“Whaddya mean it didn’t work? I’m here, ain’t I?” I was sitting on a bench seat in our cabin wearing a too-small concert T for a band I didn’t recognize. I Am Shartacus was stretched taut across my ample man-bosom. Handsome Alex was propped up on the bench across from me, his bones situated between a trio of red velvet pillows as he often requested. My butt was asleep from tailbone-to-taint. “If I made it through the portal and ended up back here, then what’s the problem?” I gestured to indicate my whole body. “And I mean check me out. I made it through. I’m right here.”
“In fact you did not.” Handsome Alex’s eyes lit up with amber light emphasizing each syllable. “The bone portal was altered in several ways the exact moment you entered. First, it was made to exclude blood and tissue from transport. Some hours ago, your vessel emerged as bones, only. I have spent the past four hours weaving it back together.”
I realized suddenly that the sun had come up. The time-skip was disorienting.
Handsome Alex continued. “Another effect of the portal’s unexpected reconfiguration was the rapid, unpreventable application of several valuable essences to your soul. Unfortunately we will be unable to remove them. The plan will likely need to adapt now to include you in a performance role.”
“Wait. Wait. What do you mean the portal was altered? An unexpected reconfiguration? How could you let that happen?” None of this made any sense. I squinted hard at Handsome Alex. “That’s it, isn’t it? Of course it is. You didn’t let it happen. You wouldn’t. You’re too much of a pro for one of your portals to go haywire. So something else is going on here. Something fucked with the portal; something so powerful you couldn’t counter it.” I stopped. I thought. It was a lot easier with this freshly-woven meat-brain. “Oh shit, don’t tell me it was—”
“Stop there. Your instinct is correct, but dare not to utter his name. Not so soon after his influence has been imprinted upon this realm.”
The door to our cabin slid open just then and Mina entered. Her eyes sparkled as she saw me.
“Hey! Uncle Kirby! You finally made it!” She rushed up and caught me in a hug. She loved me, I could really feel it. In her mind, she’d known her Uncle Kirby since she was a child; longer than he’d even existed. She had a lifetime of memories with her two wacky uncles, all courtesy of Alex’s Compelling Narrative.
“Hey, kid.” I peeled my way out of her hug and she went over to her guitar case and got it out. It was an old Gibson Flying V. The whole thing was painted to match her penis-torture tattoo. She started tuning it and I returned my talk with Handsome Alex. “I feel weird, Bud. Real weird.”
“A revelation which comes as no surprise. Before we proceed any further, I must insist you take complete stock of the major changes your vessel has undergone.”
“Alright, one sec.”
I first tried checking my logs out of habit but there were thousands of entries I’d missed and parsing whatever Handsome Alex was referring to would have been impossible. The quickest skim showed me dozens of notifications from the corpses I’d mass-reaped, literally thousands of essences being harvested, followed by entering the portal where things got all jacked up, then having all my blood and tissues stripped away, dying, being put back together by Alex, and finally waking up hours later to find my butt asleep.
With the logs a mess, I’d need to scope out my DNA to dig into these supposedly major changes to my vessel, instead:
Dead Nerd Appraisal:
Ossick Meldrath. Dead Man Walking. Soul Alchemist. 1,621 years old.
Current Vessel: Kirby Dufresne. Human. Male. 43 years old.
Attributes:
8 Strength
20 Stamina
17 Agility
23 Intellect
4 Spirit
35 Presence
Spell and Powers:
Rank 5 [Alchemical Soul Conjunction]
Rank 5 [Alchemical Soul Dissection]
Rank 5 [Alchemical Soul Purification]
Rank 1 [Child of Rivulon]
Rank 2 [Down Here, We All Float]
Rank 5 [Mend Soul]
Rank 2 [Putrefaction]
Rank 3 [Reap]
Rank 1 [Rivulon’s Pact]
Rank 2 [Shadow Boxers]
Rank 2 [Weird]
Talents and Traits:
MUNDANE[Insurance Salesmanship]
EPIC[Kirby, Please. I Need You To Stay Sober]
LEGENDARY[Singalong]
LEGENDARY[Stage Dive]
LEGENDARY[Swagger]
GOD TIER[Voice of Rivulon]
“Alex,” I said, “what the shit. Why would he do this?”
“One could sooner shoot one’s piss into space and extinguish the sun, than comprehend the motivations of beings as ancient and inscrutable as the Old Gods.”
What did he just say? A hairline fracture suddenly zig-zagged from the top of Handsome Alex’s skull to the bony ridge of his brow. I couldn’t handle that right now. I had to focus on what Rivulon—
—on what the R-word had done to me.
“He’s gone and made me into the baddest motherfucker since Freddie, is what he’s done.”
“On the contrary, Her Royal Majesty’s presence attribute never exceeded eighteen. Yours is now nearly twice that. The comparisons to historical earth figures would be more accurately limited exclusively to a handful of messianic figures.”
“He’s gone and made me into a rock and roll god.” I felt mad with power.
Looking at my DNA, there were a pair of new spells. Both had R-word’s name in them so I was hesitant to even check the descriptions. They’d wait.
The legendary talents leapt out at me, of course. And I’d never even heard of a god-tier anything before. Again, I ain’t ashamed to admit I was scared to even read the tooltips for these.
But more than anything it was the attribute scores that had me instantly feeling like the belle of the Boner Ball. These I understood at a glance, because the average human scored eights across the board, and without supernatural intervention they could never grow past fifteen in anything. My stamina, agility, and intellect had all shot up to superhero levels.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
With a little effort, seventeen agility would let me dodge bullets.
But twenty stamina meant I didn’t really need to.
And shit, twenty-three intellect might finally make me smart enough to not get shot at in the first place.
But it was the presence score that really made my eyes cross and my toes curl. A thirty-five in anything was unheard of, full-fucking-stop. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was going to attract followers like some kind of religious figure now. And a marketable religion, at that, not like the Temple of Neverending Agony I was brought up in.
Handsome Alex and Mina were just watching me struggling to reckon with it all. “My presence is thirty-five now, dude. Do we even need to win this stupid contest? I think I might just be able to con Emperor Hawijimi into giving us a couple wishes for free now, right?”
“The Emperor is a powerful reality mage. He is immune to your confidence games.”
“Fair enough.”
“Now, I understand your hesitation, Kirby. I empathize, believe it or not. The Old God of the Unraveling is known for his love of intricate traps. But before we go further you will need to study your new talents and traits. It simply cannot be avoided any longer.”
His insistence was making me nervous. While he was weaving me back together he’d obviously already seen what the R-word did to me, and there was something in there that was going to fuck our plans good, I was sure of it.
Stalling for time, I said, “You know he slipped two new spells into my repertoire, too.”
“I am aware. I believe he forced these incantations into your arsenal as a trap. To use them would almost certainly result in outcomes both unintended and disastrous.”
“Alright then. Gimme a sec and I’ll read up on these new talents.”
I still wasn’t eager to read the description for the god-tier Voice of R-Word trait I’d picked up. He was a mean old bastard and I wouldn’t put it past him to replace the tooltip with, like, a spell that turns the reader into an anthropomorphized herpes sore or something. Hard pass on that. Never again.
But the three legendary talents I’d acquired were recognizable, at least, the frameworks for which I’d reaped from a corpse named Rajah Superbus right before I’d fled the morgue.
“Superbus,” I muttered. “Why does that sound familiar?”
For a moment Handsome Alex’s eyes flared bright yellow but he said nothing. I went ahead with reading the descriptions for all three of my new legendary talents:
[Singalong]
LEGENDARY TALENT
Activating Singalong forces entities within earshot to repeat any phrase you sing. Can be toggled between Concurrent, Harmonic, and Call-Back.
[Stage Dive]
LEGENDARY TALENT
Stage Dive is a crowd control ability. You may designate an area of any shape and size. Observers you select will be drawn to the designated area, where they will prepare to catch objects falling from above.
[Swagger]
LEGENDARY TALENT
Activating this talent instantly doubles your agility and presence attributes. This Legendary version triples that shit.
I paused. My blood, which was brand new, started to boil. “Alex, did you plant a fucking story in my head, man?” I got up from the bench. “We had a deal—”
“He means to drive a wedge between us. You have my word as your partner, Kirby, I have not and will never employ my narratives upon you. More importantly, you have my word as your brother. He has given you unfathomable power. You are now indisputably stronger than I and he expects you to resent the hierarchy of our operation, where we have agreed I am empowered as the ultimate decision maker. The suspicious entries inserted into the tooltips are entirely of his devising, I assure you.”
I looked at the tiny crack which had appeared on his forehead earlier. “It’s all about destroying you, isn’t it?”
“As it has always been. My utmost regret in undeath is that I have drawn you into our conflict. This is my curse. I, alone, should bear it. You must read the final trait now, Kirby. It is unlike the talents taken from Superbus.”
“Alright, alright. Hey, why is that name familiar? Superbus. Do you know?”
“Superbus is the stage name of the Drix Consortium’s acquisition arm.”
“Oh shit, those are the guys from that pocket dimension full of murderbots, right? They had a band entered in the contest?”
“Correct. And I have learned while you were indisposed that a cloned replacement frontman will arrive shortly, having already departed a titan-class warship currently in orbit of Saturn, which will allow their skew to perform tonight as required.” Skew was a phonetic pronunciation of the acronym for Sonic Combat Unit. The word felt extra-cringe coming from an ancient evil like Handsome Alex. “They represent perhaps our toughest competition.”
“I can’t believe they want to colonize Earth right when we’re about to conquer it. I mean, I can believe it. Their dimension is full of killer robots and whatnot. But still!”
“Kirby, our reason for entering this contest is not to conquer Earth. Now, please, view the tooltip for your newly-acquired trait.”
“I know the goal is to break your curse, Bud, but if we can take over the world at the same time I’ve always felt like we really gotta go for it.”
“The tooltip, Kirby. I beg you.”
“Alright, alright.” I laughed, but I felt legit anxiety when I looked at the entry on the very bottom of my Dead Nerd Analysis:
[Voice of Rivulon]
GOD-TIER TRAIT
Sing, my child, and the worms will enter their brains.
That was it.
“‘The worms will enter their brains’?” My face screwed up in confusion. “I think that’s Floyd, right? But that’s it? What’s it even mean?”
“I do not precisely know, but I have suspicions. He is the personification of the Unraveling. His goal is and has always been to break, but not outright destroy.”
“That’s why he doesn’t just snuff you out of existence, right? He wants to drive you insane; change who you are.”
“Correct.” A centipede as thick as my wrist wriggled out of Handsome Alex’s eye-socket. He ignored it as it crawled onto the floor and began to shriek in a tinny voice. “He will not break me.”
“Man, this could really put a twist in our plans, eh? How do you think we should move forward from here?”
“Nothing has changed in that regard. Same as before, we must build the skew in time for tonight’s performance or we will be disqualified and required to exit the competition.” His eyes flared with what I can only describe as renewed fervor. “We will begin with Miss Mina.”
Mina stopped tuning her Flying V and turned to look into those glowing eyes set in his ancient skull. She smiled with excitement. “Oh, oh! Is it finally time for Uncle Kirby to play with my soul?”
“Uh, yep.” Her eagerness to have me fuck around with her immortal soul was a little unnerving. That was the thing about a well-built Compelling Narrative; what made it perfect for this job. Without that enthusiastic consent, I couldn’t do shit to enhance her beyond human limitations. Neither could Handsome Alex. Not without killing her.
Mina Diamond grinned at the skin-suit she thought of as her dear Uncle Kirby. “This is so bitchin’.”