I watch Ananta, doing nothing, and Silvia seems to pick up on my strategy. Don’t attack, see what he does. Ananta obviously was right. We all are going to die, and I’m not sure what’s next. I’m following my instinct on this, scared shitless from the devastation I’ve seen him wreak in so short a time. He seems to be able to bend the rules of the game at whim.
“Oni, you alright?” I ask him, eyes still on the master summon before us. I get close to Silvia, who keeps watching Ananta, as well.
“Yes, Mystic Master Sid. I feel no pain,” Oni answers.
“Good. Thanks, Oni. You’ve done well.”
Sid dismisses Oni.
Ananta’s snake heads sway back and forth as though scrambling for a chance to see what just happened, yet his golden face is impassive. With his eyes completely white like a White Elf’s eyes, I can’t tell what or who he’s looking at. It feels like me. A sensation of being scrutinized, assessed.
I put my Shaman Stick in my bag after unequipping it.
“Ananta, you are too great a summon,” I say to him, winging it. “I cannot possibly wield your power as you do alone. You have special qualities… as your own master.” Even though Silvia has no physical sensations, I have a need to protect her whatever way I can.
Ananta floats into the air and comes to us, glowing a deep bluish-purple, with black swirling tendrils on his outer illumination. “You and your team have fought well. The Voodoo Lady was indeed a force to be reckoned with.”
“If I may ask, where are they?”
“We have other things to discuss. Please, sit. Sit by the fire with Silvia Diamond.”
We exchange glances, and then settle in the sand with the fire between floating Ananta and us. The flames are dim compared to his electric eyes.
“So, Ananta,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. Am I about to get him? Without Silvia dying? Or me? “What would you care to discuss?”
“You speak Nuudle words with ease. As a glorious Mystic should. I find your fighting style nervous, but in a cautious way. Instead of aggressiveness in the face of the inevitable end, you take care. You believe you have a chance to live even though I have destroyed all your chances. None of your summons can hurt me, and you now know that.” His voice is even like before, as though no fight took place. He sounds like he’s reading out of a book.
“Yes, I know.”
“Is that why you commanded Oni to retreat?”
“Yes and no. I figured, why attack? It seems to me you only attack when you’re threatened. So, I took a chance and asked him to retreat. When you didn’t attack, I dismissed him.”
“Why?” For the first time, he sounds curious, losing the boredom of the whole thing.
“Because I didn’t see any reason for Oni to take any more hits. He got hurt enough, and I didn’t want to put him through that anymore.”
“He could have extended your life for a little longer. Have you no survival instinct?” A serpent head leans down over the fire and into my face. Its blood red tongue flips out and tastes my cheek, and then the long neck pulls back.
“I do, and that’s what it told me to do.” I’m confident in my answer; it’s the truth.
“Why?”
“Because I think you’re a reasonable being.” I don’t know if that’s the real reason. It just felt right. I don’t want to say that. It sounds stupid and makes no sense. Felt right. Felt right. I don’t know why I do anything with Mystic, just go on gut reactions. I’m afraid of his reaction, so a little sincere flattery might warm him up.
“I am, and you have made an impression on me. While we fought, I discussed with Djinn my terms of surrender. He explained to me that you would agree to them.”
A pause. I wonder how that came about. Must be more of the timelessness stuff.
I say, “What are your terms?” He’s talking about becoming my summon… Ananta. Right?
Silvia takes my hand and squeezes it. Her Diamond Dagger and Wand of the Forest are unequipped.
The serpent heads fall back, Ananta’s mouth opens more fully as he speaks next, and I assume that’s so I won’t misunderstand his accent. “I have two conditions, and then I agree that you may summon me. One. You must make a sacrifice. You must kill Silvia Diamond by your own hand, and you know how.”
I swallow hard. Keres. Her fifth ability, Sacrifice. So that’s what it’s for. I want to scream, “No! No! No!” but stay silent. The thought of seeing Silvia gored by hungry Keres makes me sick and stiff with fear.
“My second condition is that you die at my hand last. You must know what you inflict on others. Do you agree?”
I gaze into the fire. Yeah, I’ll take the hits, sure. But I refuse to watch Keres eat Silvia alive. “I’ll die for you twice, a thousand times, but I can’t let Keres at Silvia with that new Sacrifice ability she has.”
I hear her gasp. She doesn’t know about Keres’ new move because I didn’t tell anyone.
“Then there is no agreement. My terms are non-negotiable.” Ananta begins to float backward toward the water.
“Wait, please, Ananta,” Silvia says to him, then turns to me. “Sid, don’t be ridiculous. I won’t even feel it.”
Ananta stops his retreat.
I shake my head. “We’re not even sure about that right now. Ananta didn’t ever touch you. We don’t know if you feel pain with this… situation, and what Keres does… I can’t let you go through that. I’ll make it without Ananta’s help.”
“Make what? What’s the point? Come on. I didn’t feel the buffs. You said you feel buffs. I felt nothing. Look, I can adjust my headset and see my living room.” Her eyes unfocus and go auto.
I blink at her. I can’t conceive of a headband, a living room, a bed, a friggin’ pizza.
Her eyes come back to me. “Please, Sid, let me do this. If you’re upset, don’t watch.”
“I—I don’t know.”
She leans toward me. “Look, we both know it’s more about you taking the action to tell Keres to do her thing. About you seeing me, how did you put it once, gored? Skin shredded off my bones, body eaten alive? I won’t feel a thing, you know it. Drop the stupid, romantic guilt, and play this game like the awesome player you are.” Her jaw is set and her whimsical eyebrows pushed low over her white eyes. “Finish this.”
I look at Ananta. Then to Silvia. Then back at Ananta.
“Silvia, it’s not that important. Like you said, I’m a player, and this is a game. I’m not doing it.”
Silvia stands up and points her dainty finger at me. “It has become much, much more than a game for you, and you know it. Sid Vicious, you do this, or I swear I’ll get Keres to eat you.”
“Don’t get mad, please.”
“I can’t get through to you any other way. It’s called a sacrifice because it’s hard. Otherwise it’s not a true sacrifice. That’s what Ananta wants.” His face softens. “Come on, Sid. Don’t give up. This is it. You got this. I’m fine with it.” She smiles slightly.
I stand, too, facing her. Defeated by her logic and her gentleness, yet the fierceness before made me think of a mother chiding a kid for being afraid on his first day of school.
“You know you want to claim Ananta. He’s offering. Who gets offered that? Come on. Don’t be an idiot.”
I think to myself what a loser I’d be to her if after all this, I quit. Gave up. She’s right. She won’t feel it. It’s a game to her still, and she’s also right about how it’s not a game for me. Honestly, I don’t care how bad whatever Ananta does to me hurts. I don’t want to see Silvia’s precious body desecrated. “But… are you sure?” I ask quietly. Could I do this?
“Absolutely. Tell Ananta you’ll do it.” She’s tough when she means it, her face back to solid determination.
I reach up and touch her hair, then turn to Ananta. The girl I love is commanding me to torture her to death, like she’s the Mystic and I’m the summon. What do you do? “Ananta, I agree to your terms.” I almost choke on the words.
H
e floats back to the fire. “Very good. Now, you must summon Keres for the sacrifice.”
I pause. Silvia nudges my shoulder.
Sid summons Keres.
She swirls out of the black mist from my chest, taking her awful form. I can’t stand to think of what I’m about to watch. It isn’t real, it isn’t real to Silvia, I keep telling myself.
“Master Sid, have you a meal for me? I sense a great battle.”
“Keres, I’m making a sacrifice to Ananta as terms of our agreement.”
Her dark eyes brighten. “Oh? Oh, my Sacrifice ability you will use?” She turns to Ananta. “I have never used Sacrifice. I savor the thought. Thank you, Ananta. I am very hungry.” She turns back to me and flexes her black wings. “Who do I get to feast on?”
I cock my head at Silvia, eyes downcast.
Her greedy eyes roam over Silvia’s flesh. “But Master Sid, you said to never, ever, ever eat Silvia Diamond.”
“Just this once, and make it… quick, will you?”
She grins wickedly, needle teeth dripping with saliva. “I will do as you command, which is what I am here for. You are a kind master, you feed me when you don’t have to use me. I know. I appreciate it. I starve constantly. I will make her death quick, but I will feast slow. White Elves have fine-tasting flesh, a delicacy, though not much quantity.”
I cringe. “Okay, thank you, Keres.”
Silvia tells me, “Don’t worry. It’ll be over so soon you won’t know it. Just do it. Don’t think about it.”
I sigh and look away from her and Keres. I target Silvia. Close my eyes.
Sid commands Sacrifice.
I keep my eyes closed, and even though I know she can’t feel it, I’m surprised not to hear her screams. Instead, I hear her neck snap immediately, and then the sound of raw flesh being torn and chewed ever so slowly, savored.
“You have fulfilled the first term; now, the second. Your kindness affects. I will make yours quick, as well.”
I brace myself and face him eye-to-eye.
Ananta uses Ananta’s Gaze. Sid dies instantly.
I feel my heart stop, my lungs paralyze, and then I fall into a blackness like no death yet. It’s how I imagine a real death is, if I’d had one… one that wasn’t wrapped in mystery and confusion of being alive and dead at the same time, and in a new existence.
The pain doesn’t last. The darkness feels like the sleep I’ve never achieved in Dark World.
~
The next thing I’m aware of after the welcome end of Ananta’s terror is flashes of bright red behind my closed eyelids, but I don’t feel rain. I open my eyes.
I’m at my grave in Dark World, but I’m a ghost.
I’m a ghost… I’m a ghost with no body to go back to.
Panic rises in my ghost chest like bile from bad fish. How can I come back to my physical form here in Dark World if my body is left in the Temple of Nuudlel’s dank basement in Elora? Come to think of it, how could it be, really? Somebody would have discovered the hole the Counts blew through the wall and secret door in the temple’s library, found our bodies and… and what?
I put my ghost hands over my face, overwhelmed with frustration. What of the others?
What of Silvia?
In my interface, I read the most wonderful thing I could wish for right now.
Anella casts Revive. Sid is revived.
I become solid again, my body fully forming as I look up, rain pelting me, and see Silvia’s sister standing over me with a faint smile. “Anella! Anella, thank god you’re here. I had no way—I mean, I couldn’t get to my body. It’s in Elora. Well, that’s if it’s anywhere. I don’t know anything. But thank you, thank you so much.” I jump up and hug her. She stiffens and pries herself away from my small grasp.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for in the graveyard, Sid. I knew you’d come back a ghost. I know many things. I knew you’d need Revive, and I have spent all my time around this graveyard waiting for when you would need it. But there’s more. You had others. We must find their graves and ghosts, Revive them. You must know where they keep their graves. You do, don’t—”
Suddenly, a bright, pure bubble of light springs up to my right, facing Anella. As the blinding light takes the shape of a player, I feel my heart skip a beat.
I recognize her by her scent before her physical form. “Silvia, Silvia?” I say.
She fully forms and turns to me. “Sid. Sid, the Sunlight Daisy. It took me to you when you… you…” Her eyes wander to Anella, who stares at Silvia with shock and denial.
Silvia’s no idiot. She reads the Hidden’s name, and she grabs for her sister, Anella Portabella at one time, Kristina in another world and life.
“No!” Anella cries out. “No!”
“It’s me, Kristina, I know about you, about Dark World, about all of it. I know you’re here and I can’t believe it. You’re right fucking here. Please, don’t be afraid.”
I’ve never heard her curse nor plead so desperately.
Anella pulls back further, putting her palms out. “You shouldn’t be here.” She looks at me. “Sunlight Daisy? You gave her a Sunlight Daisy? Look! Look what you’ve done! You’ve trapped her here for eternity.” Her voice shakes with anger and conflicting emotions.
I take a step back, looking at them both. “But, Anella, look. Look at her name. Just look.”
She reads above Silvia’s head again and gasps. “Ohhhhh…” she murmurs, wonder in her voice.
The name above her head reads “Silvia Diamond.” Two names.
“Silvia,” I say to her. “Can you feel Dark World? Can you feel the rain? Did you feel Anella’s arms when you grabbed her?”
Silvia finally tears her eyes from her sister’s Dark World Siren Hidden form and meets my stare.
“You still have two names.”
Her eyes clear from their glaze of shock. “No. No, Sid. No, I feel nothing at all.”
“Can you still lower your headband view? Come on, try it.”
Her eyes go on auto almost instantly. “I see the Chinese takeout box from last night. Lo Mein. I can feel it.” Her eyes snap back to here and now.
“You’re not dead, Silvia.”
Anella whispers, “Not dead. In Dark World, but not dead. Sunlight Daisy.”
I wrap my arms around Silvia’s waist. “Nothing made sense, it all happened so fast… you’re okay.” I pull away from her and smile up into her eyes.
Anella takes a step toward Silvia. “Silvia Diamond. The first player in Dark World to ever have two names.” She turns to me. “What have you done? What have you started?”
“I—I don’t know.” I’m at a complete loss. “But Anella, we have to find our friends. We have to Revive them. I know their graves. We’ll go to them. I mean, we should have had some kind of plan, but how the hell could we have known this would happen?”
“Right,” Anella answers softly, still looking at her sister. “Silvia Diamond.”
Silvia touches Anella’s upper arm. “You’re beautiful, sis. The Hidden. I like it.” She gives her a love-filled gaze that she must have wished for fifteen years she could have given her one last time after she died. “You’re alive. In some way. You’re here, and I know it’s you. I can tell. I feel you.”
Anella gets that look like when she’s about to Scatter, but Silvia seems to pick up on her anxiety. “Now’s your time for action. Kristina, we have to find the others, and only you can help. I’m assuming you brought Sid back with the Revive spell he told me you used on him before?”
“Yes…”
“No hesitations,” Silvia says gently. “Now is time for action.” She turns to me. “Have you checked your summon list? Do you actually have the ability to summon Ananta?”
I access that menu in my interface.
Summon Ananta.
“Yes. But I want to wait until we’re all together before I pull him out. That’s tradition.” I smile at her. She’s here. She’s here and not dead. What does that mean for t
he rest of us?
Anella says, “People are going to flock her. The two names. I can disguise her with a certain spell. It lasts twenty minutes at a time. We must stick to backroads and swimming and—”
Silvia laughs. “Sillies. I can tele us all wherever we need to go. That is, if you’ll join a party with us, Kristina. Anella.”
He mouth opens, closes, opens again. “Yes. Yes, invite me.”
When I enter the party at Silvia’s invite, Anella is already there. How fast did she accept her sister’s invite? Something about Silvia being here has inspired Anella, shaken her, made her want to take the action Silvia urged her to do.
I know it’s not just me. They feel it. My friends felt it. Something is coming. Something about this great event so many NPCs mention vaguely and with desperation, but don’t explain. They back off of the subject, almost like people might when they have mixed emotions and don’t want to say too much… or more like hope too much. But for what?
“Sid?” Silvia says. “What graveyard first?”
CHAPTER 17: THE NPCS
“Are you going to use Ananta?” Days whispers.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not? You haven’t used him yet at all. It’s just weird.” He’s eying the guards in front of Bane’s tower like he can’t wait for the challenge to hold all their hate at once.
The six of us huddle inside an NPC’s house outside the great deviant Bane’s worship tower in the capital city of Dragonbane Territory. We had to sneak in behind the rich Dragonbane NPC family’s backs at night while they slept, and we stayed hiding in their nursey until dawn… now. There is no infant in this nursery, just an empty human-sized baby’s crib.
The room faces the entrance, and there are double doors leading out to a small veranda here. A direct assault line to Bane’s guards.
“I need Djinn for this.”
“Why?”
“Because I know how to use him best.”
He rolls his eyes, then focuses back on his soon-to-be victims.
I had surprised myself by knowing where all their graves were, although I’d never seen them. Days’ gravestone read “Days End.” Sorry was So Sorry. Simple’s said “Its Simple.” And Doctor Doolittle. Of course.
Total Immersion: Dark World: A LitRPG Adventure Page 25