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by Matthew Siege

  As carefully as I could, I picked the glowing object up. The outside texture had looked like finely-grained leather but now that I was holding it, the membrane felt much more like satin in my hand.

  I frowned. The frog dog thing's hide had been like that. That must have been this creature's mother. I'd saved him and then she had saved me. I was certain now that whatever words had made up her final moments had included a request.

  "I'll do my best," I told the Citadel, since that was my only witness. I only had 3 Hit Points left though, so whatever vow I was making was practically guaranteed to be both fruitless and short-lived.

  I saw pretty quickly that I had myself a bit of a quandary. The egg wouldn't be safe in my pocket and holding it was probably just as dangerous. Even though the quiver's ability to store objects had thus far been limited to arrows, I was willing to take the chance.

  I held my breath and crossed my fingers as I carefully placed the egg inside the throat of the only container I had that was big enough for it. As soon as it crossed the threshold, it vanished from my hand.

  That was the easy part...

  I concentrated for a moment and was pleasantly surprised when it immediately returned. The thing inside was still swimming in little concentric circles. If its short trip to whatever place the mysterious Phasic Field sent things had done it any harm, it didn't seem to be aware of it yet.

  Reminder: Unsuitable Environment

  The Nursery requires a higher level of acidity than your Faction has been designed to tolerate. You will lose 1 Hit Point every fifteen minutes until you rectify this.

  -1 Hit Point

  Shit. Down to one, now. I returned the egg to the quiver. It was probably safer in there than I was out here.

  I needed to find somewhere that had air that didn't slowly kill me. Of all the ways to go, slow-motion exposure to airborne acid had to be one of the worst that I could imagine.

  Then get your ass moving, I chided myself. Take stock, pick a direction, and save yourself.

  It was good advice, even though it was the sort of obvious input your brain gives you when it’s making a point of willfully ignoring exactly how hard obeying the sentiment actually is. Most of the horizon ahead of me was still flat. There was one sloppy lump in the distance that might turn out to be mountains though, and simply because it was different than everything else I headed for it.

  Primary Ability: Suffer

  The pain won't go away, but inexorable anguish alone might not end you.

  +1 Hit Point

  Well, that was useful. I tried to do more than grimace at the fact that my hit points had just doubled, but all I could do was wonder how long it would be before the environment eroded them once again.

  The message was right about the pain, too. With every step my joints felt like they'd been dusted with a generous helping of crushed glass. If I'd had the option of walking on a bed of nails I'd have gladly accepted, just to give my feet a break.

  "Nothing worth doing is easy," I muttered to myself. My mother had given me a framed picture with the saying on the day of my diagnosis. I'd tucked it away in the attic somewhere, but now those five words filled me up. They became my mantra. On and on they rolled in my brain as I practically chanted them with every anguished step.

  Nothing.

  Worth.

  Doing.

  Reminder: Unsuitable Environment

  The Nursery requires a higher level of acidity than your Faction has been designed to tolerate. You will lose 1 Hit Point every fifteen minutes until you rectify this.

  -1 Hit Point

  Is.

  Easy.

  Nothing.

  Worth.

  Doing.

  Is.

  Easy.

  Primary Ability: Suffer

  The pain won't go away, but inexorable anguish alone might not end you.

  +1 Hit Point

  Nothing worth doing is easy, damn it.

  The only thing I could do was keep on keeping on. I didn't see any more of the Glossy Vipers, and soon the sound and then the sight of water faded away behind me. The sand beneath my feet transitioned to pebbles, and eventually the pebbles gave way to stones. After a while I blearily realized that the stones were gone. I was walking on perfectly square polished rocks now that had been tightly ordered into rows and columns. It was like walking on top of a finely crafted grid or along a surface of graph paper crafted solely of black rock.

  Stopping somehow seemed more difficult than continuing this death march, but I dragged myself to a halt anyway, practically falling to my hands and knees as I inspected the ground.

  All of the squares were exactly the same, their edges as sharp as blades. None of them were quite flush with the one beside them and the gap was endlessly deep. I had the feeling that, if I could craft lights small enough, I could drop them down the seams and watch them fall forever, down into a place beyond knowing.

  I stood up, and felt my knees wobble. Vertigo. Standing on these infinitely narrow, precisely placed stilts was disconcerting, and even though I couldn't feel the slightest tremor or quake in the ground, I still felt as if at any moment I might topple to one side.

  Reminder: Unsuitable Environment

  The Nursery requires a higher level of acidity than your Faction has been designed to tolerate. You will lose 1 Hit Point every fifteen minutes until you rectify this.

  -1 Hit Point

  I got back to my feet, feeling the coldness of the stone radiate up through the soles of my now-ragged boots. The wind got in between the cracks of the columns and whistled eerily. Speed was clearly of the essence, and at least the gusts were at my back. I refused to look down again, instead staring at the mountain range to make sure that in the otherwise featureless environment I didn't drift to one side or the other.

  At first I kept my eyes open for more predators, but eventually I didn't even bother. I wouldn't exactly welcome their approach, but there would be something in the deepest, darkest parts of my psyche that would be grimly thankful for an end to this.

  The stones I walked on extended for as far as I could see. There was no food here. No warmth. No comfort of any kind, and I felt more alone than I ever had before. A big part of me wanted to take out the egg and hold it, even though I knew in my heart how selfish that was since the air would dry it out.

  I'd kill it, and for what? A few moments of questionable solace?

  Again and again my suffering replaced my Hit Point, only for the environment to tear it away again. Time was beginning to lose its meaning. I couldn't keep track of the rhythm between the addition and subtraction of my health, which meant that I had to stagger on amongst a black cloud of uncertain anticipation. At any moment the environment may win out, reducing my life and my hopes to zero.

  The most frightening thing of all came when I looked at my stats.

  Hypothermic - Body temperature below standard.

  Dazed - Reflexes and cognition slowed.

  Despondent - All hope is lost. Encouraging thoughts suppressed.

  Hungry - You will become Famished if food is not ingested.

  It wasn't even the actual impact on my attributes that scared me the most, though it was deeply worrying that it seemed the Citadel was able to actively censor my thoughts. No, the fact that I'd gone this long without dragging up my status proved to me once and for all just how far gone I was. I'd neglected to use one of the most basic methods a gamer had to check on myself.

  You are losing it, Adam...

  As bad as it was, the fact that Despondent was listed allowed the ghost of a smile to cross my lips. Imagine how many psychologists' careers would be wasted back on Earth, how many hundreds of billions of dollars of tuition would be immediately refunded if everybody back there could just hop into the Citadel in order to find out if they had daddy issues or if a cigar was sometimes just a cigar...

  I walked until I couldn't, and when I couldn't I crawled.

  My tongue swelled up until I could feel it pressin
g against each and every one of my teeth. My throat felt like it was the size of a pinhole, and I had to concentrate in order to gather every breath.

  I could no longer look to the mountains. Instead, the best I could do was focus on a spot three feet ahead of me. At some stage the squares had gotten larger. The sharpness of their corners had been cutting me to ribbons, and I paused to look back over my shoulder at the trail of gore.

  Suffer. I was certainly getting my money's worth with that one, whether I wanted it or not.

  In response to that thought came a prompt:

  At its extreme limits, Suffer may be made voluntarily dormant. Doing so will result in your death, though the penalties to taking one's own life will not apply. Would you like to render Suffer dormant now?

  No.

  Are you certain? If dismissed, this option will not return during this life.

  "Fuck off," I croaked.

  ->Where are you, Human? I received word that your death is imminent and returned to witness it.<-

  "And you can fuck off, too," I told the Evvex. I'd have loved to spar a little harder, but that was the best I could offer. Still, I didn't see any reason for him to lie to me, so at least he wasn't back on the station beating my body to a pulp.

  I'd expected him to fire back a reply, but instead I felt a palpable pause. Then, ->Where are you hiding?<-

  I looked around. "It's gorgeous here. So many trees... The air smells like jasmine and... puppy feet."

  ->Where did they put you? The Yvarre'en know full well the punishment for interfering. Tell me the name of the place and I promise your Faction mercy. I will make your death instantaneous, once you are out of the Citadel for good.<-

  "Nothing."

  ->What? Nothing?<-

  "Worth doing." I pushed myself to my knees. It wasn't as difficult as I'd anticipated. The square of black stone to either side of me even obediently rose up from the ground to aid me when I reached out for support.

  ->Has your feeble mind snapped?<-

  "Is easy." I stood, enjoying a single unbroken moment of golden triumph before tilting backward on my heels and crashing to the ground once more. Either the stones I was lying on sunk into the ground or the ones around me rose.

  The sky or my vision darkened.

  I lived or I died.

  The dark stones grew until they were all Citadels. It began to rain. I wept as it did, my tears lost in the sweet water that poured down my face and gathered beneath me. I used the last of my strength to reach into the quiver and withdraw the egg, placing it on my chest. The creature within swam around happily, occasionally pausing to push its face in my direction.

  The tough casing made it blurry, and I smiled at it.

  Primary Ability: Imprint

  Newborn neutral Fauna that see you before a member of their own species will become unwaveringly loyal.

  Will you name this creature now?

  "I'm going to call you Clutch," I told it.

  Divergent Caecilian #441,860,818 moniker had been changed to Clutch.

  It didn't seem to mind, bobbing happily in a way that reminded me of Toot. "Let's call my debt paid, okay? I'm done." What was it Toot had said to me, at the end? It had seemed so foolishly final at the time, but now the words made sense. "Remember me with fondness," I told Clutch.

  "Important words," Toot said from beside me. "I wonder if you're worthy of them."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  "Toot? Is that you?" I had the impression that time had slipped by, though I didn't feel as if I'd taken part in it or blacked out. It was simply gone, with the pieces of my consciousness neatly spliced back together to almost seamlessly fill the gap.

  "It is. I ended your conversation with the Evvex. I hope you don't mind."

  I sat up. I could just make out a large figure beside me, though it looked nothing like the glowing orb I was used to when speaking with him. His face gleamed with the white of bone, though his voice came from within his chest. The mouth didn't even open and close. The only movement he made was a sweeping gesture across my body.

  Rite of Renewal - your Hit Points are returning.

  As always, the Citadel wasn't bullshitting me. I was halfway back to full health and climbing fast.

  I looked around, staring up at where the sky had been. All I saw in any direction was the smooth surface of an orderly forest of closely constructed Citadels. The ground began to glow, and by its light I saw that Toot was made of metal, though of a far more flexible construction that I'd ever seen. His lifeless skull looked like real bone, though.

  I stood up, reaching out to touch the side of the nearest massive Citadel. It was warm, and wet with rainwater that trickled down from far above. "Toot, could you have healed me this whole time?"

  He shrugged, and the gesture was both mechanical and robotic. Mechanical because it looked like he'd been practicing it for days, just waiting for the chance to show it off and robotic because he was, well, a robot. "Would you have wanted me to?"

  "Yes!"

  He shrugged again, and I saw the skull watching for my reaction from the corner of its hollow eyes.

  I chuckled. "Am I supposed to be impressed? Congratulations, you can shrug. I find it fascinating that, of all the human expressions and gesticulations you could've chosen, you went with the one that means 'I don't know'."

  "Does the gesture suit me?" he asked.

  I wasn't sure, so I shrugged. "Damn it, now you've got me doing it!" I took a deep breath, appreciating for the first time how little pain I was in. "Thanks for saving me, though. I did miss you."

  "If all has gone to plan, you will have already saved yourself."

  "Good old Toot, already talking in circles..." I panicked for a moment, uselessly slapping at my pockets and then scanning the luminous ground. "I had an egg. It was on my chest when..."

  "It is safe. I returned it to your quiver."

  I was relieved, but the logic of that made me cock my head at him. Trading glances with the skull was too disconcerting, but it was still better than being alone. "How did you do that? I figured that I was in charge of the Phasic Field."

  "You, or one bonded to you. The Divergent Caecilian within the egg is already smart enough to make use of it, on your behalf. It went readily enough."

  "Divergent Caec... Oh, you mean the thing in the egg. I've been kind of mentally calling the species Frog Dogs."

  "Fascinating. Later, if there is time, please remember to tell me all of the other pointless thoughts that populate your head. I am endlessly interested and have nothing better to do with my time."

  I ignored him, reaching into my quiver and bringing back the egg before gently pressing it to the wall so that it could soak up some more water. I thought that Toot would eventually make some comment to hurry me along, but when I turned to see what he was doing I was surprised to find him watching me quietly. "What's wrong?"

  He shrugged again, but I bit my tongue instead of pointing it out again. "You have surprised me, Adam. My compatriots and I spent many long hours in heated debate about you. It was most disconcerting. We spoke for a shorter time about the decision to don these new bodies. You are an enigma. Just when one of us is certain you will fail, you succeed. And, at the very moment of success, your failings overwhelm you once again. It is exhausting."

  I grinned at him, though I stopped when I realized that the skull was already permanently grinning back. "Tell me about it."

  "I am trying."

  "It's an expression..."

  He started to shrug, though he thought better of it and stopped halfway through. "Of course. My people have recently taken some time to hastily study Earth, but the intricacies are yet beyond us. We were far more concerned with your species' ability to survive the use of the Relic."

  Now we were getting somewhere. I carefully returned Clutch to the quiver and asked, "What does it do?"

  "Nothing."

  I was glad that I had put the egg away, because now I found myself unable to stop my hands from
clenching into fists. Speaking with Toot was like walking down a hallway that only lit the area right in front of you whenever your foot hit the ground, never showing you where the next step should go.

  "Fine," I said to him. "Don't tell me."

  "You see?" he said. "Defeat from the jaws of victory. You always ask the wrong question, Adam. This is exactly what I cited when I voted against you."

  "When you what?"

  "Don't worry. There are thirteen of us. You received seven votes."

  The knowledge that the decision had gone in my favor was there, but I was too livid to concentrate on it. "But you're the one that knows me best! How the fuck did I get seven votes if the asshole that had been hanging out with me the longest didn't have my back?"

  He snapped his metallic fingers, and impressively dexterous gesture for the clearly robotic hands. "And that, dear friend, is why I insisted on voting last. I was able to act without compunction."

  He sounded so damn proud of himself that it robbed me of whatever retort I was ready to lob back in his direction.

  "You are angry," he stated.

  "No shit."

  "The Relic," he said, his tone making it clear that this explanation was as close to an apology as I was going to get, "is our most prized possession. Sadly, we waited too long to use it. We are not impulsive by nature, and in this case it was to our detriment. In our misguided patience, the Yvarre'en squandered every opportunity to use it as we waited for a more favorable one to present itself. The Evvex destroyed us utterly, and the Relic lies dormant."

  Hang on... "Destroyed you? I thought you said you challenged them for control of the top floor and lost."

  Toot didn't exactly nod, but the skull sort of bobbed when he bent at the waist in acknowledgment. "We did."