[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Terence Glasgow]

[Level: 2 (Sub-Level)]

For a very tense minute, no one moved. Not even the demon creature that had popped out of Asadullah’s bangles. Everyone waited for someone other than them to make the first move. But no one did. Because they were apparently cowards.

The djinn – because that was what Asadullah said he contained – stretched itself out, its tail-like appendage swishing slightly as the voice spoke directly into their minds, “You lot are a dense bunch, aren’t you? Usually they say something by now.”

“Fine, here’s a question.” Tench snapped, “What are you?”

Its glowing eyes were expressive, and the emotion they were expressing now was supremely unimpressed, “Wow. Let me guess. I’m a feline-esque creature that appeared out of the contraption that contained a djinn who granted the wearer of said contraption to take the forms of various cats. I have no earthly idea what I could I be.”

Simon let out a nervous titter, and Nina glared at him, “Listen, it had a point!” He defended.

Terry didn’t care about that right now. He didn’t really care about what the djinn was, or what its intentions were now that it had been released from its decade long imprisonment. The most pressing issue at hand was Asadullah, still dead to the world at Terry’s feet.

“Please.” He croaked out, feeling his throat close up around the words, a noose formed out of his own desperation, that he fought against, just to choke out a few words, “He. Alive?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t stress about that. He’s perfectly fine without me.” The djinn assured him, “Me on the other hand… woof. Has existence always been so hard?”

This was a djinn who had nearly flattened a mountain. And now was cracking wise in their cottage. The whole scenario was just bizarre. But Terry looked down at Asadullah, his arm properly bandaged, and his chest going up and down in a shallow, but uniform manner. He was going to survive this. It was going to be alright. Terry just had to force himself to keep calm and believe that.

Asadullah’s ears and tail were drooping, he realized dimly. They were quickly losing color, becoming faded and… translucent?

Terry reached out to touch the tip of his fuzzy ears. The finger slipped right through them, as if they were a mirage. His breath hitched as he glared at the djinn, furiously pulling his hands away from Asadullah to sign, “You said he wouldn’t be affected by your extraction!”

“Don’t misconstrue my words. I said that he would be fine. With my loss, he is simply losing all the benefits that I gave him. Such as the tail and the ears. His humanness is quite intact, though.” The djinn replied, seeming to understand his complaint. When did it have time to learn the style of sign language that Terry used? And it was strange, he’d never considered Asad without the feline features.

“You know, you’re very rude.” Lucky noted, shaking the bangles a little, displacing the djinn slightly.

“Watch it! I’m tiny and fragile!” It yelled, hanging onto the bangles for dear life.

“Yeah, why are you tiny and fragile?” Tench frowned, “I thought you were meant to be the size of a mountain or whatever.”

It puffed its chest up, voice echoing in Terry’s skull even harder, “I was very uncontrollable back then. Or perhaps, I was too controlled. By this strange veil of red, that pushed me to the brink of my sanity. Next thing I knew, I was trapped in those bangles. Free to gather my thoughts, but not to convey them to anyone. Not until now.”

They all looked at each other with dark eyes. This was not a good sign. Terry gulped, finger spelling ‘Developers?’ at the rest of them.

“That would seem to be the case.” Lucky agreed, “But their planned Apocalypse on Asadullah’s world was the robots, was it not?”

“Maybe they were trying this first.” Tench considered, “I wouldn’t put it past them to go for a kaiju monster world. Not after what they did to CephaloRaven. But then it must have failed, when the people in Asad’s world were able to capture the beast and contain it.”

It… failed?

Terry knew that the Developers’ fate for the Levels could be beaten. That was exactly what they were trying to do. But they were going to be able to do it because they had the power of the Console guiding them. People who didn’t have that were like the ones they had met in Hygeia. All blank-eyed and robotic. Clearly acting along the plan of some other force. They were NPCs.

The first time he’d seen a person with an actual human look in their eye was when he came here, to Delica. Where they were free from the influence of the architects of the other Game.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

But Asadullah’s world wasn’t always in an Apocalypse. None of their worlds had been. Which meant that at some point, the Developers had had to have gained control over the dimension, and had been able to reprogram it as they saw fit. Before that… the people were moving of their own free will. Which would explain why they had been able to thwart this djinn-kaiju version of the world. How interesting.

It stood to reason that they could wrest that control back, and hand it to the people, the characters playing this twisted Game. If they could only find the Developers in their own realm and take the fight directly to them.

He decided that they would bring it up to Lucky, as the only person here who had a working Console with any hope of transporting them out of here, let alone towards the Developers. Terry knew that she had looked into it after Peter Paterson had thrown the idea to her.

For now, however, he was stuck looking at this tiny djinn as it beamed up at them, “I’m still a baby, you know? No one’s given me the time and space to let me mature. For a long time, I’ve been barely more than a glorified energy source to be fed on. And now that I’m out from it, I’m painfully weak.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Nancy was the first to react, her eyes wide with concern, “Do you want food or something to fill you up?”

“What’s there to fill up? I’m nothing but conscious vapor!”

“Good point. So, what do you live off?”

“Technically speaking, I’m supposed to be absorbing the radiant energy that exists wherever we go, turning it into pure magic to sustain me, but I never learnt how. Because I was dependent on that containment device doing it for me.”

So, it was by all means helpless and was likely going to starve to death if they didn’t get it back onto Asadullah’s arm so that he could feed off the boy. But that course of action came with it’s own slew of potential problems, from the broken bangles to the lack of consent Asadullah had if they went through with it now.

“Listen, he didn’t lose enough blood to be going into shock right now.” Tench told them all, “He probably lost consciousness due to the sight of his own blood or the jostling of the djinn. I don’t know enough about mystical shit to see if that’s possible. For now, you, how long can you survive without a way to take in energy?”

The djinn shrugged, “No idea. Guess we’re finding out. Have I mentioned that I was a baby when I got brainwashed into a murderous rampage?”

“You’ve mentioned.” Lucky replied tersely, though not as cross as she had the ability to be. Perhaps the djinn was wearing her down, and faster than most.

“Great then. We give Asad some time to recover, and if he’s not up when you’re starting to feel a bit of a strain, we’ll get the smelling salts.” Tench decided, “In the meantime, keep a close eye on your vitals. If something seems like it’s going wrong, we can move the timeframe up some.”

“You are prioritizing me over your friend?”

“I’m prioritizing life. Took an oath to do that and everything. C’mon people, move him to the bed. Let’s get the poor boy comfortable. Lucky, you think you can go and get the bangles fixed up if you borrow some tools from the blacksmith?”

“Yes.” She agreed, twisting her wheelchair around and going outside, the bangles in her lap, while the djinn hung in the air, disjointed and abandoned.

Terry decided that it was a good thing that Jared had already gotten his Perfect Day before they had barged in through the door. This would definitely have tanked his score.

“Yes, yes, just forget about poor, little Babur.” It murmured limply, “I know where I’m not needed.”

“Oh, is Babur your name?” Simon asked, trying to make small talk even in such perplexing situations. Terry already knew that he was going to be a blast to hang around if the siblings joined the Party.

“Yes!! I like the sound of it. Very distinguished, no? It was one that Asadullah wrote off, but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.” It wagged its tail, eyes turning into crescent shapes from the force of the smile.

He wasn’t too bad, Terry thought. Then he immediately felt bad about it, because Asadullah had talked to him about the djinn more than a few times. Recounted in great detail the horror and destruction it left in its wake. For the better part of his life, Asadullah had been haunted by its legacy. And even if Babur claimed for it to not be its fault… could they believe that?

It could be lying to save its own skin. Or gain control over Asadullah’s body. Anything was possible in these uncharted waters.

“Okay, then… Babur. Can you move?” Nancy asked, watching it carefully as they moved around it to carry Asadullah up the stairs to his room. It swam through the air as if it was syrup thick, drifting away to give them more access to the stairs.

Terry followed after the procession, eager to keep Asad in his line of sight, only to have Babur drift back into his face. He reared up, glaring at it.

“Come on, you can’t all leave me to become bored. Entertain me, mushroom boy.”

“Why me?” He signed.

“Listen, your presence has been pumping serotonin into my system for nearly a year now. Must be doing something right. Show me your charms!!!”

He looked at Simon beseechingly, who was standing at the top of the stairs, facing down at them, holding Asadullah’s arms while Nancy and Tench struggled to pull his legs up the stairs. The boy shrugged silently, unable to react in any meaningful way.

“Well…” He wet his lips and reached for a topic he wanted to tell Asadullah until the boy returned unconscious and covered in blood, “There’s a mold growth in the pantry I wanted to show Asad. You wanna see it?”

“Sure! I don’t know what any of those words mean.” Babur told him gleefully. This was definitely not going to make any explanation easy, but they were always up for a challenge. He turned towards the kitchen, beckoning Babur along to the tiny room full of shelves where they were meant to store food.

Not that they had had time to get enough food to have any leftover after a meal, so the shelves so far were barren. Except for a small patch of damp black spores, from where there reached a small tendril of green. Babur rested on his shoulder, and its presence felt like a warm, slightly misty cloud.

“So, what’s cool about this?”

He took a shuddering breath, “Uh, mold needs moisture to grow. And this pantry is very dry. Which means that the strain of mold is incredibly hardy. Awesome, right?”

The circumstances were dire, and he was helpless, so all he could do was talk to cover up the panic, the words coming out of him easily, as he explained the taxonomy of mold and how the spores worked.

[Player Log End!]