> He stood in front of a sea of cubicles, the walls only tall enough to present a mirage of privacy for those seated in front of their computers. The air was filled with the buzzing of fluorescent lights. Every one of the roofless cages was occupied, the inmates hunched over worn, cheap plastic keyboards. It was through this off-white and beige sea of invisible chains that Liam walked. The tie around his neck a noose, the suit a straitjacket, the tight shoes shackles. He could only drag his feet forward, thoughtlessly navigating the corporate hellscape until he found the empty chair. His chair.
>
> The flickering computer screen beckoned him. Mundanity and routine calling out like a drug. A promise of paid bills and a full fridge. The only price was a monthly subscription that would take little bites out of his soul.
>
> Until there was nothing left.
Liam woke to agony.
He was feverish; every muscle cried out as if riddled with nails, his throat felt like sandpaper, his stomach twisted in knots, and his skin was so inflamed he could almost count every individual sharp grain of sand.
By every measure, he was miserable.
Yet he’d never felt so alive.
Above, the night sky greeted him. A curtain of black and violet that had been infested by billions of fireflies. Each light spun, danced, and wove its way across the night sky with no discernible patterns to their movements. Unlike his world, there was only one star in the world of Crystal Skylight, and that was the sun. Everything else that glowed above were not stars but crystallized mana wandering the void that was the bubble of existence. Each of these glowing lights could vary in size from something equivalent to a car to being larger than continents.
Crystallized mana could naturally become aether when exposed to high enough temperatures and pressure, such as when one of those clumps crashed down to the world.
That was the only source for high-quality aether: magic-laden meteorites.
Liam smiled, following one of the redder stars with his finger as it slowly traveled across the firmament. “In a few months, you or one of your red brethren will fall down,” he muttered hoarsely.
Sitting up, he glanced around, finding the other three curled up and asleep. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened after they’d reached the desert, but he was sure that he’d collapsed within minutes. He’d remained asleep for a whole day, which sort of explained how he’d come to wake up intensely sunburned and completely dehydrated.
The other three had most likely argued over whether to leave him there and continue without him. Liam wasn’t sure of the details, but Umira had clearly pulled through and browbeat Hassim into being the mule and carrying him. Apparently, the dwarf wasn’t even that bothered by his weight; the guy definitely earned himself some probation points.
Or at least that's what he guessed had happened; everything was kind of a feverish blur.
Slowly standing up, his legs gave out, and he fell back on his ass. His body refused to move further. "Maybe I was out longer than I thought?" he muttered under his breath with a scratchy throat. Speaking hurt a lot more than he had thought, too.
Looking at the other three, their breathing was shallow, weak; they were shivering from the cold—a cold he couldn't feel because his body was so feverish he might just burst into flames.
Were they going to die?
Liam closed his eyes, breathing in, focusing.
"Maridah."
To call upon the name of a god was to make yourself known. It was like ringing a doorbell. But this wouldn't work too well if you just happened to speak the name; it had to carry intent. It had to carry knowledge, certainty that this was the deity's name; without it, the power was far lesser.
"Maridah, holder of secrets." He could taste the iron of his own blood; it dribbled from cracked lips, his tongue feeling like a stone in his mouth. "Maridah, devourer of shadows."
A freezing cold breeze blew over Liam, forcing him to blink and cover his face from the sand.
"You call using the old ways." The voice came from all around him, a softness devoid of inflection or identifiable traits. It was no true sound but thoughts, impressions placed upon his mind.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Whisperer, I seek a boon of knowledge," he said. "I desire safety for myself and my three companions. For the price, I will reveal a secret, bury a secret, and spread a secret."
"You know not just the old ways but of the path of pledges." There was a hint of amusement, maybe even surprise. "You are too weak to make it to safety even if you knew the direction to take. But you are the first mortal to speak my name in… too long. I can grant you favor, to bring you to where the shadows hide from the sun. Only you, however."
"I do not wish to be the recipient of the knowledge." Liam grinned, bloodied as he leaned back into the dune. Maybe he'd take her up on the offer, though only once he had the protections that would prevent him from being trapped in the realm forever. "I wish for you to whisper the knowledge to someone who has the means to save us."
The breeze blew once more; there was the warmth of laughter. "You are sly." The Goddess' praise felt like a soothing trickle against his burning skin. "Pay the price, then."
"The secret I will reveal is the name of the stranger you seek. His name is Volkanar." He closed his eyes, chuckling at himself. "The secret to spread is that a great war is coming, one among mortals the world has never seen before."
The War of the Red Star. A mountain-range-sized meteorite of crystallized mana would fall. The whole thing would be a cataclysmic impact that, fortunately, wouldn't hit anything too important. The really impactful stuff would be the war that would be waged to secure the literal country's worth of aether ripe for the taking.
To the winner, an empire with more magic than any collective group of mortals had ever been able to wield before. To the loser, chains that would take centuries to break.
In the original version he’d written, the Sultan would be perfectly poised to get a first mover advantage. With the death of the Yulvenir patriarch, he’d mobilize and crush the political power of his competition through military might, a very convenient army that would have been put to new use right away.
How would things play out now? Liam’s thoughts were wandering, so he steered them back on course.
“And… the secret to bury is that I’m not of this world.”
Liam found himself standing in front of a creature made of darkness, a wolf whose existence would not be touched by the light, a walking hole in reality.
“You know the consequences?” the wolf asked. “A secret buried is a secret forgotten… until it is unearthed.”
He nodded. “A certain Goddess who’s very talented at tracking fate seems to be looking for me.”
“You hope to hide, to buy time,” Maridah concluded for him.
“Can’t defend myself if I’m mostly dead,” Liam laughed, his words turning into a dry cough. “Besides, why deny myself the chance to get a fresh perspective for a bit?” In truth there were more reasons than just cutting himself off of fate. This world had kept most aspects of it that he'd put into his writing, and if that kept being the case, then removing his own ability to comprehend the context of their creation would add an extra layer of protection.
After all, if a certain Goddess happened to have been made with a past lover in mind, then would that not leave him more easy to manipulate?
Maridah's projection nodded, gaining a fractional amount of "realness" to it, as if a certain amount of power had manifested locally in some unfathomable way. The next moment, it was over, regaining its near ethereal presence.
“It is done.” The wolf-shaped silhouette approached; from the darkness, two eyes of glimmering obsidian peered out at him. “A seeker will be here before dawn.” As the divinity said this, she reached out with her paw and pressed it against Liam’s forehead. A jolt of electricity ran through his whole body. “A parting gift, use it well while it lasts.”
She vanished as easily as she’d come.
The pale young man blinked as he lay on the sand, staring up at the dancing stars. There was a deep sense of something missing, a great deal of things, really. Yet with it also came a lightness, as if some lingering discomfort had been lifted from his soul.
Without the strength to move, and his body too pained for sleep, the human could only lay there and think. Too many things to think about. What was he doing before meeting Umira? Or the day before? Why did he know the world he was in was immense yet not remember where he’d learned that?
Dozens of questions turned to hundreds, then to thousands. Minutes turned to hours, the chaotic paths of the celestial lights dimming ever so slightly as the first rays of sunlight began to peek over the horizon.
And with it came the visage of a sail peeking over the dunes.
A boat crested over the sand, floating over the desert as if buoyant over an invisible sea.
Voices shouted out, and the flying vessel came to a stop above them. A ship of wood shaped like an egg lying on its side, with sails poking out from above and the sides. Like some sort of…
He blinked, feeling like the word was right at the tip of his tongue.
A single figure flew down with azure wings and the fierce golden eyes of a hawk.
The valkyrie looked upon the four of them. “Matches the description,” she landed like a feather, her weight barely disrupting the sand as she glanced at the human through tresses of silver. “Now, who might you be that you got my first mate all in a tizzle?”
He glanced back, still smiling and entirely unable to stop. “I can’t remember.” Something about being able to understand her felt incredibly important. Was this what the Goddess had mentioned about a gift? The inquiry only seemed to bring with it a thousand more questions. “Probably related.”
“Gods do seem to meddle a bit too much with us bugs,” the valkyrie’s expression turned into a savage smirk. “Since they don’t pay in gold, I’ll have to get it out of you four. Welcome to the Barb.”