CHAPTER 192

Tom was wide awake. His heart was pounding as his mind transitioned from absorbing the information to processing it with the availability of his higher conscious cognitive functions. The implications of the vision were significant despite how short it had been. A lot could be inferred from those few moments and the context that had driven the alien’s actions.

The first was that someone, a person that was part of a larger community had been assigned to watch and monitor the migration. It was a not a contingency they had planned for and they had not tried to conceal themselves. Happy with the ingenuity of managing the risk by monitoring the threats in front and behind them they had walked with nothing shielding them from observation. Apart from, Tom realised his title, which would stop many forms of divination magic but would do nothing against a physical observer, which was always the most likely outcome.

They had been stupid.

Tom wondered whether they had been noticed. He immediately considered the alien’s position. Mentally, he tried to marry up what he had seen through the person’s eyes and the geography of the area just before they had fled to this cave. The observation point had been placed to observe a sharp bend in the canyon, at least relative to everything else they had seen. Tom remembered where they had left the path. Where Everlyn had stopped them and sent them to the pink tongues.

Right there in his mind’s eye he could see it. The canyon bending more than usual. They had been a kilometre from reaching the focus of the observations. If he then checked the range of the peripherals… He could determine whether the alien should have been able to spot them… The results were not good… Then he remembered the aliens’ ability to focus on multiple spots at once.

“Damn it.” He hissed and hit the ground.

They were definitely in range, but the scientist, and Tom was going to call it a scientist because that was what it was… if it had noticed them it had not considered them at all remarkable because they had not been worth even a moments consideration in its thoughts. If anything, they were a footnote in a book because the person had been far more focused on the fight evolving between the different packs of monsters. As for any other observation points along the route since they joined the migration, well, there was no doubt they would have been spotted.

Tom sat up his mind still racing. Michael, amongst others shot him a concerned glance but none of them said anything because they probably recognised his mood.

He chewed on his lip as he thought through it all. There was a confirmed sapient almost directly above them. He was a scientist who was interested in studying the breakdown of a circular eco system and had been assigned to monitor one called circular number eight. That was not the monitoring station designation it represented instead the eighth system.

Tom’s mounting disquiet deepened. Whatever that race was they were not a small civilisation. This circular eight was massive. It was hard to estimate how large, but the average width of half a kilometre told him a lot. As for length? For these systems to work, they needed to be hundreds of kilometres long, if not thousands. That fact, combined with the breadth they had already witnessed meant it was huge with a biomass of monsters that was frankly scary. As for the sapient civilization. For it to have control, or at least have the drive to monitor eight of them, that was mind-boggling.

Tom figured they were probably dealing with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of sapients.

Logically, a sapient race in the underground was not too surprising when he thought about it. Sure, there had been none in the tutorial, which is why they were caught by surprise, but there had been no sapient races on the surface there either. A species making their home down here made sense. There was a lot of real estate and resources in the underground, so people would exploit that and the GODs pulling from multiple different universes would find underground races easily enough.

His eyes glanced at a clearly frustrated Keikain, thoughtfully. Tom’s inner demons argued against each other vehemently. On one hand, an isolated sapient would be the perfect target for the cursed and was potentially reachable in the timelines that they needed. Then there were the more pertinent details of the choice. Moral dilemmas to consider. The target had been a scientist and obviously not a terror, so to sacrifice him was the same as murdering. There was no ethical argument to justify the action. Even worse was the fact that while the person might have been a civilian, when Tom had shared the mind the body had felt powerful enough to destroy them without really trying.

When he mentioned this dream, those with the cursed bloodline were going to have to be managed because he had seen enough of their psychic to know what their first response would be.

He wrinkled his nose. Something had been nagging at his subconscious since he had woken up, and that irritation was not dissipating. With more discerning eyes, he studied the cave to try to determine what was setting him off.

What was the clue he had missed?

First check was that everyone was accounted for.

Nope, he could see them all.

A game of dice involved the entire group, excluding the killers was in full swing. Sven was practising sword forms. Keikain was cooking but in a bored fashion with no sense of haste. He was even using the tiny fry pan Tom had gotten as a loot reward to create what looked like cookies. There were a pile of hundreds of them, and each must have taken five minutes plus to make.

What had a subconscious twinged on?

Nothing was out of the ordinary. Everyone was up and socialising, they were relaxed.

The clues coalesced together. That was the explanation. If he was a detective, he would have clicked his fingers to announce the significance of the lightbulb moment.

No one was sleeping!

The entire team was awake, and no one was agitating for them to hurry and leave. They must have independently confirmed what True Dreaming had shown him. They were stuck here for a bit.

“What’s happening?” Tom asked.

“Dice.” Michael said good-naturedly. “Thirteen hours, sleepy head that might be a record.”

“Really?” Tom scratched behind his ear. He didn’t feel like he’d been unconscious for that long. The True Dreaming episode had after all captured a moment only five or six hours after he fell asleep, but then again that skill did not report other sapients experience in real time. If the situation warranted, he might be shown a scene from months, years, or even centuries earlier.

“Yes, we’re trapped in here.” Michael glanced significantly at the crystal in the centre of the room. “We can’t leave, so we figured we would let you get the sleep you need. It’s a disaster zone out there.”

“Continuous battles.” Jingyi confirmed. “Basically, the kobolds fought the cauldron stompers, and that took over forty minutes, which meant the next wave of monsters ran into the remnants of the two forces. That created another huge fight, which was still going on when, fifty minutes later, a subsequent set of monsters arrived. They attacked and then before they finished…” the scout shrugged… “Well you get the idea. That pattern keeps repeating over and over again.”

Tom nodded. “My source suggests it will take days to clear.” He announced casually.

Keikain stopped cooking and pulled the fry pan away from the fire. “You had a dream. About what’s happening out there? In real time?”

He noticed Everlyn glaring at him. If she could advise him, she would tell him not to say anything to the man.

“Yes. There is a single sapient observing the circular breakdown from the roof.”

Keikain jumped on one foot in excitement. “Yes! That’s our opportunity. Can you point out the exact spot?”

Tom shut his eyes and recalled what he had witnessed during True Dreaming. The position of the two nearby large light crystals was noticeable. One of them had been emitting a distinctive aqua glow and would allow him to triangulate the position accurately. “Yes, I can.”

“Come, we have no time to waste.”

“Wait.” Jingyi said forcefully, jumping to his feet. “You can’t go out. You’ll break Harry’s ritual and that’s like committing suicide.”

Keikain kept walking. “We have to. This is our chance.”

“You’ll die if you do this. Look.” He pointed toward the pink crystal that was still in the centre of the room. It now had a ritual around it and Harry had moved from his spot in the dice circle to be next to the carefully scribed lines, which he was refreshing with his magic.

An image formed above the crystal. It was presumably the view from the entrance to the cave.

Tom’s breath hitched in his throat.

Everything had changed.

That first fake cliff had been broken away and lay as rubble below. The pink tongues were mashed into pieces. He was not sure the strange plant would bounce back from so much damage. Beyond that, the landscape looked like mini gods had battled across it for days. The giant fungus had been torn down, the stalactite hills with their tenacious trees were all gone, the unbreakable underground stone had been cratered in places, courtesy sometime of massive physical blows and elsewhere because of intense magic. Tom saw more than one molten pool and other areas where the stone had just vanished like it had never been.

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There were bodies of monsters everywhere.

It was an apocalyptical wasteland.

There seemed to be more dead corpses than the mind could comprehend like multiple large armies had clashed together and fought to the death. There were shapes that were the size of double story houses and others no bigger than a house cat. Most were dead, but hardly all of them. Danger still lurked amongst the carnage. There were more than two types of monsters left fighting the perpetual war in front of the cave. It was every species against each other, a battle to death for all of them.

They were using the massed bodies as cover.

It was crazy.

Praying mantis’s taller than a human had just entered the battlefield. There were hundreds he could see from the rituals view and given its limitation that meant there were probably thousands of them in total. Arrayed against them at least in the majority were disk like animals that used magic to flit from one spot to another.

“Those disks,” Jingyi said urgently, “Have won the last four battles.”

“They’re very dangerous.” Harry said. “Their perception is off the chart. I’ve had to go out and reinforce the main camouflage twice since they have taken control.”

“But there is a sapient. We need…”

“We understand Keikain.” Jingyi said coldly. “And if I could let you go without risking the rest of us, Tom’s views aside I would usher you out the door and then watch you die for your arrogance and not feel a moment of regret. But the simple fact is that if you leave, we’ll be discovered. Maybe once the disks are gone, we’re be able to do it. But currently no.”

“It wasn’t that type of vision either Keikain.” Tom told him.

“Type of vision?”

“Yes. He was on the roof. That’s five hundred metres of climbing. I’m not sure we’d be able to reach him.”

“We’ll find a way.”

“Plus… he was a lone observer tasked with watching things far more dangerous than us. I doubt he’s defenseless. He wasn’t worried about that chaos.” Tom waved at the crystal, or at least the image that had been displaying. “He found it interesting, and I got the impression that even if he got drawn into that fight, he was confident of surviving and not by hiding, either. But that is not what I meant. I didn’t get a sense from True Dreaming that he was prey for you. This dream serves a different purpose.”

“A sense?”

“Tom’s skill helps him interpret,” Michael started.

“I’ve been with you for days. I was around when you had those fucking conversations.” Keikain yelled. “I know what you mean.” He looked furious. “We can’t afford days.”

“I don’t know what to say Keikain. I’m not saying it’s days. I’m just reporting what intelligent alien that seems to have studied how these ecosystems work is predicting.” Tom deliberately refrained from talking about the risk of it lasting a week.

“Just because the fight is ongoing doesn’t mean we have to be stuck here.”

Everlyn across the room rolled her eyes, Thor scoffed and even Harry, who was normally placid and unassuming, looked frustrated. This was clearly an argument that had already been litigated and Keikain had lost.

“We can sneak out and get past this block and have open territory for hundreds of miles. We could make great time and find another of these sapients who are not so powerful.” Keikain looked hopeful that his new plan might sway them.

Michael shook his head and waved at the crystal, and the images that it had produced. “We’ve studied five waves. There’s no way we’re getting through there. We are too weak.”

They kept up a debate about what their options were and for once it wasn’t the three cursed bloodline line carriers arranged against the others. Instead, it was a fertile cross discussion between all of them. Admittedly, Everlyn and Thor made a point not to be included.

With nothing else to do. Tom focused on True Dreaming and regular naps and returned to probing for more details about the trial.

It was the end of his fourth sleep and like every other time he cracked his eyes opened and checked the atmosphere. Internally, he sighed. The same bored restlessness filled the cave along with the incessant stench of the rotting bodies. The battle raging outside their hiding spot clearly hadn’t stopped at least this time the dreams had been more fruitful.

Hiding a smile, he sat up.

“This time?” Michael asked immediately even as Tom rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

Tom recalled his dream. Yes, this time he had something interesting to share. Unlike the previous three dreams, which had been dedicated to unravelling the limitations of the dragon’s breath weapon. This one had been new.

Michael smiled. “You’ve got something.”

“A third race.” Tom admitted with a smile.

Instantly, every eye was focused upon him, but to be honest he’d already had their full attention and even another story about the dragon would have been a welcome relief to them. Not a lot had happened over the last two and a half days to provide. After all, there was only so much amusement to be gained from watching each new wave of fantastical creature to crash into the wild battle on a screen that was only slightly bigger and arguably not better than the first smart phones that came out. And the movie being played… the outside world that the ritual reflected… the story being depicted lacked a hook, and had no interesting characters, kobolds aside. Monsters would die, but nothing changed. Groups of creatures had created unofficial alliances against the incoming monsters and the wide variety of skills brought to bear meant the newcomers were brutally destroyed. The only entertainment too most of them were his dreams… They had true meaning.

“Hey are the kobolds still in play.”

“Yes, they are,” Michael grumbled. “But you can’t mention a third race and change the subject.”

“Have they had any losses?”

“Tom.” Everlyn said in a dangerous voice.

“And don’t use her as an excuse to clam up.” Michael warned him. Unfortunately, successfully predicting the ploy he was about to launch into. “No teasing, just spit it out.”

Tom looked at Michael with wide, expectant eyes, imploring him to answer the question.

“Their ice mage got ripped in two, but the rest are intact.”

“Was that so hard?”

“Tom, you’re pushing everyone’s patience.”

“Shut up Everlyn.” Sven snapped. “We want him to tell the story.”

Tom couldn’t help but smile at Sven’s ridiculous expression. He couldn’t stall in the face of that. “It’s another terror race.”

“A third terror race?” Toni sounded horrified.

Tom waved his hand to indicate uncertainty. “The dragons and this new one are definite. The other race, the ones whose champion was supposed to prepare to be positioned to kill everything if a dragon didn’t go into his event trial. I’m not so sure that species can be classed as Terrors …” Tom hesitated. “I would say their sponsor GOD definitely wants them to fulfill that role, but potentially their honour will prevent them going down that path.”

“Whatever. We and others will judge them on their actions.” Michael declared, sounding boring. “What’s the third race?”

Tom licked his lips and remembered the strangeness of the dream.

He had been in an individual. It had been capable on its own and had possessed its own thoughts and desires.

But the individual was more than that. Its existence extended beyond its own brain and soul. There was a connection to those near it, and the ability for that collective swarm of minds to influence its actions. A flow that went both ways as it was part of the collective thought pattern and more immediately because of its internal standing it could command the absolute obedience of those around it and they would be compelled to obey even if it sent them to death.

It was a weird communal overlay where control would swing in different directions, but because of its status the local mind cluster more served the individual whom Tom had been observing from than the other way around. It had been in control of that group.

Then there were the other connections that were maintained. They were more nebulous, but also in most ways far stronger. One was to its birth hive and then a second to the species as a whole even if on Existentia both of those links were greatly diminished. The competitor race had however got around that. They had created a newer Existentia constructed hive which served as the most powerful influence despite how new it was. That third connection felt wrong, but the species always put power first even over tradition.

Those links, unlike the local ones, were more than capable of wiping out all of its personality if his body and skills were needed for a specific purpose. There was a surprising acceptance of things. Ultimately, even though it was an individual the good of the species came first.

It, a deliberately genderless pronoun was used because it had not gained enough respect to be offered the opportunity to choose a gender. It had been part of a hive and species’ decisions that had stripped the personality from large groups to achieve the results needed. Sacrifice for the greater existence was how they got strong. It had done it and would accept if it was done back to it.

“Well?” Michael asked.

“A hive mind insect race.” Tom said after a long pause. “Multiple layers of conscious thought starting at the individual then a collective intelligence constructed from the nearby insects, then the hive and finally the species. Each higher level having more say than the one before it.”

“Level strengths, weaknesses.” Michael prompted.

“Started stronger than humans, but only marginally. The primary trouble is that they are a terror race.”

Michael chuckled. “You’ve already said that. Multiple times, I believe.”

“That characteristic,” Tom explained, choosing his words carefully. “Means they’re growing fast. They kill everything they can, without remorse, concern or consideration of longer-term implications. Their link to the hive and others of their kind along with an ability to fly has let them clump up. They’re now travelling in swarms of thousands. I didn’t get much more detail than that. The individual I was in was young, but considered a champion. It, unlike most, because of its genetic gifts is almost predetermined to receive the opportunity to choose a sex. It had a unique trait to cause emotional pain in foes.”

“Did this creature have a name?” Michael asked. “You saying it all the time is distracting.”

“No, they only receive a name once they have a gender. As I was saying, its trait causes emotional pain.” Tom paused. “It is completely useless against its own kind because they don’t have those empathy centres…”

“Are you sure?” Toni asked.

Tom laughed. “Terror race remember. Yes, I’m sure. It definitely checked the limitation. It might not be good against its own species but against others…” Tom shook his head. “It’s devastating. It comprehensively shut down sapients stronger than it and is somehow even effective against most monsters. I gleaned one other thing, and it’s important. It and thirty others were split from their new hive of thousands into their own cluster. They were handpicked by the local hive collective, and I believe this is to target the competition trial. The champion whose mind I shared…” Tom looked at Michael significantly. “Believes the entire thirty will be accepted and their role is to act as insurance if the other GOD’s plans fail.”

“But that’s unfair.” Toni pointed out. “If we go into the trial, there will be ten of us. You said they’re more powerful than us. Shouldn’t their numbers be restricted rather than the system allowing three times the number through.”

“Wait.” Michael raised his hand to stop Toni from talking. “Is this certainty from your skill or from he who has not been named. Your Skill is backing it up isn’t it.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s not fair.” Sven grumbled.

“The competition is balanced on a whole.” Tom reminded them. “And that smaller level collective is considered a single organism, so they get more in.”

“But they’re not a single entity. They’re deliberately bending the rules.” Toni protested.

Tom shrugged. “It’s troubling.”

“We can’t enter that trial.” Michael concluded. “Too much is stacked against us.”

Tom shook his head, and he knew the healer didn’t really mean his definitive statement. The True Dreaming abilities brought a lot to the table, and the consistent dreams about this trial screamed an answer that was quite different from what Michael was stating. When the trial came, Tom sort of knew they would discover they had no choice but to enter it… even if the odds seemed insurmountable. That wasn’t going to be enough for Michael. “I’m not happy about this either.” Tom told Michael, capturing the healer’s eye. “But I have an oracle question left. When we find the trial, I’ll use it to confirm what we should be doing.”

“We should all get input on that question.”

Tom didn’t like the suggestion at all, but knew it was reasonable. “Yes, we’ll workshop the best phrasing together.”