Consciousness wavered back toward his own reality. Giving a glimpse of the near-mummified corpse hanging from a meat hook hanging from a skyscraper. His out of body experience had long ago drifted outside his own reality, and now he rarely glimpsed his own body.

Warning: Entering Universe with permadeath ruleset. Other local abnormalities include: Low mana conditions, infinite space, unique integration terms.

Warning: System integration dangerously low.

System Integration: 0.0%

The message drifted in and out, much like his body. Each time it appeared it seemed new and just as incomprehensible. But it quickly drifted away like every other thought.

However long the drifting, the sputtering, ethereal thoughts continued, he had no feelings about it. Feelings were an embodied thing. All that was left to him now was his mind. For now, anyway.

His mind drifted.

Patiently. There wasn’t much to do but be patient.

As always his thoughts drifted toward the girl. He couldn’t recall her name. He couldn’t recall an image. Memory was another privilege of the embodied. Memories resided in the brain, rarely imprinting on one’s consciousness. But the girl, whoever she was, had been embedded in his soul. So he remembered… her.

There were no feelings. They were yet another privilege intrinsically tied to the body. No love, no lust, no longing. What he did have was the deep emptiness that lack of feelings evoked. Something–some feeling–was supposed to sit there in that little ball. Instead it was empty.

He huddled inside the emptiness. It was the one part of him that didn’t hurt.

He knew the agony raging through him was only an echo of pain. Pain was also only of the body–or perhaps it wasn’t. He was in overwhelming pain. Still, he thought it must be the echoes of agonies that had flowed through it when mind had finally separated from body.

It made sense, and it was a lie he could hide behind.

The agony was a lie. The emptiness was temporary. The girl was real. She only existed as an absence, but the absence was real.

That was his existence. Drifting among realities. Occasionally recognizing his own body among the myriad of visions. Huddling in the impression of the girl, the bastion of his soul against the pain.

A tether he’d been unable to know or sense yanked him back, reorienting his focus. He felt himself reconnect with his mind, with his body. Again.

Memories, personality, fears, hopes all flooded back at once. Then they all took a back seat while sensation drove. His senses returned in a whirlwind. His vision returned in a blinding wave of light. He tried to close his eyes. Either he was too weak or they were already closed and his eyes were just that sensitive, even shut. He forgot his eyes as a sharp icicle piercing his heart appeared and demanded his attention. Another ran under his ribs and into his gut.

The echoes of pain had prepared him for this. He merely grunted at the steep increase in intensity. It came out as a wheeze. His mouth was parched. His whole body felt dry as dust.

Owen forced his eyes open. He couldn’t lift his head yet, but he could see the healing magic flooding into his body. His arms and legs had the familiar look of dried jerky. It touched on a sense of familiarity, as if he’d seen himself that way a thousand times, but couldn’t remember. Perhaps he had. Things had changed, and Earth had developed some nasty ways of punishing the weak.

The magic moved so quickly his limbs inflated like balloons. As his innards refilled and his blood began to flow, the chill lessened somewhat. He was still hanging from a meat hook over a sprawling city.

He’d been mounted on the guardrail on the highest skyscraper in the city. What was that forty floors? Fifty? He couldn’t lift his head, and he briefly worried about vertigo. But nothing happened. He let his mind imagine what it would be like to just fall, impacting the ground enough that he might even overpower the curse of immortality. His gut felt nothing. His mind was blank and calm.

Perhaps he was too tired and sore to be afraid.

That would be justice. Maybe Nikolai and simply forged him into a deadlier weapon. Sent here to learn a lesson in obedience, and all he’d learned is to have the last ounce of fear and caring drained from him.

Owen laughed. The movements behind him stopped. He’d developed a knack for laughing at inappropriate times. Now, he’d been tortured, set out on display, nearly mummified in the open air, and hung staring at the meat hook rammed through his stomach, and he was laughing. Owen rolled his head to the side, still unable to lift it.

Someone began hauling on the chain. The hook had curved under his ribcage and now it dug into the bone as it bore his weight higher and higher. Two figures moved to either side of him, seizing him by the shoulders and adding their efforts.

One of them yanked out the cold stake and the healing magic poured over his heart, sewing up the wound and restarting his heart.

A silver stake. That would be Nikolai’s idea of a joke.

Cold. It felt cold. Was it winter? How long had he been hanging here in the sun?

Sun. The vampires wouldn’t be moving him inside. It would be another clan. Unless someone had toppled the king. Except luck like that didn’t exist, not for him.

The chain went slack and for a moment the two figures to either side were both leaning over the railing, overbalanced by the sudden weight. One let go of him and Owen instinctively grabbed the arm of the other. Moving caused searing pain as muscles that should have long ago atrophied woke up and did their jobs for the first time in–who knew how long? The extra weight was enough. The figure fell over the railing. Owen squinted at the rapidly shrinking figure. Green skin? Probably an orc. Good riddance.

The second figure screamed and went sailing over Owen’s head. It was flailing too much to really make it out. Instead of landing next to the orc, it landed across the street. Owen smiled. Crime scene investigation 101: if the body landed more than forty feet from the building, he didn’t jump. He chuckled again, or rather wheezed.

Whoever threw the orcs was too strong to be a mundane human. Either their species or their magic granted them inhuman strength. Either one excluded any ally he would recognize.

First he needed a goal. What did he want? What was his next step?

Two mana streams shot up from the street, moving past him. The white streaks of pure mana rewarded the betrayer for his kills. Owen sagged, knowing his minor contribution would not have registered, even if he’d really gotten the ‘killing blow’ on the first one. The first mana stream shot past him. Owen counted the seconds between the mana streams start and finish. Six, maybe seven seconds. The two must have been at least around level fifteen to twenty. That was an insane amount of mana. Or it had been when he’d been hung out here.

The chain shifted again, this time rising quickly and smoothly to the edge. A clawed hand wrapped around his neck, easily straight-arming him up and over the railing. It dumped him on the rooftop, and Owen collapsed into a pile. The hand reached for his chest. Owen couldn’t see much more than a rough shadowy shape. His eyes had gone from bright sun to this monstrous shadow. The hand yanked out the meat hook that had rammed into his gut, pulling a rib out with it.

The surge of pain occupied Owen for a while, but it quickly melded into the raging sea of pain that suffused his entire body. Owen shifted his weight and managed to roll to the side, sneaking a peak. Dim hope faded fast.

His rescuer was an adlet. Adlet were dog-people that came in two varieties. Dogs with the intelligence and cruelty of men, and their undisputed leaders, the rare humanoid with a dog’s head. They all had tell-tale red fur, and usually smelled of carrion. They’d been confused for werewolves early on, but eventually the taxonomy had been adjusted to the Eskimo legends of the giant man-eating red-headed dog people, the adlet.

Melding a bit of intelligence, history, and legend, Owen had long ago concluded that the Adlet were either a mythological explanation for some cannibalistic serial killer or a tribe of such, or they were the descendants of the early viking explorers in the region.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Either way, the legends described a truly deranged monster. Adlet ate anything, but preferred human meat or humanoid if pickings were slim. That often included their own leaders. And family. And kids. Any man-shaped Adlet that survived childhood had the strength to lead the clan, usually because everyone else had already tried to eat him. Which is why the dog-head but human-body variant ruled the less-intelligent full wolf variant.

This adlet stood almost nine feet tall. The dog head stood proudly on a massive hirsute humanoid frame. There was enough body hair that Owen initially thought the Adlet was wearing reddish-brown pants. At least he had something covering the delicate bits.

The creature was muttering and light and mana swirled in front of the man-wolf forming a spell. The spell gathered quickly, and mana swirled between Owen’s chest and the adlet. Owen recognized the spell that had healed him as he hung over the side of the tower. Except an adlet with healing magic was impossible. Sure, he’d been essentially dead for an unknowable duration, but there was no way things had changed that much.

The aberration persisted though. Owen found himself hyper-ventilating and tried to slow his breathing. Spots of light shone in his vision, and he tried to blink them away. Panic was rising fast. He tried to force down the rising anxiety. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to take long, deep breathes and followed the logic chain:

Magic came from your magical Aspect, and your Aspects were linked to your nature. Vampires and dog people might be supernatural, but they made sense. A compassionate spell from an Adlet was like a Vampire channeling sunlight. It violated the fundamental rules.

All hope drained out of him collapsed as he watched the spell repair his own chest. He’d already fallen behind. He didn’t even have a single power, not even a single level. Now someone had gone and scrambled the way the world worked again. It wasn’t fair.

As the spell worked, it became clear it was a draining spell, siphoning health from the adlet directly into Owen. Owen sighed in relief. Life draining spells made sense. Although he suspected the adlet rarely used the spell to drain himself and heal others.

The sense of relief was overwhelming.

Owen laughed again. He’d nearly had a full-blown panic attack, not from killing an orc, not from being hung out like laundry, not because he was facing down a cannibalistic predator from the nightmares of a people who fought polar bears, but because a magic spell hadn’t made sense to him. God, the world had gotten weird.

Adlet were creatures of hunger, typically Aspected with either Hunger or Cannibal. Consuming something’s lifeforce to fuel yourself was basically just magically eating someone. That kind of spell suited their potential repertoire.

He’d just collapsed in relief when the pain vanished. His whole body tingled as if it had gone numb. He’d heard about this. The unexpected lack of pain sometimes fooled the brain into thinking that he’d totally lost sensation.

Owen laughed again. The Adlet cocked his head as if trying to decide if he had gone a little crazy. Owen smiled back and shrugged. There was probably something to that theory. Displacement of fear or something. Or his body simply hadn’t had any adrenaline yet to feel afraid.

Regardless, he was wasting time. He needed to assess his condition.

Owen checked his mana.

Magic Saturation: 7%

He’d been drained regularly then. They couldn’t leave him out to just be dead. Even with the mana straining to keep him alive in impossible conditions, eventually his body would have absorbed enough mana to get him out of limbo. Then he’d have really died, and they wouldn’t be able to torture him anymore. Or eat him.

Owen’s body began to feel normal as the chill air and hunger pangs reminded his brain that things were once again working properly. But his conscious mind stayed focused on the red wolf man, trying to learn everything he could about his opponent. He was healing faster than before, so the spell didn’t heal at a flat rate. His best guess was that the adlet had been draining the orcs before, but now that he used his own life force, there was more to share and the healing had accelerated substantially. So the adlet was proportionately stronger than the orcs they’d just worked together to experience the brief joys of unsustained flight.

The hole in his gut healed over in seconds, and then the magic went about replacing lost nutrients, and the tired ache in his muscles vanished almost instantly. So the spell replaced stamina too. Noted. Not that his mundane body had much to replace.

Unknown - Species: Adlet (Humanoid) - Lvl ??

Aspects: [Hunger]

Known Spells: Life/Stamina Siphon (Not a flat rate)

That was everything he could figure out about his rescuer without using mana, but when the magic spell came to an end, and the little light show disappeared. A tiny speck of mana struck Owen and rebounded. The adlet’s attention faded into what looked like a daydream. Well, two could play that game. Owen pinged the adlet back, and his information was updated when the mana rebounded.

Frank Sadler - Species: Adlet - Lvl 27

Aspects: [Hunger], [Unknown]

Known Spells: Life/Stamina Siphon (Not a flat rate)

That didn’t make sense. “Frank?” Owen struggled to his feet. Pain exploded across his face, and he found himself back on the ground. The pain in his jaw receded under the overwhelming pain of the scratches across his face. He brought his fingers to his face and stopped breathing when he felt bone. “What the hell? Do I owe you money or something?”

His cheek had been shredded, so the words were garbled and unintelligible.

How long had he been gone? Frank had been a human when he’d left. Adlet didn’t spread their affliction through an infection like werewolves. So Frank had either volunteered to join the Adlet Clan, or he’d saved up enough mana to join the “game” and found out he’d been destined to be an adlet all along.

Either one was a terrible decision, but what really destroyed Owen’s hope was his level. When Owen had been hung out on the ledge to “think about his options,” that strong a player would have been the leader of a clan, possibly Alpha of his species. Now apparently even a lackey had reached the second tier. Twice the Aspects, twice the powers. Owen grimaced. He was falling further and further behind.

The healing siphon appeared again. Life force swirled through the siphon as if draining down a funnel and flowed into Owen’s chest, healing his face. “Do I get to know what that was about?”

“Take a moment to think about that. I’ll just be here hitting you.”

Two more swings across his face and a foot caught him in the stomach, sending him skidding across the ground. The healing arrived as he skidded to a stop. Ice settled into Owen’s veins. He didn’t know what he’d done to Frank specifically. There were too many possibilities. I choose ‘D all of the above.’

“That’s fair.” Owen crawled to his knees. “Come on. Two or three more.”

Frank obliged him then poured health into him only to repeat the procedure.

Owen tried to achieve the same floating mind state that he’d achieved hanging from the building, but it never arrived. The pain was there every time. The breaks for healing became less frequent. Compared to the constant daily pain it should have been nothing, but each successive blow renewed the agony. He’d forgotten that.

The pain seemed to go on forever, and time stretched before him as a novel yet familiar hell when the blows ceased. Healing poured into him, and he looked up at the adlet, collapsed and exhausted on the roof next to him.

“How's it feel?” Owen’s mouth was parched. There hadn’t been enough healing to fully hydrate him or replenish his stamina.

The wolfman shrugged. Owen watched his arms rise almost a foot and drop. Those were some pretty good sized shoulders. Even laying together on the roof, he could only see the snout peaking out past the forearms.

“Just tell me it was worth it.” Frank’s tone came out almost pleading.

Owen gave a sardonic laugh. “I’ll let you know, I guess.” The cold dry wind dominated the conversation for a while. They sat and listened.

“Was it worth it for you?”

“Not really. I’d rather be an orc, but I couldn’t afford it. It’s so much cheaper for them to just breed, but the adlet are always recruiting. Although a lot of recruits get eaten, before and after joining. Still, converting is pretty cheap if you eat some human meat, and there’s plenty of that.”

Owen’s stomach flipped, but he kept smiling. No reason to offend the cannibal. Then his stomach growled loudly. How long since he’d eaten? It was amazing how quickly you got used to the most unbelievable things.

Frank reached into a pouch at his waist and retrieved a Snickers. “Eat up. You’ll have a hard enough time getting down the stairs on an empty stomach.”

True. “Almost easier to just toss me over the edge and heal whatever's left.”

Owen split the candy bar in two. It took more strength than he could muster on his first try, then it broke unevenly. He passed the larger piece to the adlet. It was his candy bar after all. The adlet waved it away. “I’m a carnivore now.”

That brought a long silence.

“Can you still do it?”

The question took Owen by surprise. Owen thought it over while he ate the candy bar. It was sweet and salty, and his mouth was as unprepared for flavor as his eyes had been for light. It almost brought tears. He had to rest between bouts of chewing. Frank stared at the sky.

Owen shrugged. “Probably not. Knowing me, I think if I get a chance to get out, I’m just going to take it.” Maybe he would, but he couldn’t share anything real with Frank anymore.

The adlet climbed to a sitting position and nodded. He reached out and collected the bloody meat hook. “Sometimes you pay a little, and then you find out that the real price is so much higher.”

Owen nodded. “And sometimes the first price is so high, that you’ll pay anything to make sure it was worth it.”

The adlet nodded. “I didn’t really think you could run away.”

They hadn’t really known each other, had they? It felt like meeting an old college acquaintance, feeling each other out and wondering if the other guy just wanted you to lend him money.

Owen sighed and climbed to his feet. “I’ve gotta say. I’m deeply disappointed you’re an adlet, Frank. I liked you.” That earned him another long silence. Maybe they could have this again. Maybe next time he’d just be food. Maybe Frank was thinking the same. Drool had begun to drip from his mouth.

“Are you ready to go?” Frank’s voice was soft. It’d be nice to trust him, but he wasn’t that dumb.

Owen sighed.

“So is dad still in charge?” The adlet’s eyes got very wide. “Take me to him.”