as another pulse of power washed through me.
“Stop!!” I screamed, falling to the floor, and I screwed up my eyes trying to focus, was I too late?
I heard a chorus of relieved swearing, groans, and moans of the injured, as well as the muted grumbles and squeaks that came from the kobolds.
The rest of the creatures that had been advancing on our party, single minded in their determination to smash us into interestingly colored paste, had seemed to suddenly wake up. The two longer, thicker bodied lizards immediately lost interest in the fight at the Beastmaster’s death and were hissing at everything around them. The reject from Jurassic Park had been stabbed through the throat by Bane, and whatever had been at the back of the makeshift stables next to the Fenris was staying there, dead, or playing it.
The last beast that had been in the stables was a giant Tiger, but it was close to death already. It had ignored the call from the Beastmaster and even now, it laid there, watching us, rather than attacking.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked when I could manage it, looking up at the Fenris. It stood there, directly over Barrett, one silvery hoof still raised, ready to crush his skull. He rolled out from under it and backed away. All of us slowly grouped up as far from the collection of corpses and blood splatters as we could, and we forced down more healing potions and smiled at each other grimly, knowing how close we’d come to death.
“What the hell do I do with it now?” I muttered, looking at the Fenris, only to have a new notification pop up. I ignored it for a second and spoke to the others. “Does anyone need healing?” I got a chorus of ‘Noes’ from most of them, but a weak voice called out from my right and I dismissed the notification for now, looking over at Lydia. She’d managed to get to her feet, but she wasn’t walking well.
I had her sit down and cast ‘Battlefield Triage’ over her until my mana pool was empty, my head spinning and my last meal trying to escape.
“We’re gonna have to rest here for a bit. I know we’re too close to the main settlement to rest properly, but we’ve no choice.” I said quietly to the others.
“Horkesh, I need you to send you drones back up the tunnel, see if the main settlement heard any of that, and warn us if anything starts coming this way.”
“Yes.” She said simply, before vanishing again, chittering at her spiders. They flowed away from her as a group, only one staying with her. “They will watch for anything coming,” she said, and I had a momentary thought, wondering how they’d communicate it, before I remembered they were fucking spiders, and had webs they could shake or some such shit.
I was too tired to care and just nodded acceptance.
We broke out some rations, I conjured a fountain for Bane, and we all rested for a bit. While we recovered, I pulled up the notifications I’d received, starting with the one that’d popped up when I was wondering about the Fenris…
Congratulations on your purchase of Model 017 of the ‘Fenris Heavy Automaton’!
Please note that the Fenris, while limited in scope compared to our premium models, has been created with a large number of additional features. These include voice command and…
I winced as a high-pitched noise tore through my mind and the prompt disappeared in a wash of pain, before a second prompt appeared.
Warning!
Cranial damage detected. This manual cannot be deployed, due to physiological and mental restrictions. Please seek immediate healing and request a new manual from your dealer… ceasing installation…
I fell onto my back from where I’d been sitting, clutching at my head, and gritting my teeth as pain rippled through me, it seemed to build, then retreat, like the tide coming in and out. I curled into a ball, clutching my skull, and tried to master the pain, feeling it as it built. It was like before, when Oracle had given me the Airblade spell, only worse. This time, it wasn’t esoteric magical knowledge. No, this time it was a full-on goddamn instruction manual for a god-damn horse that ran on mana crystals, which meant the manual was heavy engineering details and how to polish out scratches in the damn paint.
There were details on command structures, trees of how to link together command words for maximum efficiency, and how to adjust the color of its eyes so that it matched your outfit.
I thrashed as the pain continued to build, feeling something hot and wet running from my nose, my ears, my eyes…I tasted blood and I felt hands grabbing at me, holding me down and frantically forcing potions into my mouth again.
I coughed and choked on them, starting to shake as the pain began to build past my ability to take it…
“Jax!”
I heard the voice, it echoed around inside my skull like a fart in an empty bathtub, making me wince as the sound added to the pain.
“I’m sorry…here…”
The voice came back, much softer this time, and I felt something change, a burrowing feeling as something changed in my brain, a shift that was both horrifically painful, and…calming…
I felt like the pain was building on my side of a door, like there was a physical blockage in a line suddenly, rather than a pressure cooker that was building, closing on self-destruction.
“That’s it…just a little more…”
As the seconds passed, I felt the blockage change. I could suddenly visualize it, and I was somewhere else, the world around me that had been so shut out by my pain, suddenly was replaced by the place I’d met Jenae before.
I was curled up on the floor, shivering with pain, but She was there. I could feel Jenae crouching beside me, lifting my head. She held out a hand, and a glass appeared in it, filled with crystal clear, cool water, which she lifted to my parched lips.
I drank greedily, and she smiled down at me, little more than my own height. She helped me to my feet, holding me under my arms and supporting me as my legs almost gave out.
“Where am I?” I asked her, and she snorted, shaking her head.
“Somewhere you have no right to be, yet still, you’re here…again.”
“Well…” I sniffed, tasting blood, and feeling it coating my face. “That’s a spectacularly unhelpful answer, you know that?” I said, then grimaced as I saw the blood that stained the front of her clothes. She was dressed in a robe that crossed over the front and ran down to open at her knees, with creamy leggings underneath. The beautiful patterning of runic symbols that ran across it, marred only by the straps of her backpack…and the garish smears of my blood. “Shit, sorry about…”
“It’s all right… and yes, I know it’s not helpful. This reflects the Realm of the Gods. You’ve been here before, remember? When we had our… falling out?”
“Dangerous…” I muttered, looking around.
“Yes, it’s very dangerous, especially for you, as weak as you are, but this place is also the best place I can think of to reach a threshold, as you have.”
“What’s a threshold?” I asked numbly, pain still buffeting my mind. I blinked and forced myself to focus in on her face. I saw her lips quirk up as she watched me.
“It’s the first step toward growth to real power, and not something you should be experiencing for a long time yet, but it was that or let you die, and I don’t want that. You’re my Chosen, after all, so it’s only a
short step to make you my Champion as well…”
“Champion?” I asked, confused, forcing myself to look around. I studied the cracked desolate earth of this realm, and the foothills in the distance that were the base of the Gods’ thrones.
“No!” Jenae snapped, gripping my jaw, and turning me back to look at her. “Don’t pay attention to anything else here; you will only force it to become aware of you, and that’s not something we can risk right now. Look only at me… and listen.” I nodded and she went on. “I’ve opened up a pathway for you, but it’s one you’re not ready to use yet. When I return you to your realm, you need to focus on breaking through it, and reaching towards your evolution. It won’t be easy, but one of the advantages to evolving is an increased capacity to learn. You’ll still need to be healed, as we discussed before, but this should keep you alive long enough to find someone to do it.”
“Thank you…” I muttered, screwing my eyes shut against the pain again, and she shook her head, a gentle laugh coming to her lips.
“Oh, Eternal, you’re very welcome. If you can survive this, and bring back my brothers and sisters, you’ll have earned my help a hundred times over. Again, I am sorry for hurting you before…” She said, her voice tinged with sadness and regret.
“I was an asshole.” I whispered and she laughed again.
“You are an asshole Jax, but not a bad person, for all of that. Now hold on and push forward. I’ve opened the pathway, but only you can walk it…”
I grinned at her weakly, and the world dissolved again. I found myself on my back on the floor of the cave. My team, my friends, all clustered around me. Lydia, Bane, and Miren were next to me, and the others were all facing out, weapons drawn.
“It’s all right…” I whispered, forcing the words out through a blinding pain in my skull. “I…just need some…time.” With that, I closed my eyes again, feeling the wash of pain flowing through me, back and forth, building again like the sea crashing against the shore. With each wave, it grew higher, the pain threatening to overwhelm me, as I searched frantically.
After a minute that felt like it lasted a year, I found it… a single thin line that pulsed and beat along with my heart. It was inside me, and at the same time it lay behind the crashing waves, a single hair-thin line of golden light that pulsed faster as I focused on it. I reached out, and inwards…
I could feel it, it shook with my heartbeat, power flowing through it in the same way blood passed through my veins, and I followed it with my mind, looking for a blockage, a problem, a weakness…none of them were there, as far as I could tell, and as I flashed along the length of it. Another wave of pain hit me, and I was back on the shore, catching my breath, watching another wave build.
I tried again and again, feeling myself becoming weaker by the second.
I threw myself at the pulse of power, rushing blindly down it, hoping against hope that I could travel far enough along the golden thread that I’d find the end, before…
When I could see again, I panted, forcing the air out through gritted teeth and I looked at the thread, really looked at it.
I kept thinking of it as a vein, and I was trying to get far enough along to find the blockage, or whatever was stopping the pain from draining away through it, but what if…
I shifted my perspective in an instant, not looking at the far end of the vein, but instead the beginning…
I looked back inside myself, realizing that if I could feel it inside and way, way over there…then there had to be a connection, a point where the two met…It only took a few seconds of searching, tearing through my mind frantically, until I found it again…
It was the wall I’d visualized before, and the door in it. My vision changed, and the pain/water began smashing into me on my island, and then retreating back to smash against the door, making it creak, before rebounding and heading back to me.
I watched it for a second, then gritted my teeth and pushed. The flood seemed to batter against it harder this time, and less so when it flowed back to me, so I did it again, pushing harder, faster.
I bit down on my fear, and I imagined the assholes. All of them. Pricks like Barabarattas and my father, the slavers, and that freak Toka… Lorek, and the asshats from the ship, all of them were on the other side of the door, eating fucking cupcakes and drinking cold beer.
The bastards had a goddamn burger from ‘Five-Guys’ and they were using it as an ashtray… they were pissing on my fucking cornflakes and calling it milk, and I… WAS… NOT… FUCKING… HAVING… IT!
I gathered myself, all my anger, all my hatred, and I shoved so hard, I almost passed out.
The door didn’t just open, the entire motherfucking wall was smashed into pieces. The floodwaters of my pain carried the world away with them, and as I sagged backwards, I saw the sun rising over the water. It was beautiful. The first warming rays of the rising sun made my skin tingle, and I drew a deep breath, sweet and invigorating, before closing my eyes and sleeping.
When I opened them again, I was laid out on the floor, the shitty stench of animals, kobolds, and corpses filled the air, and my face felt wet. I shifted, feeling a rock under my shoulder blade move, and I tried to sit up, only to be immediately grabbed by Bane.
He helped me to rise slowly, and I frowned around the room. The insane pain that had filled my world seemingly only seconds before was gone now, and instead, there was a feeling of… relief.
It was like I’d only ever taken half breaths before now, but suddenly there was more, like a belt that had been wrapped around my chest had been moved. It had been shifted only slightly, a millimeter or less, but the air I could pull in… It felt… better.
My mind felt clearer, and as I shifted, my muscles felt smoother, like I’d unknowingly spent my life with a restraint clamped to me in every way, only now, it was releasing. Like an elastic band that’s been stretched too far, it was slowly losing its grip.
“I’m all right,” I whispered to Bane’s questions, and I heard the others breathing relieved sighs as I explained distractedly about the manual while I pulled up the notifications.
You have taken your first step into a wider world. Beware, Mortal. Binding your soul to your physical form is not a step undertaken lightly. You have gained the following bonuses:
2% increase to all stats per level, 5% increase in experience earned, plus a one-off bonus of ten points to distribute as you choose.
You have been elevated from ‘Chosen of Jenae’ to ‘Jenae’s Champion’. As the right hand of a Goddess, you have gained the following bonuses:
+2 to Intelligence and Wisdom per level, 1x Random Blueprint or Spellbook, 1x Map Marker.
Additional Bonus: 10% increase in experience earned.
“The Drow have made no move to come closer,” a voice chittered close to my ear, and I flinched as I made unexpected eye contact with Horkesh.
“Thank you, Horkesh,” I muttered, forcing myself to smile at her, as I heard Lydia and Barrett begin to give Stephanos a dressing down off to one side, making it very clear why he was the reason we’d all had such a nasty fight, and I pulled the remaining notifications up.
Congratulations! You have killed the following:
2x Drow squad leader for a total of 5,950xp
1x Drow Beastmaster for a total of 5,500xp
5x Drow soldiers for a total of 2,850xp
As leader you receive a portion of the experience earnt by troops when they fight under your command:
13x Drow soldier for a total of 27,000xp
1x Drow Mage for a total of 4,500xp
1x Goregaon for a total of 1,100xp
4x Nightwolves for a total of 1,800xp
Total party exp earned: 34,400xp
As party leader you gain 25% of all experience earned
Progress to level 15 stands at 45,443/140,000
You have received a Quest from your Goddess: ‘Keep your Word’
You have given your word to an ancient Cave Spider Queen. Kill her enemies, gra
nt her and her brood safety and food, and she will consider her Broken Oath to be renewed, binding her and all her brood to your orders and laws. You must kill thirty-five (35) Drow and their leader.
Drow Killed: 22/35
Locations Cleared: 2/3
Drow Leader Killed: 0/1
Reward: Oracle’s Freedom, Sworn Allegiance of One (1) Greater Cave Spider and her Brood, access to Cave Spider Silk, Cave Spider Nest Treasury and 62,500xp (Recalculated…)
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Perception by one point. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Wisdom by one point. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Dexterity by one point. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Endurance by two points. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Strength by one point. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Wisdom by two points. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
I found myself grinning as I finished with my prompts. A point in Perception and Wisdom was always going to be welcome. Fifteen percent increase on top of the original ten I’d been getting from the party overall to my experience meant I would level much faster, and that was a fucking relief. The two percent increase to my stats was awesome; not that it was much now, but considering my Agility was in its forties, that meant I’d increase it by four points for every five levels I gained, regardless of assigning points. That boost applied to all my Stats as well, so while I didn’t have any stats over fifty, which meant I wasn’t seeing any noticeable increases yet…I would soon. I had ten points to distribute as well, which could be lifesaving, considering how close I’d kept coming to dying over the last few fights.