CHAPTER 276 – LOOSE LIPS
The dream broke and Tom snapped awake.
His head was screaming instructions to him. There was no time to think, but a need to act. Eight snakes. The time it was going to take to cook them was all he had.
The sounds of combat were all around him and still fighting off the debilitating effects of both sleeping and the residual of the True Dream he stood spear in hand ready to respond to what was happening. They were not currently engaging the Zorca’s but instead were besieged by one of the massive flocks of sparrow like monsters. They were non-sapient, small, numerous but still individually were rank seventeen even if with their size anyone could kill them with a single hit.
Not that any melee fighting was going on. If the swarm reached close enough to peck them then, even the chosen might be in trouble. Instead, magic blazed into the heavens and warded off the monsters. There were two layers of attacks. The chosen, as always defended the immediate area in front of them. The familiar interplay with the deadly patches of flame and ice worked more effectively than any magical shield he had seen. They crisscrossed the air close enough that Tom could reach up and touch it, not that he would be foolish enough to attempt something like that.
His team were not using chaos bolts, but were instead launched air tempests up at the sky. They would reach five metres above him and then explode in a variety of direction and power levels. Tom had known the spell was on the list to buy, but they must have rushed the purchase when they realised the giant flock had spotted them. The spells were like chaos bolts with a large range of outcomes, but exclusively employed air magic instead. That was favourable against any creatures with an air vulnerability, which these monsters had.
Toni shot one skyward, and it was four times larger than everyone else’s. Tom wasn’t sure if that was her affinity coming into play or if she had just got lucky. The fight was intense. Hundreds of the monsters were dying every second.
Thanks to the sanatio’s chosen nothing threatened them personally, but outside their fire and ice shield dead birds had filled the landscape. They were literally knee deep in a twenty metre circle around them. The dead were stacked ten high. It was macabre. The flock had been devastated, but the battle was ongoing. From what he could estimate, over half their number still flew above them, trying to get a kill.
“Thor,” Michael bellowed from next to him, “Tom had a dream.”
The healer’s yell pierced through the fuzzy feeling in his head. “Thor, hurry!” Tom yelled, adding his voice to Michaels. Reminded by the healer of the urgency the dream had imparted. He needed Thor’s help.
Thor finished casting your spell, and then immediately ran over to where Tom was waiting. The dread had not left his stomach, and he attempted to rally his thoughts.
“What do you need?” Thor asked, pen and paper already in his hand.
“Phil, where is he?”
“He’s on the third ring.” The big man shrugged. “Might have reached the second by now. I don’t know. He had to slow down because his rank wasn’t enough to steam roll the zones anymore.”
Tom didn’t care too much about that detail. But the fact that he was so deep into the trial meant there was a chance he could get a message through. After a deep breath, he explained all the facts.
Hearing his own explanation, Tom was faced with the enormity of the task that faced them. The New Zealander was uncommunicative at the best of times and there was a limited window where they needed him to check his messages and Phil almost never did so during the day presumably preferring to be fighting. That was something that Tom had to change. He shut his eyes and internally screamed.
Calculations spun in his head. He was going against another sapient; he needed an unlikely event to occur, which was Phil checking the auction house followed by an even lower probability action of Phil doing what they asked.
How much fate would that need?
Everything he had and some more. Tom concluded bitterly.
He felt like screaming in frustration, but it had to be done. There was no room for failure. He opened his eyes as he expended all of his fate with the single desire that the message would reach the other man and he would act on it.
There was always a reason for his dreams even if sometimes it was not clear. This was not one of those times.
“Tom,” Michael said urgently. “What did you just do?”
“Phil needs to get this message. So I did what I could to guarantee it.”
“You emptied yourself.”
“I’m very aware.”
To his immense surprise both Thor and Michael also emptied their entire pools. Michael Tom knew had seen him use his fate, while Thor must have deduced the crux of the issue by reading between the lines.
There was a crackle of energy as the letter was posted on the auction house. Thor looked at him. “I’ve written to him, but will this work? You’re asking Phil to go up to a creature far more powerful than him and start talking about the feeling in the giant’s gut? Why would he?”
“Especially to a fellow competitor race.” Michael said darkly. “They get double benefit by killing us. They remove our future impacts on the world and get credit from that and hurt humanity’s accumulation of ranking points at the same time.”
Thor was writing another note. This one, while less rushed clearly contained more detail.
“I don’t know,” Tom said helplessly. “Send him a hundred notes. We can all write. Offer him a bribe… Phil has to stop the dragon. My gut,” Tom if he was feeling so terrified would have smirked at using that term after being in the giant’s mind. He knew having just experienced the dream, that it was a ridiculous statement. His intuition was not the same as the giant’s which seemed to be a trump ability from its pre-system days, but that didn’t prevent the gnawing sensation from occurring. This was important. His entire soul realised that. “Thor! This is a pivotal moment. If the giant gets killed by the dragon, then it’s all over. We’re doomed.”
The instant he said it out loud he felt the fabric of reality almost break… at least from his perspective.
He had been talking rhetorically.
Deliberately exaggerating a threat to get buy in.
But…
It wasn’t an embellishment.
It was true.
His mind spun as all the different clues that he had been presented with coalesced. It wasn’t perfect. Lots of what was necessary was still unknown. He didn’t have a full picture even if his dreams had splashed a few blobs of colour on the canvas. Each dream was a specific event with an innate feeling. They were restrictive in the amount of guidance they could communicate. He needed to be smart enough to interpret what they meant.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
But they had a theme, and he was beginning to see some of it.
One dream by itself in this context revealed little to no information, but when you put some of them together… he could see more. Especially when he had inadvertently uttered a fundamental truth. ‘If the giant gets killed, then it’s all over.’ That was what he had said, and it had rung with that awful tolling of truth. His subconscious had pieced together all the different feelings from recent dreams and had come to that conclusion, and he knew it was right.
In his guts, he knew.
“Tom, why are you looking like that?”
“It’s true.” He whispered.
Thor, he noticed had stopped talking and was instead studying Tom in concern. The swallows above them had been scared off and were flying away. The other man was no longer writing the second message.
“What’s true Tom? Are you okay?”
Anger spurred through him. “Fuck it, Thor, don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy. Write the fucking message.” He snapped. “Write faster. Our lives are on the line.”
Thor returned to scribbling furiously. The three of them had invested in fate… but that was it. He glanced around and now the battle was over. Every one of them including the chosen were staring at him with interest. He guessed he had not been subtle or discrete when he woke up. His heart was thumping. It rallied him to action, and the small voice shouted in his ears that they hadn’t done enough yet. There was no point holding anything back. When oblivion was on the line, you did everything you could.
They were staring at him.
“Everyone,” Tom called out. “Phil needs to stop the giant from going alone to kill the dragon. It’s beyond critical. Thor is writing a note to explain everything to him. We need Phil to read it and then act on it. Everyone, I need you to spend all of your fate now to make it happen. Don’t hold back. I can’t stress how important using your fate to change his actions is.”
Shocked, angry expressions greeted him. Everlyn looked like she wanted to burn him alive.
“STOP looking at me like that and do it!”
“Tom. Shut up.” Michael snapped.
“I’ll shut up when everyone does it. Spend you fate. All of it.”
Everlyn was hurrying toward him. “Tom. We need to talk privately!” she hissed.
She was not the only one responding in the same way. Even Rahmat appeared sickened, and he usually supported Tom in all decisions.
Why were they reacting like this? Thor and Clare were the only two who didn’t like they wanted to kill him. Yes, he had been rude, but that was justified.
“JUST DO IT!” Tom yelled at them.
Everlyn expelled all her fate and then she grabbed his hand and life drained from her features. He knew what she wanted, but he took a moment to check on everyone else. Clare had spent her fate as had Harry who was shaking his head in a disappointed fashion.
They had all listened. Relief rushed through him. With that much fate being invested, the message would reach him. Phil would get and read it, Tom was certain of that. Whether he would do what they asked or run from the scary giant was another matter. Fate could only do a finite amount of lifting. There was a possibility that there had been nothing they could do to get a man like Phil to act instead of hiding from a threat that could easily eliminate him. The fate could influence things on the margin and with all of them contributing their entire pool if there was a chance of him being convinced it would happen.
That was the best that they could do.
His eyes continued their examination of everyone else. Keikain looked sick, Michael and Toni as furious as Everlyn had been, but they had all emptied their fate.
Almost sagging in relief he stepped into the system room and accepted the invitation. He didn’t care if they objected to his tone or if Everlyn was going to scream at him. He had got the result they needed, and that was all that mattered.
They should thank him for saving their lives, and in time they would understand that.
The hard floor of the system room was under him.
There was a flicker of movement.
He flinched as a metal chair flew at his head. Dodge did not kick in like he expected and he only had an instant to react. He collapsed to his knees to duck under it.
But he was moving to slow.
It was going to hit him.
He raised his arm to fend it off and threw his head backwards to reduce the collision.
His flailing arm struck nothing. The chair went straight through him completely intangible. It clattered into the wall behind him and he toppled onto his bum.
A flash of anger coursed through him. She was throwing stuff at him.
“Idiot! What were you thinking.” Everlyn screamed. “You can’t blurt that crap out in front of a competition race.”
“What?” he asked in confusion.
“You ordered us to spend fate.” Everlyn yelled. “Apply it to get a specific outcome. How could you. That’s the biggest secret we have. And it wasn’t even in front of a native but another competition species.”
All of his anger at the chair being thrown vanished. He felt like all the blood had left his head, rejecting the stupid, treacherous brain. He became dizzy. Sweat broke out on him and his skin was probably white… The Sanatio’s chosen…. He had ordered people to use fate, and they all had witnessed it … There was no code used, just English, which the system translated for everyone to understand.
Horror filled him.
Even if they had never considered the concept as a possibility, that wouldn’t matter. It had been stated explicitly in front of them… They would work it out… They were alien not stupid.
Oh fuck, he thought to himself. Oh, fuck… and he was planning on creating an alliance crossing multiple species… The chosen were going to get a chance to talk with other competitors… and the individuals they told would be champions of their species… Humans listened when famous people spoke he doubted the alien species would be any different. There almost couldn’t be a worse audience to have let this information slip out to. “Shit. Shit. I… shit.”
Another chair was flung at him. He realised she had brought him into the spartan default layout, probably because she was that angry. He let the chair go straight through him without even blinking this time.
“Is that all you have got to say?”
He wanted to defend himself, but words failed him. “I can’t believe I forgot. We’re screwed. I stuffed up.”
Everlyn took a deep breath, saw his face, and some of her anger vanished. “Yes, you did.” She said gently, without slowing her pacing along the metal floor. “It was a mistake. It’s done. All that matters is what we do now?”
“I don’t think there is anything we can do. Once a secret is out, you can’t put it back in the box. And… it might not be that bad. The secret was always going to slip out, eventually. It was not something we could hide.” The excuse sounded even weaker after he had said it.
“No.” She answered. Still pacing, a ball of nervous energy. “I mean it’s not helpless. There’s going to be stuff that we can do.” She turned to face him. Her face softened once more. “Tom, you goofed. We all do it. From your reaction to your dream, I suspect spending the fate was also important.”
“No. I betrayed my race. It was better that we all died rather that letting this secret escape. You’re trying to be nice now, but you know I’m saying the truth.”
“You made a mistake.” She said evenly. “Who knows, maybe the other races won’t feel threatened by human’s racial ability.”
“Maybe…” Tom said doubtfully. “The problem is that it’s a growth one. The stronger we get the more powerful it becomes. All the competition races will realise that. If our racial trait was something like; start with an extra fifty percent mass. That’s not threatening, but a level two hundred able to twist fate to do their bidding every single day. That will have to be terrifying.”
“Maybe they won’t understand how bad it is…” she sighed. They both knew that the chosen were too smart for that. “Nope, they’ll work it out. Maybe we can ask them not to tell anyone… that it’s a big secret. They might be receptive.” She shook her head straight after saying it a disappointed look on her face. “That won’t work. They’re not very good at keeping secrets. An elder and the smallest both let slip that the middle had sacrificed itself for the killers. I don’t think they even noticed the mistake.”
“I doubt they would agree, anyway. Their view would be why should they keep a human’s secrets.”
“We can ask. It won’t hurt,” Everlyn told him. “And it doesn’t matter if the chosen know because they won’t come after us. They won’t even kill semi sapients, so we’re safe from direct reprisals… All we have to do is stop them talking to other races.”
Tom’s mind raced. They could limit the danger he realised in excitement. They had the levers they needed. “You’re right it won’t be too hard to permanently silence them.”
Everlyn sucked in a breath of surprise and worry.
“I know,” Tom continued. “That they might have already sent the information out to others of their kind, but that’s not what we’re worried about. We’re really only concerned about them telling the more warlike competitor races. Silencing them won’t even require us to fight… all we have to do is abandon them. Get a gather quest like the ore one… gets ours and leave… Its possible that they’ll finish a gather quest without us but the moment they hit another kill quest with something semi-sapient they’ll be stuck again.”
“Tom, No.”
He just stared her down and allowed the importance of the need to protect the secret to do the heavy lifting.
“Um… I… It’s… I don’t want…” she trailed off. She clicked her fingers abruptly. “We don’t have to.” She proclaimed almost jumping in excitement. “Contract binding is the answer.”
“Both parties have to agree without outside coercion.”
She looked embarrassed, and then her resolve firmed. “We have the leverage. They contract or we won’t let them accompany us.”
“Are you really suggesting…”
“Tom,” she said with a sudden, hard voice. “Don’t finish the sentence. I don’t want to do it, but if I have to.”
He nodded. “That’s fine. You stay here. I’ll take care of it.”