Nothing but bones 2: The chaos rifts

by J. Carrarn

  "As I die, so does an age. But with my passing, your era begins! Evolve now, and take this final gift. You will know when you wake how long to remain here. That knowledge and much more besides will be yours!"

  Viridi's face continued to grow younger, her skin turning into the bright, vibrant brown color Solus remembered, the flowers' petals straightening and glistening with fresh dew.

  More and more warmth and energy flowed into Solus, and the pinging of his status window turned into a soft hum as if it was incapable of keeping up. A moan came from Viridi, and she raised her head, her eyes moving as if they could see something he could not.

  "I come, sisters and brothers! Finally…." The last word was but a whisper, as Viridi's shape turned into a myriad of green particles that shot up at a speed Solus could not follow with his eyes. His mind, however, could. Tired and sad, he felt the last living entity in the entire galaxy depart this world. It shot up, out of the thin atmosphere of the planet, and into the dark and cold vastness of space before flying away at an incredible speed. Then it was gone, leaving behind only a sense of loss.

  Returning to the present, Solus felt a massive transformation beginning to take place inside him, and there was a new... connection with Tirella. She was like him, but different. Like two separate pieces of a puzzle, only together were they whole. He barely felt like himself, but he also knew that the feeling would fade. It was his mind, incapable of the quick adaptation. He also knew that he needed to sleep for a very, very long time.

  Tirella also seemed to know this, because the platform was now shooting down into the ground much faster than before. Feeling her mind gingerly touch his, he smiled at her. She had changed again, her skin now a deep brown, close to that of Viridi's. Her hair was brown, orange, and yellow, and each strand seemed to have a mind of its own. Only her eyes were as black as before.

  Like the trees during fall, Solus thought, barely knowing from where the knowledge came. It didn't matter. It sounded right.

  He could see the lines of mana flowing through her, and as he watched them, he realized he could see mana everywhere. There were green, red, black, and yellow veins of mana flowing through the ground. He instinctively knew that there had been more kinds of mana long ago, but that those had disappeared together with the life energy. All that remained now was the undead energy, already mutating and morphing under the chaotic forces that raged in the center of the galaxy. Torrential waves of energy were blasted out from the center, rippling outward.

  The waves crashed into the thick field of mana wrapped around the planet, and as they did, he sensed it. His energy and that of Tirella flowed into the core of the planet, strengthening the protective field. The deeper they went, the stronger the field became. He knew that as soon as they would reach close to the center, near the molten layer, the field would be so strong that barely anything would be able to penetrate it as long as they stayed below.

  "How long do you think we'll sleep?" Solus asked, startled by his own voice. It was still deep, but it had a different timbre to it now, warmer than before, less... dead.

  "Tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer… but it will be fine. Can't you feel it?"

  Wondering what Tirella meant, Solus stretched out his senses. He could move them towards the surface, feeling an area of the world above. Skulltown was there, a beacon of orderly lines of mana and activity. He also sensed the rifts, like puncture wounds in the fabric of time and space. Undead energy flowed through them, and with it came a feeling of danger and terrible power.

  Solus shivered, turning his attention away from them. He could not close them right now and hoped that Drys would find a way. Trying to widen his scope, he sensed the hills and the undead there. They ran and fought; bright dots of undead energy. Most were green, yellow, or black, and they clashed with those that were a muddled red and black.

  Kaots.

  "They will win, although some areas will need our help when we wake," Tirella said.

  Feeling her presence draw away and hover above the planet, he followed her. He smiled as he saw how tiny the wasteland he knew truly was. It was but a mere fragment of what had once been just a single mighty continent. Landmasses, unrecognizable from the memories he had, covered the tiny grey and brown globe.

  "Enjoy the view while you can… After we wake, it might take millennia for us to grow this strong again on our own," Tirella said with a smile.

  "I know," Solus said, drinking in the image of the dead and barren world. Dead, yes, but he knew that there was a way to shake it awake.

  The downward movement slowed, and the chamber was steaming hot. It didn't bother him but only made him more sleepy. The chamber widened as Tirella flexed her new powers. Decorations of trees, birds, and grass were etched into the walls. Two beds, side by side, sprouted up from the ground in the middle of the chamber.

  "I don't want to see only cold and dull stones when I wake," she said, and Solus laughed.

  He focused and created stone grass on the floor, drawing in green crystalline particles to give it color. Stone veins crept over the walls, turning a similar translucent green and sprouting red crystalline flowers. Scanning deep and wide, he searched for the blue crystal. It was not as abundant as the other kinds, but he managed to find some and drew it onto the ceiling until it was a bright, glittering blue.

  "Still a show-off," Tirella said with a smile. Solus felt something from the way she looked at him, but he was too tired to delve too deeply into its meaning.

  Instead, he moved to the other bed and lay down upon it. The energy Viridi had gifted him was waning, and he knew that when it was gone, he would slumber. He had an inkling that even while sleeping, he might influence things, but that wouldn't be for a while yet.

  As the desire for sleep grew stronger, he wanted to see what his status window had to say.

  Summoning it, he saw that the edges around the window and the words had turned from a blue into a deep green. Two lines blinked rhythmically at the top.

  > (ANOMALY) Mana-field fully purified…

  > Please find our nearest office! You will be greatly rewarded!

  > Race and class changed through external means. Custom label entered manually by a third party.

  Curiously, he turned to the status window.

  It was the last thing he saw before his eyes closed, and he fell into a deep slumber.

  Name: Os Solus

  Age: 1

  Sex: male

  Race: Undead world elemental

  Type: ERROR

  Class: World shaper

  Strength: 79/99

  Constitution: 69/99

  Dexterity: 29/60

  Endurance: 90/99

  Intelligence: 39/60

  Wisdom: 53/60

  Charisma: 19/60

  Mana-field: 29000/99999

  Physical density: 23000/99999

  Skills: 3

  Inscriptions: 4/9

  Mana generation: ERROR

  Epilogue

  Sumil listened to the loud thudding and shuffling of her pursuers as she crept stealthily from shadow to shadow. Her gaze was fixed on the jagged opening of the box canyon she was hiding in, her skeletal body coiled and ready to spring up and flee. There was no sign of the telltale glow that usually emanated from her bones, which were now a dull, steely blue. She was actively suppressing the light, a skill she had gained from Domain, unbeknownst to the other.

  At times like this, she was glad that she wasn't prey to an overabundance of emotion. It enabled her to keep a cool head and calmly calculate the odds of slipping out of the box canyon without being spotted.

  The sheer canyon walls to her left and right were unscalable, and doubling back was out of the question. The only path left open to her was forward.

  After sneaking to the end of the canyon, she peeked around the corner. A dozen tall three-legged Kaots were scouring the larger corridor that lay beyond her refuge. They used their massive front leg to hop small distances, which had been causing the lo
ud thudding that she had been hearing.

  Leapers. Eleven of them, she thought, and the minute anxiety she had felt dissipated. She quickly plotted a course from one of the undead to the next, finding the quickest path. When she was ready, she took another quick look to make sure that they were still standing in roughly the same places.

  That's fine, she thought, and she rushed forward, her bones flaring up with a bright blue light. The first of the Kaots saw her and let loose a rough garbled trumpeting sound. It leaped clumsily toward her.

  A stream of blue fire burst from the tips of her fingers, striking the Kaot mid-leap with enough force to hurl it back and slam into the canyon wall. The others, alerted by the first Kaot, turned and rushed toward her, their massive front legs propelling them forward in leaps as their smaller legs stabilized them upon landing. They would be on her within moments.

  Each of the Kaot's four red eyes began to glow, the light coalescing in front of their pug-like faces until it became blinding. With a final pulse, a beam of burning red light shot directly at Sumil.

  So predictable, she thought as she deftly dodged the beams, letting them slam harmlessly into the canyon wall behind her. She shot another flurry of blue energy bolts at the Kaots, scoring a lucky hit that blinded one and knocked the others back. She continued sidestepping their attacks and retreating out of their reach, all the while picking them off one by one with well-placed bursts of energy bolts.

  A few moments later, the remaining seven Kaots, realizing that they had bitten off more than they could chew, fled. Sumil ignored them. They wouldn't be back anytime soon. Instead, she moved between those that remained and were weakly struggling to get away. She dispatched them one at a time with massive bursts of blue fire from her hand before she harvested their orbs.

  Staring at them, she sighed.

  I can't believe they just absorb them like this! Disgusting! As she held the tainted orbs in her hands, she scanned the mountainous landscape. Two cyclopean peaks lay to her right, reaching toward the dim sky like jagged and broken fangs. She could also just make out the cancerous and monstrous shapes of the Kaot Lords roaming along the slopes of the mountain. Between her vantage point and the mountains was a chaotic labyrinth of small passages, gullies, and ravines.

  You had better not be dead, Domain. I need you to get home, she thought, shivering. Although she had little experience with emotion, the memory of how he had stolen her form, forcing her to do his bidding like some grotesque puppet, kept replaying in her mind. These thoughts vanished just as fast as they had come, but they left behind a deeply disturbing and unpleasant sensation that she had come to loathe.

  I want to be the one to end you, she thought, savoring the righteous anger she felt before it vanished. Then she turned and ran down the slope and into one of the ravines. She paused every few moments to check if there was any sound or movement, but aside from the constant howling of the wind, all was still.

  A dozen ravines and gullies later, she found herself moving toward a crack that was barely wide enough for her. Ignoring the stone scraping against her ribs, she forced herself through the tight opening for a dozen yards before she popped out into a small cavern. A pale and sickly light flowed in through dozens of cracks in the massive stone plate that had fallen atop the canyon, creating a small covered area. This was the only safe place that she had been able to find so far, and in the last few days, it had become home.

  In the corner stood a flat stone that glowed with blue intersecting lines similar to those inscribed on her mana-field. Three mana-orbs lay on top of it, glittering brightly.

  Finally ready, she thought, before calculating how long it had taken her to obtain this fourth batch. Two days and nine hours, she thought. That meant it was more efficient to cleanse multiple orbs at the same time.

  She took the three cleansed mana-orbs from the cleansing stone and she replaced them with the four tainted ones. The blue lines began glowing dimly. Not enough to be seen from outside, she had made sure of that, but enough to light up the small cavern with something other than the diseased red light from outside. Almost like the light that came from the devourer, she thought. As she carried the cleansed orbs to the back wall of the cavern, where a small crack gave a good view of the canyon, she thought of the moment when Solus had freed her from that horrific thing's grip.

  Why hasn't he come to save me from Domain? She had always been a loyal follower, helping Solus and Drys to keep Skulltown moving forward. It was possible that he wasn't able to find the rift that Domain had taken her through. Or, perhaps, he didn't know what Domain had done.

  Domain. The thought brought a flash of anger with it. The anger had become increasingly frequent, and she remembered what Solus had told her about his emotional awakening. She really hoped that wasn't what was happening to her, because it sounded like a fantastic way to get oneself ended.

  She waited for a moment to see if more emotional distractions would occur, but her mind remained calm, so she focused on what she had stolen. That wretched AI had thought it could just take her body and push her mind into a corner while he did as he wanted. It had no idea that she had been taking things from it.

  "Status," she muttered, still amazed as the large blue screen appeared in front of her. It was far bigger than the small one Drys had given her, and it had surprised her the first time she had summoned it.

  Name: Sumil

  Age: 12

  Sex: female-ERROR

  Race: Skeleton

  Type: mutation

  Class: Energy Igniter

  Strength: 10/12

  Constitution: 8/10

  Dexterity: 6/14

  Endurance: -

  Intelligence: 16/18

  Wisdom: 17/20

  Charisma: 4/4

  Mana-field: 812/1400

  Physical density: 1091/1200

  Skills: 1

  Inscriptions: 1/7

  Mana generation: 7

  Examining the various values, she nodded to herself. There was a great synergy between raising the values by hunting the Kaots, who then provided orbs that increased her mana-field. If she continued on at her current progression rate, she would soon have raised all of the values she needed for her next evolution. It would be her last real qualitative evolution. Anything outside of some simple sub-race or sub-classes would require a mana-core. For now, though, she had narrowed her next evolution down to two options.

  But first, she needed to see if her estimates were correct.

  Holding one of the mana-orbs, she began to drain it while staring at the values depicted on the status window. A stream of clear and clean mana flowed from the orb through her hand and into her mana-field. Her status window flashed as it began updating her statistics. The mana-field value increased steadily, and when the orb finally crumbled to dust, it had increased by forty-one points.

  Still this discrepancy, she thought as she grabbed another orb. Draining that increased the mana-field by fifty-four. That settles it, she thought as she shook her head. It had to have something to do with the power levels of the undead she was hunting. The best mana-orb she had found so far had only given her eighty-three mana, while the worst had given merely twelve. Those numbers matched her rough estimations of their power.

  She switched to the class list and scrolled through it again. It was immensely long, but many of the options were greyed out and unreadable. She had tried to find the evolutions that Solus might have used, but none in her list dealt with stone shaping. Instead, almost all of them dealt with throwing or shooting energy and fire. She had decided that it had to do with her base evolution. Solus had once told her that his base evolution had been different from hers. That, and there were probably some other inherent differences.

  Scrolling along, she found no newly unlocked entries.

  I need to find a more efficient way to push those numbers up, she thought as she closed the status window. It would be a while before the other four orbs were ready to absorb, and she decided to stay he
re and increase the only stats she knew how to. She concentrated, and a board appeared in front of her mind's eye, one of the skills she had stolen from Domain.

  The board was split into four quadrants, and with effort, she placed a number in each one. The image wavered for a moment before solidifying again, and she held it until she was sure it was stable. Then she split the quadrants into four, resulting in sixteen new partitions. The lines were blurry, and every time she focused on one area, the others slowly became unfocused. It took effort and a good while to stabilize the sixteen quadrants, and when they finally did, she felt a minute elation at her accomplishment. After that, the board evaporated almost immediately.

  Progress, she thought. She had never managed to get the lines this crisp. She wondered if she could keep adding to the board and focused once more. The board appeared, and once again, she began splitting it into quadrants and picturing numbers in them. The numbers took shape for a brief moment, indistinct and in constant flux, then the mental image collapsed in on itself.

  Close, but not good enough, she thought as she called up the status window again. Her intelligence had increased to seventeen, and she nodded. It was a chore to check her status window every time to see if her efforts had borne fruit. Perhaps she should turn the notification sounds back on, but the constant pinging had quickly become an irritating distraction.

  Taking a quick look at the mana-orbs, she saw that glittering spots were slowly beginning to appear on their tainted surfaces. She nodded in satisfaction. They were being purified, something she hadn't known could be done until she found the little nugget of information hidden away in the recesses of Domain's massive mind. She could already imagine the shock on Drys's face when she would tell him, and how happy Solus would be.

  If she could find a way back to them.

  The portal was far away now, and hovering a few dozen feet in the air. She had yet to find any class pattern that would grant her flight or perhaps some way to leap high in the air, nor had she found anything that would allow her to shape the earth as Solus could. Her plans to build a tower had quickly proven to be impossible due to the large number of Kaot Lords that roamed the area around the portal.