August Intruder- Chapter 252- A Sign (Patreon)

They sat quietly in a destitute part of town. They were under a bridge, surrounded by empty barrels with scorched contents. The ground was asphalt and filled with cracks and holes. There were homeless people around, people who slept with newspapers for blankets or cardboard for mattresses.

It was in this chaos that Ark and Melmarc sat, looking at Uncle Dorthna as he drank from his long cup as if he was sipping the contents of the sweetest thing in ten worlds. Their uncle sighed as he took another sip, reveled in its taste.

Bayad remained on the ground beside Melmarc. His face was turned downwards, and his wing was still in Melmarc’s hand.

Ark looked around at everyone present. The homeless that had their own sections of the space under the bridge ignored them very easily, as if all of them were nothing but a normal occurrence under a bridge. They hadn’t even spared a glance at Bayad.

“Friends of yours?” Ark asked, going for a light joke.

Uncle Dorthna looked at them and shrugged. “Never seen these people in my life.” He paused, looked at one of the homeless men pointedly. “Except that guy. I had brunch with his daughter a while ago, uneducated woman, but she’s found herself a way out of ending up like her father.”

“How?” Melmarc asked, flooded by different levels of pain and discomfort.

“She found a man,” Uncle Dorthna answered matter-of-factly. “Although, I can’t say that her life is happy. But you know how it is. People pick the pain that they can best live with.”

Melmarc understood. He nodded without even having to think about it. When Ark nodded as well, Melmarc wondered what pain Ark had chosen to live with.

“So…” Uncle Dorthna motioned at the three of them with a nod. “What specifically is happening here?”

“Veebee keeps calling him an abomination,” Melmarc answered first. “My interface says he’s an [Intruder]: Bayad the Spotless.”

“He is,” Uncle Dorthna answered.

Melmarc picked on the pronoun. Throughout their fight, he had not felt like Bayad was a he, more of an it. He had wondered if that was simply just him looking down on Bayad or if it was like Veebee that claimed to be an it.

It was good to have a confirmation.

“He’s probably been here for ages,” Uncle Dorthna added. “Judging by the state of Fallen High and the magic he used to achieve it, maybe as much as century, probably longer.” He finally looked at Bayad. “How did you even get caught?”

Bayad finally looked up from the ground yet hesitated before answering. “I went to them.”

Uncle Dorthna sighed as if at something significantly stupid. “Why would you go and find the owner of a house you are most clearly trespassing in?”

Bayad looked down and away. “I wanted to bargain.”

“Why?” Uncle Dorthna asked in a tired voice.

“Because if he found me first, he would probably not want to bargain.” Bayad looked at Melmarc then looked away. “I thought it was the better decision.”

Uncle Dorthna looked at Melmarc. “What did he try to bargain with?”

“[EP],” Melmarc answered. “Ten thousand a month.”

Uncle Dorthna barked a short derisory laugh. He looked at Bayad. “So, you went to bargain in bad faith.”

Bayad still didn’t meet his eyes. “It was good enough faith,” he muttered like a child who knew he was lying.

“For you to have that amount of [EP], you would have taken it from this world.” Uncle Dorthna paused to wave at the homeless man whose daughter he had gone to brunch with. “The whole encroachment and territory marking you did on the school gave you the [EP], giving him back would only end up giving random parts of the world to him as a territory.”

“Hold on,” Ark blurted out, interrupting the conversation. “Mel wouldn’t have been able to use it to grow?”

“Nope,” Uncle Dorthna answered. “And it’s funnier because Melmarc would also have gained those parts of the world as his territory inevitably.”

Melmarc raised his hand before Bayad could reply. “I thought I claimed the world as my territory when I came out of the portal.”

“You informed the world of your presence,” Uncle Dorthna corrected, “that’s a different thing entirely. Then the world acknowledged your presence. You are like a man with an estate. However, you haven’t been to all the parts of the estate. A lot of your workers don’t know you or who you are. That’s why you have to claim ownership of the world. Right now, you can say that you are something of a steward.”

He turned his head to address Bayad and Melmarc raised his hand again, interrupting him.

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Yes?”

“We met someone in the building with an indicator I’ve not seen before,” Melmarc said.

“Oh, yes,” Ark jumped in quickly. “She had a black indicator.”

Uncle Dorthna looked at Bayad. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Your world is full of strange things,” Bayad answered. “Perhaps—”

Uncle Dorthna raised a hand to silence him. “Not mine.” He pointed at Melmarc. “His. Now don’t beat around the bush. Do you or do you not?”

Bayad bowed his head. “I do not.”

“I figured.” Uncle Dorthna turned and looked at Melmarc. “Serious, that Voidbeast should really be dealt with for what it did.” He sighed, as if to himself. “At this stage in your life, you really shouldn’t have to be dealing with these kinds of problems. You should be dealing with this at maybe the age of twenty-seven or thirty-five.”

Ark chuckled. “Mel’s always been an old soul.”

“You think this is funny?” Uncle Dorthna asked him, intrigued. “You do know that at some point in time you are going to have to go off-world, right?”

“I do go off-world every now and again.”

“No.” Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “Not to portals and not to those demon summonings that you answer. I mean you are going to have to leave and maybe probably not come back.”

Ark and Melmarc paused at that. Deep down somewhere in Melmarc’s soul, he’d always known. But to have Uncle Dorthna spell it out was something else. After all, Ark quite literally needed to conquer seven hells. Melmarc was more than certain that conquering one of those hells was not something he would be able to do and come back in time for dinner.

Still, a part of him had hoped.

Ark’s response to their uncle’s words was a shrug. “We’ll make something work.”

“You will,” Uncle Dorthna answered. “Or you won’t. As for the woman in black.”

Melmarc paused. “You met her?”

“Uhuh.” Uncle Dorthna took a sip of his drink. “She is something of a corruption. Your apocalypse is going to be a bit different from the normal apocalypse that you have all grown to know and love.”

Bayad frowned as if he knew what was coming.

“How so?” Melmarc asked.

Uncle Dorthna took another sip. He was in no hurry. “Black is an indicator of a host.”

“I’m confused.”

“And I’m explaining. A host,” Uncle Dorthna continued, “is a—in this case—a person that has been infiltrated by a very specific species that doesn’t have a home world of their own. Instead, they go around Existence taking over other people’s worlds. In a normal apocalyptic event, a world suffers the fear of destruction. Your world is suffering the fear of colonization.” He paused, chuckled a bit. “How ironic.”

“And what is she hosting?” Ark asked.

Uncle Dorthna looked at Melmarc. “A [Faker].” He smiled. “Now, isn’t that another irony?”

Melmarc blinked. “A [Faker]? As in the class?”

“Nope.” Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “There exist some classes out there that also have actual species and races.” He leaned in conspiratorially and lowered his voice. “While there are classes with naturally occurring creatures, the [Faker] you are dealing with is not a naturally occurring creature.”

“You’re saying they are man made?” Ark asked.

“Nope.” Their uncle shook his head. “I am saying that they are not naturally occurring. They are creatures made from the ambitions of a [Creator] from a long time ago. You see, she got it in her head, that if all people could be alike, Existence would be a better place. If your skills did not necessarily place you above me, sentient and sapient beings would be able to live in harmony.”

“I can fuck with that logic,” Ark muttered.

“Language,” Uncle Dorthna chided. “But that’s not the point.”

Melmarc could see how the logic made sense, but he could not see human beings subscribing to said logic. Humans were too diverse for that. Pride, not the negative side of it, would not be able to allow it. A sense of self existed in the very nature of knowing that you were unique in some way. Sometimes it was not in the way you wanted to be unique, but it was still in being unique, be it good or bad.

He shook his head. “I don’t see human beings agreeing to those terms.”

“And they did not,” Uncle Dorthna confirmed. “So it was a good thing that she was not a human being. She was more arachnid, with three eyes. That aside, she grew to the title of [Creator].”

“People who create things?” Ark asked.

Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “They are a bit more than that. They are people who create things that are alive. They find their way until they can create sentient things. Very few with the [Creator] title succeed in creating things.”

“How is that?” Ark asked. “It’s in the title, you would think they would figure it out.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” their Uncle sipped from his cup again. “In truth, they don’t understand that what they need is the [Namer] title, but that’s a conversation for another day. Back to the [Faker]s. This [Creator] eventually created them but found herself with a single problem.”

“Greed,” Bayad muttered in disgust.

Uncle Dorthna snapped his finger at him. “Exactly. To be a [Faker], to meet those requirements, you need a level of greed and or gluttony. It is a level that does not allow one to sit in one place. To do the one thing you are designed to do, you have to be driven to do it. That’s why humans have a horny problem. Their sole purpose is to multiply and fill out the cosmos. To do that, they will need the drive to multiply. So, somehow, the actions required to multiply are sweet and pleasing.”

“Tell that to women when they get pregnant,” Ark muttered.

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “I always wondered at that, though they say it is a punishment. And yet,” he held up a finger, “you continue to see women who want another child despite the pain. The sex is pleasing enough that the average person, male or female, does not want to go without it. The birth is painful, as it is for most creatures, yet the experience of the child itself is fun enough that the average woman can see herself wanting another one. But we digress. The [Faker] enjoy gathering skills and becoming something. The other part the woman did not look into was the nature of being a [Faker]. The experience is pleasing but she failed to put in enough restraint. So, [Faker]s go out into the world to learn and understand and assimilate. They also, like almost all things, procreate.”

Ark winced. “Oof.”

“Oof is correct,” their uncle chuckled.

“How has Existence dealt with them?” Melmarc asked.

Uncle Dorthna shrugged. “They really aren’t that big of a deal. They are the failed creations of a failed [Creator], they are a rare occurrence out in the cosmos.” He paused, dropped his cup on the ground he was sitting on. “Running into them is a very rare occurrence that nobody really thinks about having to deal with. And beating them is like beating a [Faker].”

Ark looked at Melmarc. “So it should be easy.”

Bayad laughed. “Easy? Your world doesn’t even know the first thing about being a [Faker]. They developed hate and contempt for the class that they never allowed the class to figure out what it truly means to be a [Faker].”

Melmarc thought back to the bird people and how they had called him by a different name. Perhaps the [Faker] class was truly different everywhere else except here. Either that or these [Faker]s that were created had created a scary reputation for the class.

“Wait.” Ark looked at Bayad. “Does that mean that the [Faker] class is a created class?”

“Every class is a created class,” Uncle Dorthna said, bored. “But not in the way you are asking. The [Faker] class is as real and natural as every other class. Nobody has the ability to create a class. And classes with living thing counterparts are not necessarily rip offs of those things, they just happen to exist the way those things exist. The only classes that are rip offs of something are the [Faker] and the [Mage] class.”

Melmarc blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“[Faker] and [Mage],” Uncle Dorthna repeated. “Personally, I think the [Faker] class is a closer ripoff of the original class than the [Mage].”

Ark looked at Bayad. “Did you know thi—Oh.”

The confusion on Bayad’s face was all anyone needed to know that this whole thing was news to him, too.

“Oh, yeah. What of this guy?” Ark asked.

“What about him?” Uncle Dorthna asked.

“His class is [Rise],” Melmarc explained. “What kind of class is that?”

Uncle Dorthna made a dismissive gesture. “Just some abominable class. Very rare too. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a class designed to grow to emulate God.”

All three fell silent, leaving Uncle Dorthna looking as if he had not just said something outrageous. After a moment, Ark and Melmarc looked at Bayad.

“Uncle,” Melmarc said very slowly.

“I’m listening.”

“You are not friendly with he who will not be named.”

“Correct.”

“Ark is interested in getting in a fight with him.”

“I definitely am,” Ark confirmed. Melmarc wasn’t sure why Ark was interested in getting in a fight with God. Then again, maybe it came with his adventurous nature.

“Also correct,” Uncle Dorthna said.

“And Ark for some reason somehow just happened to become a [Demon Lord],” Melmarc continued. “Something that we can comfortable say is not in support of he who will not be named.”

Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Correct.”

“And we just now beat up a creature with a class designed to emulate God.”

Uncle Dorthna grinned. “Correct.”

“Please tell me that this is not some kind of sign.”

Their uncle’s grin grew wider. “I think the word you’re looking for is foreshadowing.” With that, he turned and looked at Bayad, focused specifically on him. “Now then,” he said. “I seem to have a use for you.”