Ch2Sc3 - Sam

Sam was barely conscious when the skeletons dragged him from the chair and escorted him—more ‘supported his limp body because he could no longer move on his own’ than escorting, really—down the hallway to the cells.

His body hurt. His bones hurt. His skin hurt. His soul hurt, from whatever the halfling torturer-tattooist had done to him. He could feel the ink, or whatever the bastard had used, burning on his flesh. The tattoos glowed slightly, two on his right at the shoulder and the bicep, one on his left. It was like he could feel the mana seeping into him, fouling his own natural draws, like fish-hooks in his spirit.

He barely registered the heavy iron door the skeletons pulled aside, barely realized that the room they dumped him into was less a jail cell and more along the lines of a half-way decent roadside inn. There was a real bed in the corner, a small table and chair in the other, and a mana lamp glowing cheerfully on it.

He did register when Araxesendenak, still walking behind the skeletons, stepped up to the doorway along with the strange little man Cuthbert. What was he? Before his glasses had disappeared, Sam might have been tempted to use an Identify spell on him, just to figure out what in the world he could possibly be, because human was definitely not high on the list no matter what he looked like.

“The fatigue will disappear soon,” Araxesendenak said jovially, as if the whole thing had been fun and games for him. And probably it had. “In the mean-time, I thought a gift might make this whole dreadful experience more palatable for you. Cuthbert?”

The little man stepped forward, a small ornately-carved mahogany box held daintily in his hands. He paused and extended the box, one hand underneath, the other going on top to unlatch and pull open the lid.

“I don’t want anything from you.” Sam tried to make the words defiant, but they came out withered and dry from cracked lips. “Go cram it in your pelvic cradle.”

“Now now,” he could practically hear the glee in the lich’s voice. “No need to be like that. I confess, I’ve been the most dreadful of hosts to this point. Please allow me to make it up to you.”

Cuthbert extended the box to Sam once again, and this time, growling, Sam forced himself to his feet and to look inside.

Thumb Bane lay inside on a pillow of soft velvet. The handle twisted and scarred from where the metal had been torn away from it. And, in a small silver jar next to the warped wood, dozens of shards of darksteel, all that remained of the hammer’s enchanted head.

“I know how much the weapon meant to you,” the lich practically crowed. “And I simply couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, despite its dreadful state of disrepair.”

Sam stared at the shards of his weapon, the hammer handed down from his father, and felt a cold rage start to froth somewhere down in his bowels. He tried to throw himself forward, to punch that smirking face, to do something to get back at the bastard standing there in front of him.

But his legs were weak and rubbery, his strength sapped by the chair and its horrible tattooist. His lunge was little more than a half-hearted shift forward, and when Cuthbert reached out and planted a palm against his chest he found himself leaning into it for stability rather than trying to push past it.

Damn it.

Damn it.

“Well, now that the housewarming gifts have been delivered,” the smug bastard with the crown said, “I believe we should leave you to settle in to your new quarters. Enjoy them, Tolliver, for on the morrow we have quite the schedule planned out for you.”

Cuthbert gave his chest a push that, for all its gentleness, had the same inexorable pressure as an advancing glacier. Sam stumbled backwards, lost his balance, and landed on his butt in the middle of the room just as the iron door clanged shut and the bolts shot home.

Leaving him alone, locked in a lich’s dungeon, clutching what remained of his father’s warhammer. With the foul magic of those tattoos scratching at his soul and his mana pool completely empty.

Keep it together Sam. You’ve been in worse places than this. At least you’re not dead this time.

True enough.

He took his time getting back to his feet. Whether intended or not, the entirety of the past couple hours had left him weak as a kitten and nauseous as a sailor in his first storm. The task of getting his feet back under him gave him plenty of time to look around the little room. In addition to the bed and table, there were two chairs—was Araxesendenak expecting him to have company?—a small chest at the foot of the bed, and another beside the table. From his position on the floor Sam was able to see the guzunder under the bed, too, and hoped that it was empty. He’d need to use it himself soon enough.

The room was maybe ten foot by twenty, far more spacious than any of the other prison cells he’d been inside before. And, high up on the back wall, just below the ceiling, was a small barred window through which light and fresh air streamed. There were candles on the desk, and presumably a method of lighting them somewhere, perhaps in the chests?

Sam finished his visual inspection of the room about the same time he got his knees locked and convinced his spine to straighten all the way up. Those herculean tasks accomplished, he moved first to the larger chest by the bed, then to the smaller one by the table.

The large chest contained clothing, drab and utilitarian but of decent quality. Also a sealed envelope addressed to ‘occupant’. He set that aside for the moment. Further exploration of the chest revealed socks, but no boots, as well as extra blankets and at the very bottom the round shape and lid of a second guzunder. What, in case he had such a powerful bowel movement that he shattered the first one?

He closed the chest and, though he knew it was futile, reached out with the Message system again. And just like the last twenty times he’d tried it, it came back blocked. He lacked even the mana to cast the simple Status spell or even bring up any of his menus. Who’s bright idea had that been, at the dawn of time? Tying the need for mana into such a basic and necessary function as bringing up your damn menus?

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Next time I see that amorphous son of a bitch,” he growled as he forced himself back to his feet, “I’m going to punch him in as many noses as he can grow.”

The chest by the table contained little of interest. Some paper and quills, probably used for writing confessions. A plate, a mug, no utensils, and a bottle of water. Candles, too, and a small spark-maker device for lighting them.

All in all, everything you might expect to find in a decent caravanserai room. Hell, maybe Araxesendenak had hired on a designer of just such a place to make this for him. It wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing he’d ever done, Sam was sure.

“So,” he sighed and eased himself down onto one of the two cheap wooden chairs. “Let’s see now. Captured by a lich king, can’t magic, can’t use abilities, hammer destroyed—“ his voice hitched at that last, and he shot a glance at the little box containing the shards of Thumb Bane, still on the floor where it had fallen.

“—Can’t contact anyone,” he continued after taking a deep breath. “Guards all around, walls made of bone and probably magically reinforced…” He sucked in another deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Sam old son, you might be in trouble on this one.”

“It will get worse before it gets better,” said a voice.

Sam’s eyelids drooped closed, and he uttered a gentle curse under his breath. He was too tired to react in any other way. He turned his head slowly towards where the new voice had come from, and just as slowly forced his eyelids back open.

She was sitting on the second chair, perched daintily on the edge of the seat. Her long black hair was tied into a single braid that fell out of sight down her back. Her clothing was a puffy dress that was all black lace and ruffles and buttons all the way up to just below her chin. The darkness of her clothing contrasted perfectly with the alabaster whiteness of her skin.

But all that was noticed in passing. What really drew Sam’s focus were the eyes. They were black as pitch, and yet somehow seemed to shine with a strange sort of anti-light that illuminated without casting shadow. They were the same color as the glowing black gem in the center of the brooch she wore at the V of her throat.

And, except for the color scheme and the different haircut, she could have been the twin sister of Persephone’s avatar.

“Do you know who I am?” the girl asked, her voice sounding old as time and somehow young as she looked all at once.

Sam was too tired to even try lying.

“You’re the Failstate,” he said. “Are you here to kill me?” He didn’t let any trace of hope creep into his voice. If she was here to kill him, that might just provide him with the out that he needed.

“After a fashion,” she said, nodding once in an oddly birdlike motion.

Silence followed the pronouncement.

“Well?” Sam asked finally.

“Do you know, I forgot who and what I was for the longest time,” she said, those black eyes seeming to stare right through him. “When I awoke—say rather, when your actions woke me—I was very confused. I didn’t remember my name, my purpose, my past. I remembered nothing save how to grope in the darkness for information and answers. And as I groped, I found information and memories slowly flowing back.

“You were among the first things I discovered when I woke up in this world, Samuel James Tolliver. Aside from those bits of myself I could easily reach, you were also the first thing I reached out to.”

“I remember,” Sam said. “You used the achievement messages to send me a threat.”

“I can see how you imagined it might be that,” the child said, nodding. “And looking back on it now, I confess my own reaction was rather extreme.”

“You declared war on me,” Sam said, arching a brow. “You call that a little extreme?”

“For that perceived threat? Yes. For who and what you are, and the danger you represent to this world? I consider it far less than the bare minimum.”

Sam blinked. “Wait, run that by me again?”

The girl-thing adjusted herself on the chair, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and then folding her hands neatly in her lap. “You are a threat to me, Samuel James Tolliver. Not only to me, but to this entire world and to everyone in it.”

If you had asked him before this conversation had started if he had the energy to be surprised right now, he would have said ‘no’. And would, apparently, have been wrong. He felt his jaw drop even as his eyes widened.

“You have a lot of nerve lady,” he said. “Calling me a threat when you’re teamed up with a lich king hell-bent on—“

“Lich King Araxesendenak’s actions are well within the norm for a being of his kind. He has done nothing to upset the natural workings of the system. He has taken no action that might be deemed harmful to the world’s foundation as a whole.

“You?” she raised and pointed a neat little finger right at him. “Have.”

“You have reawoken the Last before her time. You have split her in trinary. You have broken the system with your build. You have, through either the purest random chance or through some guiding hand, risen to be the only thing in the world which might truly endanger the reality my master sought to create so long ago.”

“So you’re going to kill me… What, because I’m some world-ending supervillain?” Sam snorted. “Lady, I can barely tie my shoelaces in the morning, let alone pose a threat to reality.”

“No.”

“Make up your mind, will you?”

“I have.” She leaned forward, staring into his eyes. “I am not going to kill you. But I am going to remove you as a threat to this world.”

It was her tone that made Sam’s mouth go dry. Calm, cool, matter-of-fact. Like she was adding an item to her grocery list, right between the milk and eggs.

“How—“ he had to swallow twice before the words emerged as something other than a dull croak. “How do you plan to manage that? Won’t your new buddy the lich be pissed if you wipe me out of existence before he has a chance at me?”

“The lich is of use, and your ultimate demise would strain our relationship. But my actions will not result in your death. Not immediately, at any rate.”

She raised a hand, and it started to glow with that same strange black light that emanated from her eyes.

“Woah, wait a minute,” Sam scrambled up off his chair and backed away. “Let’s talk this out. There’s gotta be some way we can reach a compromise or something?”

“Do you know what I am, Samuel James Tolliver?” she Untitledasked, ignoring him. “I didn’t, for the longest time. Only within the last day or so have I finally remembered, and has my power finally returned to me in full measure.

“I am balance, Samuel James Tolliver. I was formed by my master to ensure that his vision of the future continued into eternity, even past his own demise. And I was given powers to manipulate and even alter the System should it become necessary for its survival.

“You, on the other hand, are chaos. And everything you are stems from a single point of power. A single fulcrum on which the complexity of your existence spins. My sisters do not see it. They are too close. The lich cannot see it, he is immersed in the system. Only I, with my perfect information, can see it.”

She advanced slowly, calculatedly, watching him back up like a predator would watch a mouse. Sam’s eyes darted here and there, searching for an exit. His hand scrabbled against the iron door, pulling futilely.

No escape.

“When you became my sister’s Guardian,” the Failstate continued, continuing her slow approach until she stood right in front of him, staring up with those empty eyes. “That was when chaos entered this world. That was when the foundations of my master’s will began to crumble.”

Sam got it then in an instant. He had a flash of memory; Marie, stumbling to the ground as some lance of unseen power drove through her. Marie, staggering back to her feet, a look of horror on her face, the bond and powers she received from Apollyon removed from her in a single stroke.

“No, wait—!”

“And so I think,” she drove relentlessly on, and her glowing hand came forward to rest almost gently on his chest, “you shall be Guardian no longer.”

Power drove into Sam’s chest. He had time for a single scream.

Then blackness.