The 108 Chapter 50: The Bomb Run (Patreon)

Deza can’t debrief when I arrive because she’s having one of those extremely rare breaks granted to a cop during an apocalypse, one she decided to spend with her son. Things are bad on the station, but not as bad as usual. Antea and Krane have so many more les have been thrown out of the window. Hierarchical structures that had been shattered now function, robbing them of their usual assets while at the same time, the war with the Transformation’s Tree of Everything has never been going so well. Enderlith is actually on the offensive, cutting great swaths of territory and burning tens of thousands of abominations every day. I might have a longer year if Space decides to come late. I still don’t know what her logic is, exactly, but I suspect it relates to me. She certainly doesn’t give two shits about saving the station. In the end, I decide to head to Solas’ workshop right away. No reason to waste time, and I want to find out where the bomb comes from.

***

Periphery Ki- 5 is more populated than I expected. With Transformation’s war in full swing, those remote districts have suddenly become much more popular despite being away from everything. We’re near the base of the station, but with no access to those huge circular areas where one may grow crops and install factories. The periphery is made out of smaller, cramped districts built around inaccessible crystal hollows. Even the song key doesn’t grant me access: those strange pockets are sealed. 

The people there are hungry and desperate, poor inhabitants of the outskirts dragged there to crowded dwellings never designed to host so many. The air smells of old sweat. When I  exit the train station, guards in Law’s uniform distribute small food rations, forcing the locals into disciplined lines. They direct me to a distant corner of the narrow district. Some thugs follow me for a while, but they pull out before I need to do anything. 

Solas’ workshop is the least business-oriented business I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Not only is it nestled at the arse end of a lost district in the most remote part of Enderlith, but the entrance looks like a bank vault door inside of a prison. There is a nice little copper plate on the wall that says ‘Solas’ workshop’ so I know I’m in the right place but otherwise I couldn’t have been certain. Clearly, Solas has no money or publicity problem. 

I also find proof of Egun’s passage in a recess near the reinforce gate. It appears there is a puzzle to open the over-engineered entrance, so I assume visitors are expected to prove their intellect if they want to meet Solas without an appointment. I, of course, being both dim and terrible at puzzles, could only ever hope to knock. Egun found a more… direct route.

He peeled the wall away. 

I knew he could do that, of course, but I am a bit surprised that someone who made such a gate didn’t reinforce the nearby walls, at least while it’s still metal and not part of Enderlith’s crystalline superstructure. I kneel nearby and smell the dusty stench of old corpses. Yep, that’s Egun’s handywork indeed.

I crawl in slowly, modding my eyes for low visibility and making sure Egun didn’t leave any surprises. I find myself in a foyer with a few badly matched chairs. The place is dusty with an eclectic mix of styles in the sparse furniture that shows little care for comfort. This looks like some sort of lobby, An open door leads farther in. As I follow it, the smell of dead bodies grows stronger.

Behind the door is a large workshop, spacious enough to accommodate a few buses. Racks of tools cover the far wall. A sliding door on the right must lead to utility tunnels large enough to accommodate some of the crates I see on the side. Otherwise, the ground is littered with strange devices, models, and tools of unknown function. Half-finished projects wait in neatly separated piles. It looks chaotic at first glance, but a brief inspection shows that each work in progress waits at the center of a planetary system of parts, then tools, some shared between several machines. All of the larger devices share that same bronze aesthetics seen in the soul bomb. I study the pattern and find two missing elements, likely the bomb and teleporter. I walk forward in the silence.

“Mr Solas, I presume?”

There are two corpses, both mummified by the dry air of the workshop. One is a young woman, probably a teenager from the bone structure despite the dry white hair. The other is the old man who must be Mr Solas. Both have some of the darkest skin I’ve seen on station, with large foreheads kept deliberately exposed by ornaments as a clear aesthetic choice. The old man is wrinkled and his halo of wispy hair leaves a circle exposed at the back of the skull. I step closer, finding puddles of dry blood at their feet. 

The woman was tortured, then both were executed. Definitely Egun’s handiwork, savage and sloppy in equal measure. 

I guess I found the old man he was referring to when he asked me who sent me after him. I fail to see how a cadaver could send me after anyone, but we’re on Enderlith, so what do I know? I slowly cast the light spell, bathing the scene in an unforgiving white light. The puddles are dark and flaky now, and the bodies so dessicated I might have pulled them out of Kheops’ pyramid (I’d do anything for the British Museum). This is where I catch a glint of something in Solas’ claw-like fingers. I reach for it, not too worried about toxins. Worst case scenario, I can always cut off my arm.

It’s a remote. With a button.

“If this is a self-destruct mechanism, I’ll be very upset.”

But it’s not. Lights blink on from the ceiling, so bright I need to unmod my eyes. A mechanical female voice emerges from a concealed speaker.

“Checking for identity. Visitor not recognized. Beginning playback.”

Next come belabored breath. The voice is male and deep, old but incredibly smooth, the kind of golden voice that would sell audiobooks by the millions. It would be a pleasant experience but for the pained recollection or the fact the owner’s a corpse sitting next to me.

“Hello, if you are listening to this, I am quite unfortunately dead.”

There is pause while the voice gathers strength.

“I used a capsule of rebirth — a prototype of mine — to recover, however I fear it is still that, a prototype. If I could have just finished it for Murundu. By all the gods, Murundu…”

Another pained pause. I sigh, reminding myself that this isn’t the end. I can still help those people.

“He came with a group of thugs. I called the guards and he… killed them. He slaughtered them in front of the gate, pulling them apart. Like… toys. I saw his smile, and knew I couldn’t let him in, but he peeled the wall off. He destroyed my automaton.”

I look around, finding no traces of it. Maybe Egun packed it in the vain hope of repairing it, but then got busy with the mass murder project.

“I was forced to give him something I was building for the planet. It is, and I regret to say it, a soul bomb. I gave it to him. I taught him how to use it. I am… sorry. Whoever finds this, know that I am sorry, but he had my little Murundu and I couldn’t resist. I am so, so very sorry…”

I get it, you miserable bastard. I really do.

“But… there is still… some hope.”

The breath goes faster, a sign of bloodloss-related hypoxia. He’s going to go into shock very soon. Or, I guess, he did.

“The… the bomb. I trapped it. It will explode before the countdown is properly started. I trapped the teleporter as well. I have done what I could. I, Solas, Avatar of Innovation, have done what I could. I should… I should have mentioned. The, you have to be careful. He’ll find a soul. Very dangerous. Murundu, I am so sorry, little one. So… sorry.”

It takes an uncomfortable thirty seconds for Solas to die. I turn to the mummified remains. I am tempted to push back the sadness and the strong feeling of empathy back into my soul and subsume it, but I don’t. I shouldn’t make a habit of it.

“You got him, Solas. You get him every time. You stopped Malice by yourself, an avatar of the Heavenly Court. Well done.”

I’m really not alone in this fight. I need to make sure I don’t forget that. Solas might be dead now, murdered alongside Murundu, but it will not always be the case. Right now, it takes too much time for me to reach and protect him. I need to go through the Garden to recover my strength… but when I can start as a second awakening, I might be able to do something. Third? I can turn Egun into paste the first night. I could travel directly to the Vindrius compound and kill him before he gets a chance to murder his entire family. Not now, but later. I can always do better. I can save those people. I can improve the station bit by bit, loop after loop, until it’s perfect. Or as good as it will ever be. Bad Steve. Stop thinking about perfection.

When I faced him, Egun asked me if ‘the old man’ had sent someone after him. It looks like  Solas did try. I guess that psychopath was right. It’s amazing how one tends to gather enemies when one’s a rabid asshole.

I move around the workshop, but find nothing of use. It doesn’t look like discovering the origins of the bomb or the soul that fuels it helps at all, but I’m getting the feeling it might be useful much further down the line. I can find myself an inventor if I want to. I could also… actually, I don’t know what I want to do with Vrok’s soul. Free it? Can it even be done? Will I piss off the gods? Idle thoughts, for now.

On the way back I consider the number of avatars I’ve already met, and wonder if it’s a high or a low number. Kaysari the mysterious glass woman near Mercy’s temple is one, though I don’t know what’s her domain and she dies very quickly. Krane’s two. Law’s avatar never deigned to approach me. Pain and Malice make four, Sadness five. Retribution doesn’t count, because he was the Archon. Space is six. Innovation is seven. I never met War and Transformation. I can’t tell, but it’s still a fraction of a fraction, barely 5 or 6% of all available players. I hope I’ve yet to meet the good ones.

I’m almost at the Garden when my datapad lights up with dozens of alerts, all of them military. Abominations seen in seven districts. Eight. In the Needles?

What the fuck just happened?

***

Kimera stands by my side while I replace some of the mnemonic nodules stored for her. The Garden is a hive of desperate activity, but in her room, silence reigns. And disorder, but I can’t be there all the time. There are quite a few changes, this time. My capacity has increased with practice, so adding new memories isn’t unusual. This time, however, she has removed a few as well. Not updated, removed.

“What is this about?” I eventually ask.

Kimera sighs, leaning against a nearby table.

“You have been distant lately. You haven’t pursued a romance with me.”

I open my mouth to protest and offer excuses, but I know that look. It’s pointless to argue the truth with a rigorous researcher like her.

“I do not blame you. I know this situation weighs heavily upon your shoulders. I also know that we have lost ourselves in the past. It does not change the fact that you have created a distance. Have you found someone else?”

“What? No!”

She nods to herself.

“I would not be surprised. Founder, I wouldn’t even know since you are the one who must rekindle what we have every time. I believe the situation is untenable. If I wish to keep you by my side, there is only one option left to me. I must find a method to keep up with you. Anthea believes increasing our awakening is an impossibility, though I am not so sure with the Visage of the Meek being an option and memories being so vivid. There are… two other paths.”

“Will you tell me?”

“I would rather not, unless they pan out. As I trusted you, so, too, must you trust me. And now, time for us to die, yes?”

“I… I was going to try and save Deza and Namun. They’re in the Needles.”

“You will die fighting, then? Manly and in accordance with your continued training? I approve.”

Of course, she does.

“Let me just call Krane first.”

***

The Needles have fallen. Krane and I stand under one of the access points looking in the distance. The surviving blooms who resisted being in vacuum after the bomb have barely recovered. Their dim lights shine on the sprint towers covering the entire open area, and then, they stop. Something is devouring them, fast enough to be visible even a dozen kilometers away. Uncountable creatures eat at the last embers like so many locusts so it looks like the advance of a mass of darkness rather than any individual drone, a great blight that devours everything in its path including the very light itself. It is unstoppable, at this stage. Even the dots of fiery rage of the Seven Suns elders are smothered by counter spells, fires that could burn a nation bare embers before that drowning power. The population of the Needles is in the millions, with hundreds upon hundreds of undefended passages leading into the many hearts of the station. The flood can no longer be stopped.

“The station’s done for,” I realize.

By my side, Krane doesn’t object.

“How the fuck did it happen? It’s the worst outcome I’ve ever seen.”

“Our forces overextended, and terrible luck led to an error with sealed gate orders,” Krane laconically replies. He doesn’t sound too bothered.

I look again. I remember Deza and Namun’s location, near the middle. I know the trains have stopped, and make a brief calculation. There is no way they got out, if they were at home. I check my messages just in case. There is no reply from her.

“Looks like I came here for nothing.”

“Perhaps not,” Krane replies.

He doesn’t elaborate.

I consider spending another few months on the run, hiding from the roaming patrols of abomination while Transformation faces off against War and, eventually, Space. I could hide in the Depths and meditate. It would be a valid use of my time. But I don’t think I will.

“I think it’s time to reset,” I tell Krane. “I’m not going through another full station wipe.”

“Hold on,” Krane says.

He walks forward, then adjusts the straps on his shield.

“Do you trust me?”

“With my lives. Why?”

Krane moves through simple warm-up moves. His body creaks a bit with every step, a reminder that he’s no spring chicken. 

“You’re running away. Making excuses. If this were a normal situation, I would agree with you. But it’s not. Death is not a barrier for either of us. For anyone on station, actually.”

“What are you getting at?” I ask, though I have a strong inkling.

“Running away is habit-forming. One starts making excuses, and then…”

He sighs.

“I know it must be hard for a civilian like you.”

“I don’t think I can be considered a civilian anymore.”

Krane half concedes the point with a shrug.

“That is true enough. Then for someone who never intended to serve in the army until death.”

“Ok, yeah, that wasn’t the plan.”

“So the piece of advice I will give you might be difficult to accept, but it is better to die fighting on your feet than repeatedly run away because dying on your feet is also habit-forming.”

I glare at him because obviously that can’t be true, but I get his meaning. If I want to be the fearless looper I am destined to be, I’ve got to act the part as often as I can. I did it against the Raptor down on Obis. I can do it again here and now.

“Ok, let’s go. We can have our heroic last stand for the glory of the ancestors and all that. I just wish we had some good music to go with that. Let’s join the nearest choke point and hold it while what’s left of the civilians evacuates.”

Krane agrees, then we both jump off towards a nearby metro tunnel. I grow wings to slow my descent while Krane simply jumps from ledge to ledge, the ground shaking under his feet with each landing.

“I got an idea,” I tell him, grabbing my weapon.

“Speak.”

“You be the general, organizing everyone, and I…”

I twirl my stick around.

“I’ll be your Chief of Staff!”

His face doesn’t change, but his soul groans and it is my victory.

***

We land on a bridge next to a running group of warriors. Only when I get close do I realize those are all women covered in elaborate flower tattoos, when their dark armor shows skin anyway. They wear their hair shorn on the sides and carefully braided on top so the tips disappear down their back where, I assume, there is less chance of them being grabbed. I politely bow to the leader who’s got twenty centimeters on me in my modded form.

“Greetings. The district’s fucked and we were wondering if we could die at your side in glorious battle. I am a soul awakened and my friend here can really use a shield.”

My smile doesn’t really help. The tall lead woman gives Krane a passing glance.

“The disgraced general is known to us. The clanarch will be displeased if I fight alongside men, unsworn ones at that, however…”

“We’re all dead anyway,” a blonde one with a massive saber comments. 

A shorter black-haired one with the largest scythe I’ve ever seen chirps in.

“Barricade 7 reports sightings. Soul awakened can detect impostors.”

“We fight pretty well too,” I argue.

“The teachings of Sallur encourage nobility in the face of death,” the blonde comments.

“You’re Sallurians!” I finally realize. 

It’s been a long time since I fought alongside one of those unhinged warrior monks. I didn’t know they had the nun version as well.

“Look, sisters, the males are growing more cunning. Soon they will tell the sun from a big lamp,” the blonde one comments.

“Sorry,” I tell her, “I’m English. What’s a sun?”

“Enough,” the leader interrupts. “You can banter while we fight. General, please fight by my side. Soul awakened in the center. Let’s go.”

We fight long and hard. Joining the marauding band means we crush scouting parties with enough time to recover between skirmishes. I coordinate us with our souls. I intercept tendrils and cut them, I inflict catastrophic damage with fist, staff, and claw. I burn the largest creatures in suicidal charges. I speed up to save endangered teammates. I throw flesh-melting, poisoned spikes at fliers. I crush and I tear and I stab and I throw and I wrestle and I kick and I even bite and maul and scream and it doesn’t matter. The horde closes in, having already poured through other entrances anyway. We fight at the edge of the checkpoint, then in the tunnel, then back to back. And then we die. 

Death count: 15

Loss count: 6

Qualia points acquired: 883

Previous total available: 800

New total available: 1683

Experienced Shadow culture 5

Partial Shadow training: 25

Obtained and mastered the Cat war form: 200

Faced your haunting fear: 50

Triumph of defeating the assassin: 2

Two stage battle against a large carnivorous plant organism: 25

Learned about the Explorer’s Guild: 1

Learned a revelation about the game’s cycle: 3

Fully dehumanized someone talking to you: 200

Acquired cover tools and used them: 25

Avatar hunting training: 130

Found one more avatar: 1

Realized the origin of the bomb: 1

Met another of the seven tribes of Sallur: 5

Fear No End: 120

Last Man Standing: 90

***

Chronos offers me mead this time.

“Appropriate as I feel like I could go to Valhalla and laugh at those wankers who got there killing Benedictine monks. Absolute tossers, the lot of them. They should have faced flesh-melting abominations like true men. Wooh! I’m not even sad, that was a last stand for the ages. And a good harvest as well.”

I drink it.

“Wow, that's so sweet.”

“Honey tends to be. How are you, my avatar?”

“Could be better.”

I look at Morag who’s wearing some sort of plastic viking helmet replica, the cheapest shit one could find in a third rate amusement park yet sold for an outrageous price.

“You know they didn’t have horns on their helmets, right? Horns on helmets are silly.”

Two more pairs of horns grow from the plastic horror.

“Fine, it’s your helmet. Ok, no regrets here. Also…”

I look at Chronos who smiles back with polite interest. I think he can answer that one, but I’m not sure. Well, nothing to it.

“Could you please tell me why Vrok’s soul is in a sealed container? I’m asking because I want to know if the same will happen to me.”

Chronos keeps smiling thinly, looking like some financial genius listening to an intriguing offer.

“As a matter of fact, I can and will tell you. Vrok did what many do when they have held to power for too long and forgotten that they are not the mantle they wear: he refused to abdicate.”

I blink.

“Sorry? You mean, archons can just refuse?”

“Indeed not, as you must have realized by now. The archon can graciously allow the blessings to leave their essence, or they can resist, in which case their body is simply… torn apart.”

He gives me a knowing look.

“I will say this now and I will say it again: power changes people, as does longevity. There is a reason why we set a thousand cycles as an arbitrary maximum when the game was first agreed upon, and we have yet to be proven completely wrong. For now, chase those considerations from your mind. They are not relevant to your current… predicament.”

“So you’re saying archons can also just abdicate and keep living?”

“Yes, with some caveats.

“Alright.”

I try to express how I feel about the whole thing.

“I’m just glad I won’t end up in a box for all of eternity.”

“It would be unfortunate.”

“And I think… this is it.”

My training year may have been cut short, but I think I’m ready. I can fully defeat Egun without any last minute bullshit. This is it. Our moment.

It’s time to stop the bomb and open the game. I can’t lose this time.

***

There will be no games, and there will be no mistakes. I flee the apartment. I buy notebooks at the Garden, filling them in record time. I give the first books to Antea and Kimera. I use special codes to go through the Garden’s security just to be a few hours faster. Antea gets me the reversal, then I’m off to recruit Deza. Krane joins me in the Garden. I gather all the supplies we will need including my song key. We leave early, near the seventh, with Lex Nex the bomb defusal expert and, unfortunately, Brigadier. I swear his family saw their own name and decided it was a mission statement. 

I lead my mismatched group through the Shallow Depths in a straight line. Some of the ambushers who attacked us before seem to reconsider, which means fewer delays. We move through the deserted districts of the shallows at a brisk pace. I kill a snake that should have known better. In the ‘evening’, I gather the team and show them, with a diagram, exactly what I expect of them and exactly how they should act if they want us to succeed. Brigadier wants to know what we’re facing. I have the numbers and approximate awakening levels, though there are variations sometimes. I tell him about the bomb, who made it, but not who’s in it. We practice moving in formation.

Kimera drags me to a corner after we’re done.

“What is it?” I ask, perhaps a bit too focused on our objective.

“I have saved a few relevant memories, though my notes say I have… sacrificed some good ones too. But I know, ex-disciple. I know that I like a man with confidence.”

For the first time in the loop, I look at her, really look at her, and find the dedicated researcher there who didn’t hesitate to abandon everything to follow me on a suicidal mission because her alternate self told her to. And who can we trust, if not our alternate selves?

“You do. You also love a man who knows what he wants.”

“And what do you want right now, Avatar Prentiss?”

We make furious love in an abandoned alcove. The next morning, I rush us through the moon-bathed manor district without losing anyone, even with one of the guards spontaneously deciding to enter the place after all. When I don’t have the gate security codes, I have the songs. I know them by heart. When I’m in the brawler form, my fingers grasp at nothing, remembering the flesh of the monsters I tore apart. And Egun. That monster, I still haven’t had my fill of. We’re so close.

On the tenth day, we’re at the Spider Gate.

“Everyone ready?” I ask. “This is it. Once we’re started, it ends at the bomb. Weapons check? Last snack? Someone needs to pee?”

“Ready,” Kimera confirms.

“On your command,” Krane answers.

Deza nods, while Brigadier salutes, his usual complaints strangely quiet.

“Ok. Go.”

I open the gate and stride under a flesh golem’s silk cocoon. I can’t go too fast or the others will get caught in the webs. Our progress is slow and steady. With my soul, I remind the others of where the traps are, how to avoid tendrils and so on. The place is quiet except for distant chitterings. Once we arrive near the first blockade, I make sure everyone has gathered and recovered their breath. Then I count down, and ignite. 

The red star of my body illuminates the white ocean of silk, first unmoving and then shivering with the feet of hundreds of mutated spiders discovering the enemy in their midst. I burn my way through it like a plasma torch through lukewarm butter, straight forward and down to the gates at a dead sprint while an expanding halo of burning silk makes the whole web shake from pure destruction. I stop at the gate and turn the fire down to grab my song key. My reserves are still high. The song echoes over the screeches of the attackers, our circle tightening and my confidence drowning the primal terror of being rushed by hundreds of man-sized arachnids. We go in. Krane locks the gate behind and above but I’m already rushing down the winding stairs to the large cistern. There’s the familiar forest of pillars. This is it. Deza is the first to jump over the balcony to our right, where the basin and bomb platform wait. The first of the sentries in the forest of pillars spots me a breath before I crush his skull. The rest of them panic, loudly. I need louder.

“Thou! Why, thou wilt quarrel with a man who hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast!” I scream in their face in the king’s own English.

I’m a whirlwind of rage. Those people are lost and I’m just bringing an early end to their shattered fates. Egun’s a bit of a rabid asshole like that. He makes all of us worse.

“Thou will quarrel with a man for cracking nuts!” I scream at a terrified third awakening, a soldier from the tattered uniform. I dodge against a fire beam and smash up between his legs. A claw to the jugular ends his fight. The Uran Bridge style is good for this, as flexible and merciless as its wielder will permit.

“Having no other reason but because thou have hazel eyes! What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel?”

I feel him before I hear him, but I manage to throw a dying woman at his feet when the shadows stir. He casually bats her corpse away after splitting her down the middle. As despicable as ever.

“A bit rude to start a party without the host, don’t you think?” Egun asks in conversational Kei-sah.

“The man of the hour!” I greet, and smile. I don’t need to boost my metabolism. Adrenaline is flooding my veins at maximum efficiency the natural way. I’m rawdogging rage, and I would let it all out if I didn’t know it would only make him stronger.

“It’s time we met, Egun Vindrius.”

He doesn’t quite flinch, but I can feel when the narcissist psychopath loses full control of the situation, and thus, of his temper.

“I see my reputation precedes me. I’ll have to find out how you found out, of course, from your corpse. Don’t worry; I will be slow and gentle.”

We fight. At the last second, I pull back my emotions, turning my burning hatred into a cold pit as dense as a neutron star. I will have him this time. He’s forced to pivot away from a wild swing. I follow up with long form, then pike form. Fast thrusts, up, down, up, up, unpredictable like the ape. He grabs the tip and I twist, cracking the staff on his wrist in a quick jab that’s as natural as breathing by now. I commit in a charge and crack the staff against his ribs. My instincts tell me to follow up with a needle but I need to keep his blood on the inside for as long as I can. To the side, Pain’s Avatar has been restrained and sedated, her soul quieting. Egun hasn’t found out yet.

“You!”

“Me? You! You and the bitch who helps you! A plague on both your houses!” I roar.

He accepts a whack on his shoulder and the cracked bone that comes with it to close in. I switch to short form and smash his forearms as a retreat over the camp, stepping over sleeping bags and random piles of clothes. I know this battlefield. He won’t make me trip. Egun’s forearms turn red from the assault, He screams in rage, and takes a step back. My staff’s follow up falls short but I throw a devastating uppercut to his plexus. He doesn’t bother to block: I’m too far.

My arm extends in the bouncer form. The deformed limb crashes against his torso. Ribs crack. With silent fury, he peels the arm apart. I pull it back and reform it before he has landed. There is something new in his unhinged face: shock.

Fear.

He’s going to run. I know it before he does. I’m already switching to cat form before he’s even disappeared. Claws rattle on the uneven stone. I screech in mad triumph, scaring Deza. He’s going for it. 

There are no thoughts, only the muscle memory and instincts built over a hundred hours sparring against the shadow master. I use haste. I am a black bolt careening through the forest of pillars and then over the barricades and I don’t look left because this is the shortest path, the one of least resistance, the one Egun’s incomplete mastery of dark mana will guide him to. If I look, it becomes harder for him to materialize from the darkness. So I don’t look. I don’t need to. I extend my left arm, and the claws on my paw. I don’t need a precise location.

A blink, just a shudder in the realm of soul, a waver in the tapestry of light. I strike.

I got you, you cunt.

One of the claws tears into him. Ring finger, I think. The accelerated chitin blade carves through his torso, gutting him. Warm entrails splatter on the ground before the rest of him can and I’m already on him, and I’m already tearing while black spikes of his blood pierce my legs and I don’t care because I have him. I have him. He’s dead. I feel his soul pushed out from the mangled pile of his meat. There are stripes of him. It’s done. The first time we faced off, he killed me where I was standing, but after years of this bullshit, it is finally done.

I’ve won.

I turn around, finding the rest of the team watching me in a mix of horror and awe. They form a protective shield around Lex-Nex, who’s waited to start just as I requested. There are a few disabled guards lying around, and Pain is asleep. I soul sweep the cistern. Apart from a few survivors running down the corridors, we’re alone.

I turn back to Egun’s half head of silly page-cute blond hair. Yep, still fucking dead. Still a mess on the ground.

We… have won. I have won the duel. The operation went without a hitch. We’re in full control.

I did it.

Holy shit. I can’t believe it. I change back to my modded body, the apprentice robes settling around me while the gore drips on the ground, leaving me suspiciously clean. 

“Founder’s balls,” Deza whispers.

“Ok, Lex-Nex,” I say, ignoring the stares. They’ll get over my Fleshcrafter performance or they won’t. I don’t give two shits. “It’s your turn. Take your time. Just…”

He gives me an unamused look. I need to remember that I’m dealing with professionals.

“Just take your time,” I finish.

We half gather around the winged alien while he confidently opens the control panel. His deft fingers dance on the command, executing a series of measures. Systems slowly power down. The constant hum of the bomb quiets down.

With an almost smug face, Lex Nex pulls a lever down. I feel Vrok’s immense pain, jolted to awakening.

“Wait!” I scream, but too late. Lex-Nex has pulled another while I stand there, confused and unsure with warring instincts: some telling me to trust the pro, others telling me to trust my soul awakening. The second level clanks on the brass surface and what was a quiet discomfort turns to blinding pain in the ex-archon’s slumbering soul. It jolts to the edge of wakefullness. It stirs.

It’s waking up.

“Something’s wrong…” Lex-Nex suddenly says with a frown as one of the gauges, which had been steadily decreasing, suddenly spikes.

What the genuine fuck.

“What in the… what have you done?” I screamed at Lex-Nex.

Brigadier comes to stand between us but I step to the side, finger accusatory.

“I don’t know! I followed the shut down sequence to the letter! It shouldn’t have activated any trap! It’s a fail safe!’

“You followed… he’s awake! He’s waking up now! He’s fucking waking up. You fucking donkey, you failed. How the fuck?”

“I don’t know what went wrong! Wait, maybe I can fix this.”

“Fix this? Can you suppress the soul of a dead archon? Uh? Are you secretly fifth soul awakening?”

“Alright, that’s enough of this,” Brigadier growls.

“No! You little shit, I gave you everything I gave you that bomb on a fucking platter and you fucking fumbled it. You fumbled the optimal situation for Founder’s sake how the fuck did you fail that? How? You are an expert, I checked. Deza checked!”

“Stand down,” Brigadier orders.

“Fuck you. We’re all dead now. I can’t fucking believe it aaaaaah you hairless scrotum of a twice left-handed garbage faerie.”

“Hey!”

Lex-Nex’s backed up against the bomb, like it will do him any good.

“I gave you. The perfect. Setup. Explain to me because I need to understand. What went wrong? Can’t you do it? Or is it something else like, like a trap or something?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Lex-Nex screams.

Brigadier grabs my shoulder. He’s still a fourth awakening though a bit of a failed one, so I’m stopped in my tracks.

“Ok,” I say, because we have ten minutes tops and I can’t waste any time. “Ok, walk me through it. Walk me through the steps. I need to know. I need you to tell me the exact procedure.”

“He won’t do anything. Step aside, Prentiss,” Brigadier orders. “Now.”

I’m so mad. I’m so fucking mad. Saltier than the Dead Sea. I’m besides myself by a few miles. I am perfectly mid meltdown and I need to function because this is important, so I pull all that rage in.

In the perfect clarity of my mind, something clicks. Something strange and a little cold. Brigadier and I both blink, him looking down at the crystal spike buried under his armpit through the gambeson. He falls to his knees.

Kimera beheads another of law’s servants. Krane shield bashes a third into the wall. Deza screams while I catch Lex-Nex with a mutated arm as he tries to fly away on his tiny meat wings. Like I’ll let him. Most of the guards do not fight us. A good half runs while Kimera and Krane tear through the rest. I pull a panicking Lex-Nex back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Deza screams with tears in her eyes.

“Hmm,” I say, feeling like I’m watching the scene from an outside perspective. Like I’m a third person behind a TV and this is all a silly drama.

“Actually, why are you killing them? He’s just asleep,” I say, pointing at a slumped Brigadier.

“You attack, I attack,” Kimera replies with a shrug.

“Hesitation is failure,” Krane adds. “If you must fight, then give your enemies no respite.”

“You are insane!” Deza wails.

Mad fuckers. I’m lucky I have them at least.

“Ok, calm down. We’re dead this run anyway,” I tell Deza.

“What are you talking about?” Lex-Nex whispers.

“That we’re dead, and wasting time. Deza, please.”

“Mercy…” she softly swears.

“Ok,” I say, recentering my attention while Krane and Kimera form a perimeter. “Right. Walk me though the exact procedure you use to disarm the bomb. Be very thorough.”

“Are you going to let me go?” he asks.

I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Lex-Nex, the bomb will go off and we will die in nine minutes tops, less if we get him excited. It’s over, so as your last act of redemption in this reality, I will ask you to focus for the good of all, ok? The procedure. Or I can also rip off all six of your limbs and flood your mind with pain. That works too.”

“Alright alright, sorry. I don’t know why the bomb is going off. There is a — it’s a secret but I guess it doesn’t matter — there is a default disarming method in every Enderlithian-made soul bomb. It cannot be tampered with by design, so even Vindrius couldn’t mess with it. Ok, first, we open the panel. I’m going to do it now, don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t. Hurry.”

I take meticulous notes on my soul book, even using my paltry drawing skill to reproduce the panel and naming every lever, button, and knob with a simple system. It should be easy. It should have been easy, but I guess the soul was excited? I don’t know. By the time Lex-Nex is done and I have triple-checked that all my annotations are correct, the soul is still stirring and we have a few minutes left. I decide to try and interrogate Pain. She looks up, eyes lost and bloodshot.

“He’s dead? He’s dead,” she says in a broken voice.

Then she just collapses where she stands and cries, her soul unspooling in a yarn ball of trauma I couldn’t hope to work though in weeks. Yeah, not getting anything out of her. Whatever she’s been through, it must have been very cruel. By then I’m just crashing down so hard I don’t know what to do. Krane is meditating. Deza,’s crying on the ground, waving me off when I approach. Kimera holds me in a hug.

I don’t know what to say, or do, so I just stand there until the end.

Death count: 16

Loss count: 6

Qualia points acquired: 1020

Previous total available: 1683

New total available: 2703

Reliably defeated a major player in single combat: 1000

Victory to ashes slipping through your fingers: 20

***

Chronos doesn’t speak. There is a glass of cold water on the table. Even Moragan feels subdued.

Everything went perfectly at first. It should have worked. The only way for it not to work is that someone messed with us. I have been blind.

The obvious stares at me over the mound of dead Steves. It starts with attacks on Namun, Deza’s kid. I sort of ignored it when he was almost hurt two different ways, first by a falling pipe and second by an out-of-control cart, thinking that it might have something to do with chaos theory, but it doesn’t make sense. The more I think about it, and the more I’m certain. There is no fucking way that random accidents would target the same person at the same time across two different loops unless they’re neither random nor accidents. Then it escalates. Deza was in the Needles when it fell, which should have been obvious in retrospect. We get stupidly unlucky on the bomb defusal run. I should have acted on it earlier, but my focus on the bomb was too intense. Now, I need to accept the truth.

We’re facing three avatars. 

One of them uses random bullshit to make us fail.

A part of me whispers that the third opponent targets Deza first, so now that I have the bomb disposal procedure, I could just do without her, but this is a copout. Deza’s my friend. More importantly, she might be targeted first because she’s an easier target than I am, not because she’s noticed first. Egun mentioned two people who could have sent me against him: the old man, who’s certainly Solas the Avatar of Innovation, and a mysterious woman. That could be our third. It would also track with Malice’s uncanny ability to find a bomb and a suitable soul with no reason as to why he should know as the fallen heir of patrician wannabes. I mean, it could be a Malice power, but I doubt it. He already has three and they’re quite strong and therefore expensive. Or maybe he’s a massive investment, Like Space? I just find it unlikely. 

If I find the woman he mentions, I’ll know. I feel like it would be more effective to neutralize her than to try another immediate run. 

Mostly, I can’t go through the exact same two fucking weeks of intense focus just now. I will go bonkers.

“I’m tired boss. Ok, ok, sorry, I forgot you don’t want me to call you boss. It’s a quote, ok? From the Green Mile?”

“I have decided to be magnanimous. You are forgiven this time,” Chronos assures me.

Morag manifests a tiny flail, one that looks like a cocktail parasol in her enormous mitts. She lightly flails my hand, once. There are little pink plastic studs at the ends of the bonbon-colored leather strips. 

“I don’t suppose you could tell me which god grants random chance bullshit powers?” I ask.

“Which gods, you mean?” Chronos replies with a smile. “If only you had an ally with access to some archives,” he laments. “Secured archives dedicated to countering illegal avatars and their usual powersets, something related to law enforcement, perhaps.”

He pretends to wipe a tear from his spotless cheek.

“Ok, well, it’s research time I guess. Fuck me, we really had it this time,” I say.

“You did defeat a fourth awakening avatar of the Heavenly Court in single combat,” Chronos says, “And managed to impress your lady. And horrified the ‘normies’,” he continues, tasting the slang with a self-indulgent smile.

Morag nods her approval. Of course, she would.

“You didn’t do too badly.”

“I will be proud and happy after I’m done. Anyway, time to go. I don’t need more skills and I’ll want points for animasomatic imprint later. Please send me back. Research loop, here I come.”

Chronos leaned over the table, a patient CEO telling me I should prepare to ‘look for new opportunities’.

“When you return to the real world, all the emotional burden associated with your situation will return at once. Would you not prefer to take a break?”

“I don’t think I can. If I don’t get this out of my system, I’ll implode.”

“If you say so. Good luck, my avatar.”