Rebecca poured water on Owen’s wounds. It wouldn’t work miracles, but it might flush some of the chemicals out. And magic healed wounds a lot faster if it had something similar to convert into flesh. Water was pretty good, blood was better. Scabs were just about perfect, oddly. Usually not long after a scab had formed, the wound would disappear. Even a light bandage was pretty good, but a wound left exposed to the open air would take more mana and a hundred times longer to heal.
Owen’s body was still a jigsaw of the fissures left by the gas, the flesh had bubbled up into blisters until the bubbling split the flesh apart. That flesh had knitted back together, but you could still see marks along the skin where it had torn along the seam of each blister large and small.
Beyond that Owen’s body was covered in wounds, mostly small puncture wounds that would have required an actual doctor to prevent infection. Except it’d been soaked in bleach…and ammonia, not exactly healthy, but she didn’t expect any of the wounds to get infected. It took a lot for an infection to ascend, but a magical disease had wiped out Mumbai. Though that was only part of the reason for the military enforced Quarantine.
She tried to keep the water pooling in the wounds. The body slowly absorbed it, hopefully magically replacing the lost blood. Her estimate was rough, but the chemicals appeared to have done a surprisingly decent job of converting into flesh. Miles better than air, though not as good as water. But they needed to be leaving soon. The US ambassador wouldn’t wait for Owen to heal up, and he definitely wouldn’t wait for him to ascend. When the mundane ambassador and his cohorts entered the outskirts of the city, a feeding frenzy would erupt.
Not every player and monster in the outskirts could or would feed on mundanes. In fact, such species were the minority. Non-players simply yielded very little mana and were terrible practicing. But like any competitive ecosystem, where there was food, there would be competition, and often larger predators hoping to take advantage of the carnage. The ambassador’s team would be like a mobile watering hole–a chance for all the prey animals to drink their fill, except they wouldn’t be the only ones. The effect would carry all the way up the magical food chain. And when the lions came to feed, nothing and no one would be safe.
Owen coughed up some more bile and blood. His throat was almost as bad as his eyes. When she’d first dragged him out, she thought his eyes had melted and drained past his tear ducts. She’d been terrified to pry open his eyelids, but his sunken eyes had filled out some, though tears kept flowing yellow.
She coughed a bit herself still, and some blisters remained. Though the pain was distant, separate. Her entire focus was on Owen.
She cracked open another water bottle and began irrigating his eyes again, slowly opening them and revealing tiny red pools. Well, she wouldn’t waste the water there then. She rolled him onto his front and began irrigating the wounds she found on his back.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but when he’d triggered the elevator trap she’d followed instructions and begun dumping the ammonia into the elevator. She’d been skeptical that mustard gas could have taken down the giant beast. In fact she vaguely recalled something from history about soldiers that had survived mustard gas attacks with only ‘a touch of mustard.’
But she’d followed instructions. Poke holes in the tarp from below to drain the liquids and the gas. Though they didn’t have time to let it really air out. She’d felt the gases burning away at her eyes, but she’d breathed through a soaked rag. Her skin had blistered a bit in her brief race to retrieve Owen’s body and drag him a safe distance away. But she’d healed quickly. Her body drained her mana to accelerate the process.
Why had he triggered the trap if the ammit wasn’t inside? They’d wasted hours now, and he would be hours more in recovering. Still, facing down a creature of that size, she didn’t think she could keep her head either. And at least Owen was still alive.
Still her legs and arms itched and burned where she’d moved through the toxic gas, but it was a distant feeling. Perhaps she had a minor rash, but it was nothing compared to Owen, Mustard gas was essentially an irritant, like pepper spray, if pepper spray was strong enough to make your eyes melt, your skin blister, and your stomach empty itself unendingly. Even then it might be crippling but survivable if it didn’t cause blistering in the lungs too.
Creaking in the ceiling made her freeze. The ammit was moving. Not quickly though, she had a little time. Why had Owen triggered the trap if the beast hadn’t entered the elevator shaft? Perhaps there wasn’t time, or the beast smelled something and hadn’t chased Owen into the trap. Which meant the ammit was smart as well as strong. Perhaps they should hurry.
Rebecca rolled him back over and dumped the rest of the water on Owen’s face, shaking him. “Come on, this isn’t the time for a nap.”
His torso had deep puncture wounds, but his legs had only been scratched. They’d healed up now, and he could stumble away, if not run, but he needed to wake up first. Except, he’d still be blind. How could they run? He’d need his eyes.
She could leave him–perhaps lead the monster away.
He wouldn’t die from being eaten –she’d seen a human arm trying to regrow itself out of a pile of bear scat–she hoped it had only been a bear anyway. Bears were big, it made sense their feces could fill a waste bin, right? Or maybe that had been from the ammit.
That wasn’t important.
Owen wasn’t a player, so he was immortal. Except no one she knew of had actually come back from that level of damage yet. In theory, it would take a lot of time and resources, ideally blood and bone, to accelerate it. Even applying magical healing didn’t work on a partially digested scrap of tissue or bone. Yet it did repair itself, ever so slowly. But ammit was the devourer of souls. Rebecca knew instinctively but with complete confidence that she couldn’t come back from that. Could Owen?
There was an option here. It would be expensive, possibly fatal or worse, but she couldn’t not try.
She climbed on top of his body. Her own body stung as her skin, still sensitive from the blisters, protested. It didn’t matter. She needed to decrease the distance as much as possible. She wrapped herself around her brother, took a deep breath, and forced her spirit to enter his body.
There was an immediate sense of rejection. He fought back, even unconscious but she pushed through with disdain. The distance was only inches, but she could already feel her mana draining, strained by the effort. If it ran out–
She poured her mana into his eyes and the system soaked it up.
Mana drained. Level 17!
Mana drained. Level 16!
All over his body there were injuries. Pockets of chemicals deep in his flesh, and it all demanded mana to heal. She couldn’t do everything, but the body took what it wanted. She needed to leave. She poured one last burst into his eyes and retreated.
Mana drained. Level 10!
She didn’t know if her second ability would disappear if she fell below level ten. There were too many questions. But she needed it to live. She felt her depths, at the mana reserves that had filled as each level disappeared. She watched as the drain slowed, hoping the mana drain stopped before she lost another level and her life.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Owen woke up with a girl on top of him. Everything hurt, but that was more or less normal. The girl was a surprising and uncomfortable thing.
Every bit of his flesh suffered from some degree of chemical burns, and she was sitting on him. His voice was raspy, and his first attempt was more a grunt than words.She turned to look at him, surprised that he was awake. “Can you get off?” He said it loudly, clearly this time, and he sagged in relief as her weight left his body.
He glanced over at her and blushed. What exactly had she been doing? She seemed distracted, but relieved.
He decided not to ask.
“Well, I think I know why that stuff is a war crime.” His voice was raspy and harsh, but he chuckled. He struggled to breathe, but then he really didn’t need to. “But we did it.”
“Did what?”
“Killed the bad guy.” Owen stared at her confused expression. “There’s mana in the fridge.”
She twisted to look. Apparently she hadn’t thought to look inside. Owen grinned. “We should touch it together, if we claim it together, there’ll be enough that we can both ascend. Probably enough we can each get to level ten. We could use the head start.”
Early levels were always easiest, but level ten gave a second ability. With the right abilities, it would accelerate their early growth faster. Maybe catching up to frontrunners like Nikolai wouldn’t be as hard as he’d feared.
They stared at the elevator door for a bit. The mustard gas had disappeared, and the liquids had drained into the basement. Mustard gas was yellow, right? Hence the name, but as they’d approached, he’d smelled the garlic and horseradish again and nearly hurled. Apparently the gas lingered.
“The ammit’s still alive, wandering upstairs. We need to hurry”
Owen listened for it and began to make out the noise of the ammit crawling around the halls upstairs. How long before it found the stairwell down? A twinge of his conscience panged at him. Maybe she was a mentally impaired child in the body of a monster. Or maybe the man had lied. He wasn’t going to risk his life finding out.
“If we run, open the fridge, absorb the mana, and run back, I don’t think we’ll take much damage.”
“Go by yourself.”
“We should split the mana. Two fighters are better than one.”
Rebecca snorted. “You know that’s not how it works. One level twenty five player is easily worth five at level ten.”
“It doesn’t matter. We both ascend or neither of us do.”
She shook her head. “Someone needs to stay out of the gas, in case there’s still too much gas, and you don’t make it.”
Owen grimaced. That made sense, but he didn’t like it. The ammit was at the stairwell now, nose poking into view as it assayed the damage to the stairs. The gap it’d left stymied it, but there still wasn’t time to argue. “Fine, but we’re ascending you with my mana, even if it costs me some levels.”
He took a deep breath and bolted forward into the clouds of invisible death. His eyes began to water immediately, and because he couldn’t see it through his watery eyes, his foot caught something and he nearly tripped. He recovered well enough and yanked open the fridge. A body rolled out, grinning.
The man popped up and the knife sank into Owen’s chest.
“I am Wotan, now Odin!” Unbridled insanity oozed from Noah’s one remaining eye. Also blood. Blood was coming out of his every orifice, actually. “I die and I return with the wisdom to rule the gods. That’s what the power is for.” The man spoke to the air–no not to the air, to the system. He was talking to the notifications, looking at the madness in his eyes, Owen didn’t think it was the system talking back.
The man collapsed to the floor, but his eye remained fixed on Owen. He began dragging his body forward, a manic grin on his face. “You killed me, but I come back even stronger. Such is Odin.”
Owen backed away, his lungs already beginning to burn with the gas, and now the knife’s fire energies poured into him, adding a new flavor to the burning. Noah didn’t understand his own path. Odin had died, but it had been suicide. He’d sacrificed himself for power, just as he’d done his own eye. He’d hung himself on a tree for nine days to gain some ineffable wisdom. Maybe in a modern retelling, you could substitute the tree of life for a fridge in an elevator shaft, but Owen doubted it. Noah didn’t look any wiser.
Owen pulled the knife from his chest and swung down at the aspiring godling. The man’s hand caught his arm and snapped the bone with his grip. Owen gritted his teeth and screamed through them. Someday he would have constitution or endurance stats to let him tank some damage before his body just shattered.
This close he could see the mana’s mana burning away at his wounds. Except they weren’t healing him, they were burning him away, leaving scars and open wounds.
Noah had been given the opportunity to become Odin, the patriarch of one of the most powerful pantheons of gods when most people in Omaha became flesh eating furballs or green muscle men. That didn’t come free, and he didn’t poke out his own eye without prompting. Noah had gotten a quest. But what was the quest?
He’d needed the right aspects, the right actions, and who knows what else to complete that transformation. Owen racked his brain for what he could remember of Odin. Gleipnir, his horse, had six legs. That didn’t seem like something he could accomplish. He’d hung himself from the Tree of Life for nine days. How that granted him mystic powers and untold wisdom wasn’t explained in any detail. Presumably self-resurrection was itself worthy of–
Resurrection.
He’d wasted his resurrection. A power like that had side effects, limited uses, and likely required specific circumstances. Had rising too early driven him mad? His body didn’t seem like it could take it either. His own mana was consuming him.
He’d need to stabilize his path or it would kill him. For an orc that would mean kill something, an adlet would eat someone. But Odin was a more complex myth, a narrower path.
Three things gave Odin the powers that let him rule above the gods. He’d already lost his eye, so that wasn’t going to save him, and his nine day resurrection had been interrupted after only a few hours. Arguably his greatest power boost though was when he’d fought a demon with his brothers. His brothers had fallen in battle, and Odin absorbed their powers, then using their combined might to triumph over hell’s general and his fiery sword. In one fell swoop, Odin had seized an entire divine generation’s powers, become next in line to be king of the aesir, and taught hell to fear his dynasty.
Owen grinned. No demons, no brothers. Noah was in a death spiral. As long as he wasn’t allowed to kill himself and tour the underworld for nine days, and even then, Owen suspected his resurrection card had been played. Unless it had some kind of cooldown, Owen had already prevented a king of the gods from rising.
Noah/Odin pulled Owen to the ground and climbed on top of him, his hands finding Owen’s throat and slapping away any resistance with ease. Owen grinned at him though. It was just like his trap. Both of them were dying, but ultimately only one of them would die, could die. This wasn’t a fight. It was a waiting game. And he could endure whatever it took to wait out the godling’s demise. It was over. He just needed to wait it out.
Noah pried the knife from Owen’s limp hand. “Nothing personal, but I need to let this little guy out.” He flipped his eyepatch open and Owen collapsed as the mystical depths of magic mesmerized him. Owen watched helplessly as Noah lifted the dagger and stabbed himself, dark vapor immediately began to leak from the dagger.
A massive bulk slammed into Noah.
The ammit stood over Owen, roaring at Noah. Not an angry roar though, a rebuke? The ammit had positioned itself between them and declared ‘no fighting.’
Owen sank back to the floor and chuckled. Maybe the ammit had the mind of a four year old after all.
Except the demonic vapor was everywhere, mixing with the toxic gas. The demonic vapor dove into the ammit’s mouth, and Owen could only watch. There was no way a mentally handicapped kid had invested into willpower-like stats to prevent possession. Broken and dazed on the ground, Owen laughed. There was no joy in it, too much bitterness, and a lot of self-hatred. He’d failed. But hey, maybe the demon would leave the guardian of Egyptian hell alone out of professional courtesy.
Noah had everything he needed now. A demon, a sibling, even an enchanted blade of fire, and he’d take the next step to becoming a god.
Noah pulled himself out from under a few boards and a sawhorse. Apparently his sister hadn’t really tried to hurt him, because he didn’t seem to have a scratch on him. The tiny flames that burned away his flesh had disappeared.
“Good girl! Yes, come here sister. Let me pet you.” The rebuke left the girl instantly and her massive hippo butt wiggled in Owen’s face and happily trotted over to her brother.