“Keep your head down.” Seth whispered, and peered around the edge of a storage container. The area was dark and covered in fog; there was maybe three car-lengths worth of visibility before the soup of white obscured everything beyond. Wet grass thrashed under every step, and Iresha suddenly caught-up with him, back to the corrugated metal, “Shh. I think it’s right ahead.”

“What’s right ahead?”

“Level-boss.” He answered, and nudged his head towards an ominous shape just barely visible in the distance, “You want me to tell you how it works or just let you figure it out?”

“Let me try it first.” The Prince answered, and carefully stepped out from behind the protective corner, “We’re still looking for a way through the electrified gate, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then there’s probably a button or two in here.” Iresha nodded and made his way through, and for a moment, seemed to think he was on the right track. Just as that strangely-shaped shadow was beyond his line-of-sight though, he heard a gut-chilling roar; it was like the unholy combination of a howler-monkey and an enraged boar. The Prince yelped and ran faster, spurred on by the horrendous sound of something chasing right behind him.

“Turn around!”

“NO SPOILERS! AHH!”

Seth snorted a laugh and watched as Iresha’s player-character disappeared into the fog, and abruptly went silent. His name-plate flashed and went red.

“Don’t say a word. I’m coming right back.”

“Alright.” He answered, and waited patiently by the storage container. He looked back when he heard footsteps in the fog, and Iresha’s P.C. went around him once again, “It’s still over there, by the way.”

“So, I have to find another way around. Maybe the gate-access thing is the other direction.” Iresha wondered, mostly to himself, and peeked his head around that metal box again. Instead of following his former path, he turned left instead, keeping half an eye on the haze. The boar-scream echoed all around again, and those stomping footsteps gave chase, but Iresha flipped around this time, and instead of being mauled by that creature in the mist, he got a good look at it instead.

It was easily 20ft tall, and built like a massive, bulky centipede, but with body-parts cobbled together from animal-carcasses and crustacean-pieces. Limbs were flayed and rotted, and eyes glowed like embers in the sockets of the moose-skull set over it high shoulders, making it look all the more eerie as it loomed in the thick mist.

Iresha stood still, staring up at it in surprise, “…Damn that thing moves fast…”

Seth darted out behind it and hid behind another container, making his way along its blind-side until he could spot the Prince around the far corner. He waved to get the older teen’s attention, “Come this way.”

Iresha made the fatal mistake of trusting him, and as soon as he looked towards the blonde, the creature mauled him a second time. Seth laughed and shook his head as Iresha’s character fizzled and faded into the ground, and waited for him to respawn outside the puzzle-zone to try yet again. The creature heaved its breaths – deep and guttural – as it waited idly nearby, and all the while, Seth kept a keen eye on it. Two minutes later, Iresha finally caught back up again, and followed the path Seth had taken to get around the back of the container.

“You absolutely did that on purpose.”

“Shh.” Seth put a finger to his lips as the beast beyond the corner swayed and turned slowly in their direction, “It’s one thing to talk normal when we’re outside the zone-boundary, but we gotta be quiet in here.”

“Fine. Where do we go now?”

Seth pointed in the direction Iresha was headed before, “There’s a ladder over there that leads on top of the walls. You can go or I can, but someone’s gotta keep eyeballs on the critter.”

“You go.”

“Aright.” He pushed off the corner and carefully made his way forward, taking a wide path around the disgusting beast. He kept his sights on it until he was around 30ft past it, and too far to see much more than a bare-bones outline of its shape against the foggy foreground, and the burning glow of those two eyes. He found the ladder, and put one hand and foot onto the rungs; one last glance at the pair of candle-like pin-lights, and he turned his gaze away to make his way up…and immediately heard the scream and subsequent stomps. Flipping around on a ladder was already awkward, but holding onto it backwards while a massive, rotting moose-head was close enough to feel its breath on his face was entirely another, “You shitass! You looked away, didn’t you!?”

Iresha was the one laughing then.

A nervous bead of sweat went down the side of Seth’s face, but he clambered his way up anyway, delicately grasping at each hand-hold until he was up at the top of the container. Though the beast didn’t move forward at all, it still moved its head as it tracked his movements, and was rather unnerving. Once he was up top though, he knew he had to get the thing clear so Iresha could follow up after him, and he made his way along the container-tops, all the while keeping his sights set on the beast, “…You gotta get out of its line of sight so it moves away from the ladder. Go around the back of the box you’re hiding by, and when I close my eyes, it should come towards me.”

“Okay.” Iresha answered, and did just that.

Seth was far enough away that he figured he’d had a good head-start, “Three…two…one…” He said quietly, and turned his back. The screech sounded so loudly that Seth could feel it in his bones, and though he only effectively spun on his heel, when he opened his eyes and looked up again, not only was the creature right on top of him…it had gotten on top of the containers with him, its many twisted crab-legs clasping to the ledges on each side, “Ah damnit.”

Iresha was quick to get to the ladder and made his way up as well, “What now?”

“We have to get it back onto the ground somehow.”

“Won’t it just follow us up again afterwards?”

“Yeah, but half the fun is figuring out how to get to where we need to go, while knowing it’s going to do that.” Seth answered, careful not to let his voice get too loud. He spotted the Prince approach the beast from behind, and held his hand out, “On three, I’m gonna jump back down. Keep your eyes on it. When I say, look away.”

“Aright.”

Seth held his thumb out, then thumb and pointer, then thumb, pointer, and middle…and he leapt. The horrendous yowling-scream followed after him, but the beast stayed where it was, and Seth could hide behind the large metal container. A few seconds later, Seth was back at the ladder, and Iresha waved before closing his eyes…and was immediately mauled to death for it.

Seth deadpanned, “You were too quick.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” The Prince harped as he respawned back outside the play-area, “I thought you were looking at it!”

“I didn’t have line-of-sight on it from the ground. The container was in the way.”

“Why didn’t you say so!?”

“I thought it was obvious.” The blonde laughed.

“Ugh, I’m just gonna watch you finish then.”

“Suit yourself.” Seth shrugged, and went around the back of the metal box that the ladder was attached to. With some clever baiting, the beast came down from the top of it to chase after him, only to get to the ladder and be spotted. Seth went around in a wide arc, and lured it back the way they’d originally come and away from said ladder. Once it was far enough, he made a break for it and got up top.

From outside the game, Iresha pulled the V.R. helmet off his head and sat-up in the forward-leaning game-chair, ankles unhooking from the support-pads where the movement paddles were set. He hugged the helmet around the front of his chest and just watched on the large screens ahead of the paired seat-set as Seth finished the level on his own.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Once it had been cleared though, and Seth pulled his own V.R. headset off, he found himself getting quite the look, “…What?”

“You made it look so easy.”

“I’ve played before though.”

“Still…” Iresha shook his head and lifted off the seat, setting the headset down as well, “Well, anyway…I’m sufficiently starving. Let’s go find something to eat.”

.

Egg-toast with avocado and a teriyaki hotdog were quick favorites, and the duo took their fare to the upper deck. After finding a patio-table with an open bench near the railing, Iresha took a long, hard look at his Luminary friend, and asked an oddly specific question.

“…So, what’s the catch, with all this stuff you’re doing for me?”

“Huh?” Seth had a mouthful of his egg-toast, and avocado-sauce was stuck to his face, “What catch?”

“The catch.” Iresha repeated, “My dad hasn’t budged on the fact that he doesn’t want to join the Hadiran Accord unless the Council has…well, proven itself, I guess. These past two years – everything you’ve all done for me – hasn’t been enough to push him over the edge. But now, you’ve got me here in Agartha; a proverbially captive audience. You’re showing off how cool the World Cloud is by giving me these glasses,” He tapped a finger on the arm of the spectacles where they sat atop his head, “And apparently no real limits on what I can do or where I can go.”

“…Why would there be limits?” Seth wondered skeptically, “You’ve got all the same access any other entry-level Cadet would.”

“…I dunno, it all just seems really suspicious.” Iresha grumbled, “I was having a lot of fun, right up until the minute I realized it was probably propaganda.”

Seth snorted into his egg-toast, and panicked as the heat of it burned his tongue. Hands fanned frantically to cool his mouth, and he coughed to catch his breath, “P-propaganda!? Why would we even bother with something that serious? Can’t just the fact of this place being what it is normally be enough to impress you?”

“Does it need to though?”

“I mean…I guess not. Maybe it’s just the culture-shock. I can only imagine how overwhelming it must be to suddenly get thrown into it after spending your life without it.” Seth commented, and picked at his sandwich, trying to put pieces of swashed avocado more-evenly across the remaining egg, “But…speaking of being without things… I…don’t think I appreciated before how much your life’s been upended in the last few weeks.”

The Prince gave a skeptical look, but took another bite from his hotdog as he listened.

“After this past week…I’m suddenly being confronted with all this loss.” Seth continued, staring at his egg-toast idly as it center of it cooled down, “Towards the end of our time in the VeeArcade, I started to feel really guilty about having fun after so many people I knew had just died. …I’d known most of them for almost half my lifetime, and yet…I can sit here and laugh at you getting mobbed by a video-game boss.”

“Multiple times.”

“Multiple times…” Seth agreed, and chided himself for laughing again, “…How are you holding up?”

Iresha stared quietly, but then turned his eyes away, “It’s better when I don’t think about how I’m holding up.” He explained tepidly, and took another bite so he could choose his words, “…It’s been a few weeks now since I lost my mom. It was a Hell of a journey to go from blaming myself for what happened, to taking a top-down view of it, and accept that the outcome could’ve been prevented by a number of different minor differences. If my mom hadn’t been standing at the cell-door, or if the door hadn’t been open at all. If the Inquisitors hadn’t stuck my head in the S.D. Helmet, or if I hadn’t been so worked-up, to the point where my fire exploded outward when it finally got taken off. I’m still not sure if there were protocols that got skipped on account of the weird situation, or what…”

Seth swallowed a bit of the sandwich, “What exactly happened? Maybe I can fill in some gaps.”

“…Could you?”

“Sure. I have a lot of experience dealing with S.D. Helmets.”

“Oh…”

Seth blinked in confusion at the dour acknowledgement, but then realized, “I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’ve never trapped someone in one of them. I just…I’ve worked on them a lot. I actually got myself stuck in one once.”

Iresha gave a skeptical look, but then shook his head, “I was trying to work on the exercises Lugios gave me. The flow of Limitless, how to control it so it stays with me rather than bursting out… Someone snuck up on me and stuck the helmet on, and everything cut to black. For hours, I was so disoriented, I couldn’t stand, and by the time the helmet came off, I’d built-up enough frustration that the fire blew-up all around me, like throwing gas on an open flame. I had no warning, no count-down…no one said anything to me…it was just suddenly gone.”

“Ah…”

“Ah? What ‘ah’? What does that mean?”

“There’s a dial-down on the helmet that gradually restores the senses that had been blocked. When properly removed, the wearer has about 30 seconds to get acclimated to the return of perception, so it isn’t like getting hit with a brick.” Seth explained, “The last sense to return is sight. Before the helmet comes off, the person doing the removing is supposed to warn the wearer that it’s happening, since the eyes have adjusted for total darkness, and any amount of light could be blinding.”

“…Ah.”

“I can’t say for sure without being there or seeing a playback of the event, but…yeah, you’re probably right. Something along the way went terribly wrong, and your family paid the price for it.” Seth finished, and looked at his sauce-covered fingers with a forlorn expression, “…I don’t know how you don’t hate the Council for such flippant incompetence.”

“Well, thinking it was my fault for the longest time probably helped deflect blame.” Iresha shrugged and leaned down onto his elbows, slowly twirling the hotdog on its stick between his fingers, “…And, maybe I don’t give Lugios enough credit. Making the Fourth look like it had its shit together probably made me think everyone else did, too.”

“It was Mr. Gabriel’s idea that I come try to be friends with you.” Seth admitted, “He thought he was really clever about it, too…”

Iresha scoffed and thumped his chin into the palm of one hand, “Sounds like him… He’d been taunting me for the whole two years he was in Sargon about the fact that I had none.”

“You have no friends back home? Seriously?”

“Lugios called it ‘sheltered prince syndrome.’” He answered, and nibbled on the hotdog again, “My dad took issue with the label, but I never really heard him defend against it. I never thought a thing of it; living in the palace, having tutors come in and out, being with my family…that’s just how it was. How pathetic is it that you’re my first and only friend?”

“…Is that why you think it’s not real?”

“It’s a bit sus. If Lugios put you up to it, how can I think of it otherwise?”

Seth raised a brow, “Would someone trying to ingratiate themselves call you a shitass for getting them killed in a V.R. Game? Least not if they’re trying to be respectful of the fact that you’re a Prince?”

“…Maybe not.”

“Well, there you go.” The blonde pointed a sauce-covered finger at him, “You have nothing to be suspicious about. Mr. Gabriel probably took one look at me and thought I was friend-shaped or something. Between the fact that we’re similar in age and that I’m not afraid of afflicted people, it must’ve seemed perfect.”

“Not afraid? That was a criterion?”

“Er…I mean, most people are apprehensive about being around Limitless stuff. I’m…the opposite. I’m stupidly jealous of the afflicted.” Seth clarified, and finished the last of his sandwich, “I’m probably the only person on this rock who wishes to be afflicted. Social-stigma or not, I know there’s stuff the afflicted can see and hear that us normies can’t, and it’s maddening that I can’t find a way to get around it for my research.”

Iresha considered those words for a moment, but then set the hotdog down on the small plate it had been served to him on, “…I can show you something cool with it, if you want.”

“…Something cool?”

“Yeah. C’mon, we can go back to my place and I’ll demonstrate.”

.

Guards were quick at attention as their liege-lord appeared at the end of the hall, and quickly opened the door to the apartment. Iresha quickly shoved the door closed again before said guards could enter in after him, and dragged Seth into the middle of the open living-room area. With some of the furniture pushed out of the way and an open-space cleared, Iresha took a quick breath.

“Ready?”

“I have no idea what you’re about to do but sure.” Seth smiled cautiously.

“Okay, here I go.” The Prince lifted his head up, and let his eyes blaze. The Rydell teen didn’t seem impressed yet, but Iresha wasn’t done yet, “Hold your hands out.”

“…That’s mildly concerning.” Seth answered, brows crinkled, but lifted his hands up anyway.

“You’ll like it. Trust me.” Iresha reassured, and raised his own hands out as well, holding them above Seth’s with palms facing one another. With a bit of focus, a point of light manifested there within their mutual grasp, expanding into a tennis-ball-sized sphere of fire.

“…Concern elevating. Skin heating.”

“Just hold on a damn second.” The Prince scolded, and closed his hands slightly around the immolated orb. A few moments later, it coalesced and condensed…and he released it.

Seth just-about screamed as the tiny bolide fell into his grip, and be bounced it between his palms a few times…only to realize it felt less like a hot-rock and more like a small tangerine; completely ambient to the touch, and benign in every conceivable way. He let it sit in the groove of his left palm and just stared at it, “…How in the…actual Hell.”

“See?” Iresha beamed, and crossed his arms, “There’s no risk of burning you now.”

“How…are you doing this…?” Seth asked, more and more amazed as each second passed.

“People call it Limitless and I started to wonder why I was limited to manipulating fire.” The Prince began, and stepped inward again to make the fireball even bigger; now the size of a small pumpkin, “Everything Lugios taught me about how to control it – making it shut-off as though blowing out a candle, or imagining the flow of fire across my skin like hot oil – it boxed me into this idea that fire was all there was to it. I looked at all these other examples of afflictive powers and thought, maybe Limitless is referring to the sum total of powers, where the combination of everyone together implied an endless possibility of abilities. But then I started to wonder if that was true, and started to question if there was something more to it. I messed with the fire for a long time, and at one point, accidentally dropped one of these,” He nudged his head at the burning nugget being tossed between Seth’s hands, “And freaked out for a second that I was going to set the whole palace on fire again by mistake. It was…weird, when I realized nothing it touched was lighting-up, and it suddenly occurred to me; my own fire hasn’t burned me since the day it first manifested. And even back then, the only stuff that did burn was the fire that I was hyper-fixated on. Lugios even told me at the time that the fire couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let it. And so I wondered…what if I didn’t let it hurt anyone else either?”

“…So, it’s like…cold fire…?”

“I don’t think it’s really fire at all anymore.” The Prince answered, “Maybe it only looks like fire. What if it’s something else entirely, and it only takes the image of fire because that’s what I want it to be?”

Seth’s eyes practically sparkled with wonder, “That’s so cool. You have to let me study it.”

“Yeah, sure. Go right ahead.”

The teen squealed with delight, and all his nanotech data-panels immediately manifested.