by James Hunter
“The year is 178 A.I.C.—Anno Imperium Conditae,” a familiar, disembodied announcer bellowed as music swelled. A wave of vertigo and déjà vu hit me in the gut like a one-two combination. We were in a cutscene. And one not so different from when I’d first found myself in V.G.O., watching Eldgard’s history unfurl in flashes as an announcer narrated. “The Ever-Victorious Viridian Empire, governed by the sure hand of Grand Emperor Lucius Atilius Nobilior, is not yet even a glimmer on the horizon of Eldgard,” the narrator continued, his voice rich, deep, and booming. “Their mighty warships, mired in the great ports of Ikela Asari, will not set sail in the Great Expansion for another four hundred years.”
The clouds surged in—wind licking against my cheeks and ruffling my hair despite the fact that I didn’t have a body—then parted like a curtain. I was closer to the ground now, and that sense of déjà vu was even stronger than before. I knew this place but couldn’t quite put my finger on how or from where.
After a few seconds, things finally slid into place. That was Rowanheath down there. Although not Rowanheath as I’d ever known it. The cliffside Keep was gone—the mountain face jagged and unmarred by human hands—and the city’s trademark outer wall was nowhere to be seen. Just flat meadows and pristine pasturelands speckled with flocks of grazing sheep and occasional cows. There was a city, however. One nestled right in the curved arms of the mountains—although not the city that had grown so familiar to me over the past several months.
The homes were carved from slabs of gray granite, no doubt harvested from the mountain itself, and held a shocking resemblance to those in Idruz, though smaller in scope.
“Yet, war comes,” the voice boomed while drums rolled like expectant thunder, “carried on the backs of the Wodes driven south by a grave evil that claimed their frosty lands for its own.”
The music swelled in intensity, harps plucking frantically, cymbals clanging, all accompanied by the clatter of swords, the ring of steel, and the cries of the wounded.
A flight of arrows swept across my vision, turning into swirls of smoke, then resolving into a massive army dashing across those green hills, feet churning up mud as they ran. Heading for the defenseless city. Not Imperials this time around, but blond-haired Wodes dressed in matted furs, threadbare cloth, and age-worn leathers, their faces streaked with dirt and grime, their eyes oddly hollow, their frames scrawny and malnourished. These weren’t conquerors, but refugees, spurred on by fear and hunger. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, I realized.
They may have been refugees, but they were also conquerors—and brutal ones, at that.
A group of ram-horned Thar in short togas fled, mothers carrying young children on their backs while the men stood to fight, bleak expressions gracing their faces. The Thar were far fewer in number than the charging Wodes, and the weapons in their hands weren’t instruments of war, but rather scythes, pitchforks, crude hand axes, and hastily sharpened quarterstaves. The tools of farmers, not warriors.
There wasn’t a sword among them.
The Wodes came in a wall of humanity. No order, no formations. Just the press of bodies with nowhere left to turn, driven on by devouring need. The Wodes fell on the Thar men with ruthless efficiency, hacking and slashing with abandon. Bodies dropped by the score, and it was clear after only seconds that the Thar had never stood a chance at all. The most they could do—had ever been able to do—was buy their families a little more time to escape.
The world dissolved in a flash of golden sparks, mercifully stealing away the awful images, before replacing them with the icy plains of Morsheim.
This Morsheim—like Rowanheath before it—was different than the one I knew. Snow still covered the ground, but there were none of the stunted bone-white trees peppering the landscape. Vast forests of crystal-white pines blanketed the hills and plains. Winding magenta rivers snaked through the trees, eventually pooling in dazzling neon-pink lakes. Even the Necropolis was different, its spires straight and true, the buildings all frozen glass and flawless marble that reflected gold in the early evening sunlight.
A cold world, but a beautiful one, and meticulously ordered.
Portals—a few at first, but more every second—popped open, and the surviving Thar poured through, bracing against the brutal cold.
Over the shining Necropolis, the bodies of slain Thar fell like rain during the Storme Marshes monsoon. Thousands of dead. Maybe hundreds of thousands, chopped down from all over Eldgard. The music shifted, transforming into a solemn funeral dirge as the Thar marched, wrapping sheepskin furs around their shoulders and swaddling the young in thick blankets. Above them all hung a stoic figure, a young man of no more than twenty-five with a thin, scholarly build, a mop of black hair, and a rather pronounced nose.
I recognized him from the statue in the heart of the Idruz Keep.
Thanatos hovered, arms crossed, lips pursed, face troubled by what he saw. This... this wasn’t his doing. Moreover, it wasn’t right.
Enormous Ragna Wolves closed in on the Thar, great jaws salivating in eager anticipation. The Thar flinched back, wide-eyed and terrified, but instead of tearing the survivors to shreds with oversized fangs, the wolves fell into neat ranks, forming walls of flesh and fur around the surviving Thar, sheltering them from the biting wind and blowing snow. The act of unexpected kindness was the last thing I saw before a wall of black wrapped around me, stealing away the true history and returning me to the chamber buried within the heart of the Temple of Forgotten Waters.
I stumbled and fell from the pool, queasy from the rapid change in perspective and from the horrible things I’d witnessed during the vision. I stole a sidelong look at Cutter and Abby and noticed they weren’t faring much better.
“Bloody hell,” Cutter moaned, pulling his legs from the pool. “How about a little warning next time, eh? I don’t particularly like having my mind jerked all over the gods-be-damned creation.”
It occurred to me that as a former Citizen, Cutter had probably never seen a cutscene before. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how disorienting something like that would be for someone with no experience as a gamer. I made my way over to Abby and offered her a hand, helping her from the waters that still swirled around her dress, pulling at the fabric, making it look like some rare crimson water lily.
“Thanks,” she said, accepting my hand graciously and pulling herself free.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Not even a little,” she said, shaking her head. “I appreciate a good backstory, but, God, I wish things weren’t always so complicated. Now every time I set a Vog on fire, I’m going to think about how messed up this whole situation is. Because I definitely need that shit weighing on my conscience.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, turning toward the troubled-looking Lorekeeper.
“It was far worse than the Imperial Invasion,” Zendu said, carefully extracting himself from his own pink pool. “I believe that only Thanatos knows how many of the Thar died during those early days of the Purge, but the figure has to be tens of thousands. More, even.” He fell silent, eyes distant and thoughtful. “If Thanatos hadn’t seen fit to intervene and extended his hand, giving the few remaining survivors refuge here in Morsheim, I’m certain none of our people would’ve survived. He had mercy on us when no one else would.”
Zendu sighed, long and deep, fidgeting with the prayer beads wrapped around one wrist. “Come,” he said after a tense silence. He shook out the beads and beelined toward another winding offshoot that led from the grand chamber. “There is more to see.”
Abby and I moved to follow, then stopped short as Cutter stepped in front of me, arm extended. “Not so fast. Something nasty up ahead,” he said, nodding toward the mural Zendu had been examining earlier.
I squinted and for a second saw nothing, but then... Then the painting seemed to subtly shift and move, the golden-haired Thar turning her head just so.
“What the hell is that?” Abby asked, conjuring a fireball with her free ha
nd, the blaze casting harsh orange light across the mural.
The painting moved again.
This time I realized it wasn’t the painting itself, but rather something lurking in the walls behind the artwork.
I stood frozen in a mixture of fascination and horror as whatever it was seeped through the wall, taking form like a crudely drawn caricature stepping from the pages of a sketch pad.
It was easily eight feet tall and vaguely man shaped, its arms enormous and unwieldly, its fists large enough to wrap entirely around my skull. Its skin, if it could be called that, was a slate gray—almost metallic—and covered in glowing blue script that swirled around its form in tight spirals and impossible geometrical shapes that kept changing and shifting like a living kaleidoscope. The creature was blocky, its body and limbs all hard angles and sharp lines like one of those poorly rendered avatars from the first-gen PlayStations. It had no face, and its head belonged in some postmodern art exhibit: spikes, blocks, and an excessive number of polygons all jammed haphazardly together with no real rhyme or reason.
It didn’t wear anything that resembled armor, though it did carry a mammoth weapon that straddled the line between meat cleaver and battle-axe. It also had a thick iron chain draped around its neck—and dangling from the chain like a prized pendant was an oversized lock.
“What. The. Hell,” Abby said, pulling away from me and dropping to her knees, curling in on herself while clenching her head, squeezing her palms against her temples. “Oh shit. It’s inside my head. Oh my God, it hurts!” She screamed, blood trickling from the corners of her eyes.
Cutter toppled a heartbeat later, landing on his back, arms and legs splayed out, body bucking and convulsing as his eyes rolled back into his skull so only the whites showed.
The creature took a ponderous step toward us, the tip of its oversized blade dragging on the tiles behind it, though never making a sound. I had no idea what I was looking at or what it was doing to Abby and Cutter—some sort of psionic attack, maybe?—but it didn’t seem to have any effect on me. I drew my hammer, ready to teach this thing a few hard lessons about what happened to anyone who messed with my friends, but then Zendu was beside me, his gray hand landing on my forearm.
“You mustn’t attack it. Not under any circumstances. It is a fight no one can win, not even you.”
“You did this?” I snarled, rounding on the Vog Lorekeeper.
“No,” he said, shaking his head fervently and raising his cane in a fruitless semblance of defense. “This is not of my doing,” he pleaded. “That is a Fail-safe. They are unthinking things, powerful beyond measure. Not even the Overminds can summon, control, or influence them. They can take many forms, and they often congregate around memory nodes such as these. The Fail-safes are the very reason Thanatos cannot enter this place.”
“What’s it doing to them?” I demanded, waving at Cutter and Abby.
“It is assessing whether or not they belong in this place,” he replied, lowering his cane. “Its job is to expel outside contaminants. Tapping the Waters must have drawn it to us. Since they have been invited in, they will almost certainly survive the process.” Zendu fell silent, watching as the creature crept steadily closer, cocking its malformed head to one side.
The Reality Editor vibrated furiously against my chest with every step the Fail-safe took, finally letting loose a high-pitched squeal like a mic held too close to the amplifier. The creature faltered for the first time, the edges of its body blurring and wavering. The blue script running across its body glitched wildly in the presence of the key. I licked my lips and, acting on instinct, took a deliberate step forward, snarling like a feral wolf. Slowly, the creature edged away from me and back toward the wall, apparently wanting nothing to do with the Reality Editor. It paused near the wall, regarding me with an unreadable face devoid of even rudimentary features, then turned and vanished back into the mural without a trace.
Gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Cutter coughed and sputtered, pushing himself upright, leaning back on his palms. It looked like someone had just broadsided him in the head with a baseball bat, but he was alive. “What in the bloody hell just happened, eh?” he asked, blinking sporadically against the light.
Abby groaned and rubbed her hands into her eye sockets, fingers coming away covered in a fine sheen of blood. “Jack?” she asked, fear evident on her face.
“The trial is passed,” Zendu said, sounding relieved at the outcome. “We should not see it again. Hopefully. Still... Perhaps it is best we hurry along, in case it decides to investigate further. The faster we depart, the better.” Offering no further explanation, he turned and beelined for the connecting tunnelway. “Come along now,” he beckoned. “Make haste.”
I helped Cutter and Abby to their feet, the three of us sharing uneasy looks as I gave them a brief rundown of what had just happened.
“Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of a Fail-safe,” Cutter said, rubbing at his jaw as we slowly trailed Zendu down the winding hallway, which sloped gently downward. “Some sort of Aspect, maybe?”
“I don’t think so,” Abby replied, shaking her head. “Back when I was working at Osmark Technologies, I remember stumbling across a couple of emails about the inbuilt Fail-safes. Basically V.G.O.s version of antivirus software. Their main purpose was to prevent hackers, modders, and even developers from patching or altering the game in any way that might harm users or cause the system to crash. That was pretty common information, but a few of the emails I hacked also mentioned that they kept the Overminds in check. Made sure they stayed in their lanes. I just assumed they were lines of code, though. Not...” She trailed off, eyes haunted, skin a shade too pale. “Not whatever the hell that thing was,” she finished.
“Why do you think it’s hanging around this place?” I asked, glancing back over my shoulder, half afraid I would find it stalking us from a distance.
“Something about this location must be game critical,” Abby said, absently fidgeting with her staff. “It’s probably making sure we’re not malicious software looking to wreck things.”
Zendu’s earlier words drifted into the back of my mind: Thanatos is our only god now, but even he has no welcome here. “Or maybe it’s here to make sure Thanatos can’t get his hands on whatever secrets are in this temple,” I said.
Eventually, the meandering tunnel let out into a labyrinthine maze of towering bookcases and glass-fronted artifact cases. A combination library and reliquary. The bookcases were loaded down with ancient manuscripts, orderly tubes filled with dusty scrolls, and even clay tablets covered in squiggles and angular text I couldn’t begin to decipher. The display cases were crammed full of armor, weapons, artifacts, fragments of pottery, and oil lamps. A museum in the truest sense of the word. I stole a sidelong look at Cutter and saw greed glinting in his eyes. The gamer in me wanted nothing more than to loot literally everything in this room, but I quickly shoved that notion away. This place was special.
A mausoleum to an entire nation of people and all that remained of their culture.
Taking anything from this place wouldn’t have been right.
“No,” I said sternly to the thief. “Don’t even think about it.”
“As if I would ever,” Cutter replied, feigning indignation. “I’m not that kind of thief, Jack. I am a man of principles.”
“If I recall correctly,” Abby said, “your number one principle is to steal literally anything not bolted to the floor.”
“Admittedly, I rob from the rich and give to myself, but every good thief has a line in the sand. This”—he nodded at the assembled items—“seems like one to me.” We followed for another few minutes before Zendu finally broke the silence.
“Thanatos was merciful enough to reunite the slain dead with the living,” the Lorekeeper offered, strolling through the stacks, tracing his fingers along book spines as he went. “As lord over all of death, it was well within his purview to grant them a sort of half-life in the cities of
Morsheim. He saved us, but in the end, he could not preserve us, for his is not the power of preservation, but destruction. Ah, now here is a true treasure,” Zendu said as he made his way to a lectern with a slim leather-bound volume perched carefully on top.
“The journal of a god, secreted out from the Empirical Library itself—though how it came to be here, no one knows.” The old Thar licked a finger, the gesture delicate, almost dainty, and flipped the cover.
“The Thar continue to degrade,” Zendu read, his voice unnaturally loud against the hush of the library. “A shame, considering they were such a vibrant species before all of Eldgard turned against them.
“When I first rescued them from the brink of annihilation, most had already disincorporated and wandered into the wastes as Spectral Revenants. The rest crowded into buildings throughout the Necropolis. Pitiful things, really. Families huddling together, grieving. Like all refugees do, I suppose. For a time, I was content to let them be. It was an amicable relationship in its way. At least in the beginning. They provided a few essential services for me, tending to the dead and serving my Aspects. In payment, I left them to their own devices.
“It took years, but eventually their leaders reestablished the bonds of caste and kin and began preparations to return to their cities in the Material Realm. I watched from a distance as the strong trained for war with a zeal that made obsession blush. The weak welcomed the newly reborn from the wastes as they stumbled into the city over the decades, naked and lost. Those few who had survived the Purge even went on to reproduce in time. There was a strange sort of peace to it all—a rhythm.
“At least until they realized there would be no triumphant return.
“No one returns to the Material from Morsheim, except through rebirth. Possible, perhaps, but terribly unseemly. I never quite had the heart to tell them their dreams were just that. Dreams. Their hope, it animated them with purpose and drove them on.