There were many dwarf statues. They were attached to the walls, where they hung from their arms as prisoners in stone chains. They were in the water, some beneath the black, and others rising above it with their heads upturned toward the stalactite ceiling. They were even among the black trees, tangled in their gnarled roots or captured by their thin, sickly trunks. Each of them glowed in their own sequence and turned the dark water red by the glare of their eyes.
“Dry Clothing, Level 1,” Mad said.
Zenos felt the weight of water fade from his boots. His pants and long coat, soaked by water, puffed out with the warmth of freshly-laundered clothing. Mad had sat nearby on the silt-water shore, one arm slung over his tucked knees as the other hand supported his back. A red glow softly cast a shadow over his face.
“I followed the statues,” Zenos said. It was a half-truth. “You said they react to adventurers, so I thought that if they were sounding in this cave, then you must be inside.”
Mad nodded.
The lighting changed and Zenos saw his eyes were closed. “What is this place?” he asked. “You’ve come here before, haven’t you?”
Mad nodded.
Zenos frowned. “This cave is dangerous, Mad,” he said.
“I can handle it,” he replied.
“Handle what?” Zenos asked. “That creature?”
Mad rubbed his thumb along his index finger. “So, you saw it,” he said.
Zenos leaned toward Mad, supported his weight on his hand. “What did I see? Tell me! Tell me anything. What are you doing here?”
“I am Echokhet,” he said and Zenos sighed, exasperated.
“Don’t speak to me in riddles! If you’re in danger, I should know!”
“I can’t change what I am,” Mad continued, unfazed by the pleading. “Adventurers can move within their grade, but I’ll always be Gold Rank. The power of Mithril, or Adamantine, is forever out of my reach. But if I had that power…
“I could change this fate.”
Zenos’ felt his throat turn dry. His reptilian eyes rounded like saucers.
All along, Mad’s eyes had said ‘this is fine,’ ‘this is okay,’ and ‘this is the way it has to be.’ When did I misunderstand? When did it change, from ‘I accept this death,’ to ‘I accept this sacrifice’?
Mad opened his eyes. [Error] flashed on Zenos’ broken HUD. It was no trick of the light that made him appear strange, Zenos knew Mad’s very eyes had turned to inky-black orbs.
“Did I ever tell you why I am on this island?” Mad asked.
Zenos shook his head.
“Among the Echokhet, it is a crime to use mana,” he said. “The elders have long held the very power of our heritage a curse. Necromancers, you understand, are banished from the Khetarra. At worst, we are turned over to the Atilonians and their Inquisition. They say it protects us from our neighbors, removes the suspicion from my people, and that so long as we don’t use our Sight we will be safe from annihilation. But they lied to us, Zenos. What my leaders fear is not Atilonia, it’s the Third Path.
“It lays somewhere beyond the spirit and the body. The black ocean… the echoes of dead worlds… the home of Khet.”
Gaia!
Zenos’ arms trembled.
“The very curse that connects us to the dead can serve as a bridge to her realm,” Mad said. “She is demanding, but it’s Khet who sets our limits. If she can break that ceiling, then I’ll give her anything.”
What Mad wants… he doesn’t know the words, but it could only be the Player System.
“Did you meet her?” Zenos asked.
Mad nodded.
Zenos’ eyes flashed, he felt he would leap at Mad, grab him by the shoulders and shout at him. What did she say?! he cried against the boundary of his mind. What did the Director tell you?!
The Director, she was the entity responsible for enforcing the scripts. She had touched Zenos’ life many times before, intervening whenever the demon emperor diverged from his instructions. There was no question that a billion lives laid at Zenos’ feet and that he was responsible for the sword he swung, but the Director orchestrated that game. Zenos would also give anything to know why.
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“What… did she say?” He managed to speak the words.
“She asked me what I wished for,” Mad said.
Zenos swallowed, his eyes fixated on Mad as he awaited the Director’s answer.
“And she said, it’s not enough.” Mad’s eyes fell half-lidded. “She said I am not what she’s waiting for.”
Mad’s eyes closed and he fell backward. His head bounced on the silt.
“Mad!” Zenos shouted and stumbled to his side. When he touched Mad’s arm, his HUD flickered, and for a moment he saw the target window. Mad’s HP was normal, but there a strange icon flashed beneath the health bar.
Debuff!
A debuff was the inverse of a buff, almost always harmful, and sometimes deadly. Zenos was not quick enough to read the debuff’s details, but it occurred to him that he had caught Mad in the middle of something.
Water gurgled from the middle of the black lake. A hand took shape from the liquid, grasped the surface of the lake, and appeared to pull its body from the depths. It was as tall as Mad, dressed in a liquid fabrication of his own clothing. Its eyes, white holes like yawning mouths, glowed at Zenos. The statues howled.
“Is that Khet?” Zenos wondered.
The creature lurched forward; its haphazard steps fell silent on the still lake. Zenos tried to move, but found himself halted. He was mesmerized. The creature’s eyes seemed to draw his full attention and drink of his urgency and purpose. The seduction was sweet, comforting, and impossible to resist. The cacophony of noises fell away and Zenos thought of its milky, round eyes; such wide, soft-white holes that led down into a blank, empty consciousness. Zenos’ heart beat slowed and his arms relaxed. Static filled his ears.
[Error] flashed in his mind. The red letters appeared in the middle of his pure-white dream, juddered him awake.
Lucky! he thought. If it weren’t for the system, I’d have been caught.
Zenos was aware, but still locked in place. He clenched his hands and struggled against the paralysis, to no avail. “Inventory,” he stammered. The command caused the system screen to flicker and sputter away.
[Error] he saw.
I can’t move, but I can still speak!
“Inventory,” Zenos repeated, louder. The screen appeared briefly, distorted and broken.
[Error.]
The creature appeared to realize its trap had been damaged. It halted on the lake and coiled its flexible arm into a tight spring.
“Inventory!” Zenos shouted, strained to reach for the glitched screen.
Red light illuminated the cave and the statues moaned a low timbre. The creature’s hand launched with startling acceleration. It swerved through the air on a corkscrew of black water, stark against the red.
The hand sailed high overhead. Water like black blood wet Zenos’ face and the creature’s trailing arm curved into the ground. [!@#($)*#@] the system informed him with garbled noise. [$#!@%#^@(*]
Zenos felt a weight lifted from his shoulders and his body was limber again.
“That was the Compulsion,” he said, flourished the [Longsword of the Novice] in his hand. “How you came to possess a facet of the Eyes, I’ll never know, but Khet never needed such tricks!”
The creature reeled in its damaged arm and coiled the other for a second attack. I could dodge it, Zenos thought. I could move left or right, but I’d be no closer to destroying this creature. I’ll bet my life on a charge. I’ll go straight through!
The lake slipped his mind. In the moment, there was no a pool of water, but a surface of bright red light. As he ran toward it, memories of Baldune flit through his mind, of horses and men stampeding through spears regardless of danger. His boot fell on the lake and it hardened as concrete beneath his feet.
Zenos swung his sword. The creature launched its arm on a coil of rushing water. It narrowly missed his face, cut hair from the side of his head. The dwarfs came to a fever pitch, their deafening chorus loud in his ear. The creature’s eyes rounded, as if to scream. Zenos flashed his silver blade, ducked under the monster’s arm and came out behind it.
[Error] blinked in Zenos’ eyes.
Black water dripped from the tip of his sword. He spun on his heel and saw the creature’s torso had fallen backward, but though it had been cut deeply, it was not severed. A length of water dangled the chest behind the creature’s legs, so thin it could be torn, yet it was already regenerating. Zenos took his sword in both hands and thrust for its face. At the same time, the creature lashed down with its whip-like arm.
[@$*&%@#!] the system reported and Zenos was blinded.
[#$^&($#—Connection established.]
Zenos blinked. He stood in the dim, white light of a dark crater. Corpses lined the ground beneath his feet and orange dust floated from their hollow eyes. It drifted into the air and disappeared, against a night sky of falling stars. Lights flashed in the distance and the world rumbled beneath him.
Defeat, he thought.
In the center of the crater, far ahead of Zenos, knelt a large creature with enormous wings. Its silver armor was tarnished, broken, and scattered in pieces. A massive, black sword had been plunged through its chest. The dark blade seethed with shadows like flames. Despite a mortal wound, Zenos knew the creature—dragon-like with its snout and talons—still lived. It clung to a thread of life.
A being loomed over the reptile. It was tall and shaped like a man, but naked, and black. It was a shade of black so deep that it hurt to focus on. Its form appeared to wobble in Zenos’ eyes, move like a mirage, as if its very existence was in flux. Zenos made a breath and it turned its head, stared at him with its white, hollow eyes.
A voice flooded Zenos’ mind. It spoke to his thoughts in a language he couldn’t comprehend. Its words, like its shape, seemed to change with the moment, but the meaning was always the same. Then it reached him, a signal crowded by static, words hidden among the cries of the dead.
“I have found you.”
Zenos lost strength in his legs and he collapsed. Water splashed beneath him and he sunk into a dark pool. Further he drifted, gripped by the cold, until something pulled him upward.
“Zenos!” he heard.
Water gurgled from his mouth. Hands compressed his chest. Warnings flashed in the dark behind his closed eyes. [Suffocation damage,] they read. [HP reduced.] Zenos felt his life slip away, but the hands continued their rhythmic compressions.
“3, 2, 1…!” he heard and water spit from his mouth.
“3, 2, 1…!”
Zenos coughed hard, opened his eyes. Mad was hunched over him, dripping with water. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Just keep breathing.”
Zenos turned to cough over the floor. What happened? he thought. That creature attacked me, but then… nothing. Where am I? Is Mad safe? He looked up and saw Mad’s face. Although he felt numb and his lungs shuddered with the need to cough, he found a reason to smile.
His eyes… are normal.