Brace For the Wolves

by Nathan Thompson

  "But you're sure that's all I have to do?" I asked carefully. "Just channel my natural mana into it? It won't blow up on me or anything?"

  "That I'm not sure of," Virtus admitted. "But it shouldn't self-destruct."

  Use me, the quiet voice spoke up. I rage.

  "Who was that?" a voice from the mist spoke up.

  "What do you mean?" I asked the nearby ghosts.

  "The quiet one," the young voice replied.

  "The angry one," another replied.

  "He came," a third muttered in disbelief.

  "He finally came to save us."

  "Of course he came," another voice muttered. "An Earthborn's here, isn't he?"

  "Why didn't he come sooner?"

  Grief, the quiet voice said. That's not enough of an answer, I thought back angrily. To my surprise, I felt gentle agreement. Then...

  They should not have suffered. I rage.

  Then, in what was a strained growl...

  Break. This. Thing.

  "Everybody out," I said, unnerved by what I had heard. "Just stay outside for a moment while I handle this."

  "Are you sure?" Karim asked. Breena looked confused, worried and defiant.

  "Please," I stressed. "Just give me thirty seconds. No more than that."

  Breena flew in front of my face. She looked ready to chew her way through another fight, but after a moment she softened and gave me a peck on the nose.

  "I'll be right outside the door," she said finally. "Don't you dare get hurt."

  Everyone stumbled out of the room then, leaving me with a creepy whispering orb and an even creepier, angry-but-quiet, mythological voice.

  The orb was growing more talkative, and more audible. I began to hear it with my actual ears.

  "There is no king here, little Earthborn," the smoky ball hissed. "Flee. Go home. Stay quiet."

  But the voice inside me didn't want me to be quiet anymore.

  It is time, it insisted. Use me. I rage.

  "Broken thing," the voice in the sphere hissed. "Your soul is full of wounds. You cannot be king here."

  But the mysterious handle was in my grasp again. And it was starting to burn. Words reached from it into my mind, and found common ground.

  "You would fight me for the devoured dead? You, of the Dusk Era? You with your handful of Rises?"

  My mouth began speaking the new words.

  “Let the lightning beget fire and light, then let the lightning beget life…”

  "You cannot bring back the dead, dusk-man. Your forefathers lied.”

  I ignored the voice.

  “Brokenness is not an absolute, I continued as my hands began to create smoke of their own, or all worlds would have long ceased. Strike the heart with heat…”

  "Do it, small one! See if your own wounds don't devour you first!"

  “Let the heat spark cells in the heart, so that it may beat itself back alive…”

  Something bright crackled between both of my palms.

  "You don't know what you're talking about! If the dead could rise again all of the worlds would be choked with them!"

  “Let the lightning beget fire and life, and let the light beget the miraculous…”

  A second bolt crackled. The voice in the orb grew angrier.

  "Stop talking! Just try already! Try so that you can finally fail!"

  “Let the light reveal that grief is a sign of life and not death, for no one weeps like the living…”

  The third bolt was smaller, but unlike the other two it was consistent and kept circulating between my two smoking hands.

  "Ugly stupid boy! Who are you? You don't even know what life is! You don't know anything!"

  My hands crackled as well now. And something flickered inside of my palms.

  “Mourning creates room for rest, and then rest creates fuel for peace. Peace creates room for healing, then healing becomes fuel for new opportunities, new opportunities will create at least one victory, no matter all of the many worlds' odds…”

  "Who told you this! Who told you? Who are you to claim any answers at all!"

  As the lightning flickered again, the handle in my hand became a torch. Somehow it ignited both of my hands at once with gray fire.

  “And victory reveals reasons for joy,” I growled, in unison with something else. “Then joy begets more growth. Now by our command…”

  "Him? You fool! He will betray you! He will leave you to suffer and die! He is not even real!"

  I screamed out, alongside whatever ghost was roaring inside of my soul.

  "Let the light turn weeping into joy, mourning into dancing, and false death into new life!"

  My hands swung out wide, and the lightning between them thickened in response. The silvery fireball covering either of them intensified, and molten drops fell from my knuckles. Then I brought my hands together and hurled them forward, like I was tossing a great and heavy weight into my enemy.

  In doing so, I lifted at something inside of myself, pushed, and threw something old out of me at the scornful rock in front of me.

  "NO! NO! INVICTUS IS NOT REAL! YOU CANNOT DO THIS YOU ARE NO PENDR—"

  The fiery gray bolt slammed into the orb. Just before the light seared my eyes I saw my lightning blow it into dust-sized shards.

  Then everything went white.

  I snapped my eyelids shut.

  But it made no difference.

  For a moment I thought I was dead.

  Then...

  Wes....Wes...

  The name came from far away, as if someone was calling me from above water.

  "Wes?"

  Now they were right next to me.

  And they were shaking my shoulder.

  A tiny, pretty woman with wings and spiky pink hair was hovering in front of me, shaking my shoulder. "Wes?" she repeated, eyes wide with worry. "Please answer me."

  "Yeah," I said slowly. "Sorry. Hi, Breena."

  A sigh flushed out of the tiny woman.

  "Darn-and-knit-it, Wes!" she swore in one of her weird fairy oaths. Then she hugged me. "But I'm glad you're okay. What did you do this time? Is the curse-stone still there?"

  "Nope," I said, awkwardly reaching up and giving her a one-handed pat-hug. "Blew it the hell up."

  "Of course you did," Breena sighed again. "But that's okay. That's just what you do. I'll try and make peace with it. How are you feeling?"

  That question startled me. How was I feeling?

  "Good... I think," I replied as I tried to figure it out. "Actually... yeah. I feel good. Better. Lighter."

  And I really did.

  Hold fast, the quiet voice said in my mind. You will be whole despite your harms.

  "Wes?" Eadric's voice came from the hall. "You need to come see this."

  I turned to follow the sound of his voice, Breena trailing behind me. I stepped back into the hall.

  I saw Virtus. I saw Eadric, Karim and Weylin.

  And I also saw a young girl that looked like she was about to enter her teens, with black hair, almost ivory-pale skin, and in a white summer dress.

  "Hi, Mister Dragon," she said shyly.

  "Hi..." I breathed, in shock and awe. "Little ghost?"

  She nodded at me.

  "They said I could be first. The others will take more time. But they want to see you too," she added with a smile. "Just as soon as they can walk again."

  "You saved us," voices down the hall whispered.

  "We can pass on now," and older one said tiredly.

  "Or come back," a younger one said excitedly.

  "Can we have all of it back?" another asked worriedly. "We were cheated of so much."

  Yes. They can. One day.

  So can you.

  Hold fast. I rage.

  "I..." I hesitated. "I think you can. I'll..." I swallowed. "I'll try and make it happen."

  "He means well," one said.

  "We will wait then."

  "You are worthy," the last voice said. "So we will trust you."
>
  "Thank you," I said cautiously. I turned to the young girl, crouching down to talk to her better. "What should I call you now? Since you're not a little ghost anymore?"

  "I remember now." Her smile widened. "Talitha. My name is Talitha Koum." She gave a twirl. "They gave me an Earthborn name, and they said it was special, but they wouldn't say how. But now I know," she giggled. “It’s because I would wake up again.” She gave another twirl, and then she smiled at me even wider. “Thank you, Mister Dragon. Thank you for not letting me be sad and alone.”

  “You're welcome… Talitha,” I said, trying to figure out how she got an Aramaic name mentioned in one of my Earth's religions long before the language ever existed. But another part of me had healed just a little from the sight.

  This time I hadn't walked away. This time I hadn't pretended it was none of my business.

  Now I just needed to do right by the three little ones I had hurt in the past with that mistake.

  But I had to push the rest of those raw thoughts away. “Okay, Avalon,” I said while looking around. “Are you still there?”

  “Affirmative,” the computer rumbled. “Confirming that damaged portions of consciousness are merging more successfully. Data files are being repaired. Awareness is also expanding.”

  “Can you explain how and when the rest of the ghosts down here are returning to life?”

  “Confirming that the disembodied citizens never fully died and therefore can easily return to a resurrected state provided enough planetary mana is provided.”

  “Okay,” I said as I thought carefully. “Will that delay your other process rituals?”

  “Affirmative, though new power will soon be available upon completion of the nascent Lord's Rite. Recommend that the Challenger turn around and re-enter the remaining room to complete the Rite.”

  Oh, I thought. Okay.

  Feeling like an idiot, I turned back around and looked into the room that had held the curse-stone. Behind the pillar was a mural of a sword surrounded by mists, similar to the first door I had opened, the one that began the rite. As I walked towards it, the wall began to creak and rumble. It slowly sank downward, kicking up dust and sediment. In the end it revealed another round room similar to the one that had held the Earthborn corpses. Here though, all of the surrounding openings held doorless tunnels leading off into inky blackness.

  But it was the center of the room that held my attention. A swirling vortex spiraled around a tiny hole in the middle of the circular floor.

  I walked carefully to the center, wondering about the circumstances that led to the creation of this place.

  “Avalon,” I enquired. “This place supposedly sealed all or most of the planet’s invaders. Why is it also the location of the Rites for rulership?”

  “The current facility was deemed by Avalon's early inhabitants as the most fortified structure on the planet, making the ideal location for multiple purposes, especially for matters of kingship and security.”

  I guess that makes sense, I thought. Kings were often located in the most secure locations, and from what I loosely remembered about Earth's feudal periods, the lord’s castles or manors doubled as a place of safety during attacks. It still seemed odd that they also designed this structure to keep invaders in once they finally made it inside.

  But that was far from the most frightening discovery I made today.

  The most frightening discovery, topping even that of finding my prehistoric superhuman ancestors on this place, was the discovery of the shape of the hole in the center of the floor.

  Like the portal that had first brought me from my house that night and into Avalon, the hole in the middle of the floor was shaped so that my magic handle was a perfect fit for it.

  “Breena?” I called out, trying not to shake.

  “What is it, Wes?” my tiny fairy friend asked me as she flew over. She saw me point with a trembling finger at the hole in the floor, and cocked a tiny eyebrow at me, nonplussed at my panic. I used my other shaking hand to pull out my magic weapon-handle. I held it out in front of me.

  “Breena,” I said, still quivering, “I found this, this thing that’s been solving about half of all of my problems, inside of a game. I don’t know why I haven’t freaked out about it before.” I tried to get my shaking voice under control. I failed. “Maybe I was just too busy thinking about all of the other impossible things happening. Maybe I was just trying to get my legs and brain working again. Or I was too busy trying not to break from all the deaths and torture. But Breena, I found this inside of a game. A fake world I can’t take anything back from.” Another shivering breath. “How did something that’s supposed to be old enough to work here—” I pointed to the hole in the floor—“something that’s thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or millions and millions of my planet’s years old, wind up inside of a ten-year old VR game? How did it record the truth of my father’s murder? How did it wind up in my hands when I fought Cavus? How did it get inside of my video game, as an item drop for a brand-new monster that came out the same year I fought it? Then how did it get back out when it found me?” I finally looked at Breena, as more comprehension seared into me. “I’m here because of this thing, Breena. Remember? Stell never Called me here. It’s this thing’s fault. Everything that ever happened. Every opportunity, victory and defeat. And now I’m supposed to just stick it in a hole in the ground, in a place that’s been locked up longer than any of our recorded histories. Why, Breena? What’s...” Something skipped in my brain for a moment, but then I could see and think again. “What’s going on?”

  Breena bit her lip as she hovered in front of me. She started to answer, but then a voice spoke from the doorway.

  “It’s Breaker.”

  Talitha hesitated, then stepped into the room with us. “Its name is Breaker. That’s what the stories called it.” Her white dress flickered as she walked closer. “How did you find it?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “It just showed up…” I struggled to explain. “Out of one of my world’s stories. I finished the story, and then the next thing I knew it was here.”

  “Oh,” the girl said with a shrug. “Okay. That’s normal.”

  No it wasn’t.

  “That’s what Breaker does,” she continued, oblivious to my incredulous expression. “It breaks and cuts through things.”

  “Things?” I asked, objecting to her poor choice of nouns. “What kinds of things?”

  “All kinds,” she said with another shrug. “Iron, steel, lies, strongholds, slavery, certain doom, the impossible… death.” She looked at herself, then at my handle again. “I’m glad you brought it. Are you going to find the rest of it?”