In the center of a Great Hall, surrounded by thirteen Apostles and about sixty sorcerers, GM stood. He spread his hands out at a forty-five degree angle with the ground in a scornful approximation of Christ. At that moment, Enzo saw the central stained glass window behind GM. The stained glass window depicted an exact replica of GM in his current pose. The half-man, half-automata in the window was in the exact same position as GM, even the slight tilt in GM’s chin was captured. The Apostles’ supernatural senses made each of them very aware of this reality.
A scant few seconds later, the Great Hall was filled with the sound of supplication as several dozen sorcerers supplicated themselves before their Dark God. Enzo suddenly felt a strong desire to similarly bow before GM, but he resisted. A few of the other Dark Apostles hunched down unintentionally before GM’s majesty, but none of them bowed. Enzo felt such a palpable sense of power that it almost seemed tangible. Enzo had not felt this way the last time he had been in GM’s presence. It must have been the supernatural senses he had gained as part of his change into a Dark Apostle that made him feel afraid. Enzo was a house cat in the presence of a panther, just skilled enough to be aware of the danger, but not skilled enough to resist.
“Why are you here?” the Tenth Apostle, an Indian woman with her hair in a bun, said.
“To finish motivating you,” GM smiled. “Right now, all of you are rebellious teenagers who are completely incapable of being the villains I need to keep this server competitive while I’m gone. There are two truths that all of you are not currently aware of. Once I inform you of these two truths, twelve of you will grow into the glorious antagonists I need you to be. Currently, all of you are partially informed of the First Truth.”
“Twelve?” Svenheim said, reaching for something inside of his coat. “What about the thirteenth?”
“Sorry,” GM smiled, “I must have miscounted.”
“What is this First Truth?” Melkior asked.
“I am glad you asked,” GM said. “Those two years of philosophy education serve you well.”
Melkior’s expression turned to one of shock.
GM continued speaking, only allowing a brief moment to pass. “The First Truth: My Thirteen Dark Apostles contain fragments of a single key within their hearts. It is only by bringing these fragments together and constructing the key that my domain may be reached. You, however, already knew that. What you don’t know is that these keys absolutely cannot be removed without you dying. A key fragment is the source of power for a Dark Apostle. You can survive having your heart or parts of your brain destroyed, but any damage to the key fragment will unquestionably kill you. And, I know that you already know this, but it should be reiterated: the Revenants need to construct the key in order to escape. And don’t bother trying to hide this information from them. They already know.”
“See?” Kojiro said. “It’s kill…” Kojiro tried to subtly unsheath a dagger that was hidden underneath his coat, “or be killed.” Unfortunately, GM and every Apostle present could hear the dagger being drawn.
“The Second Truth,” GM began, “will require a hands-on explanation.”
The Apostles barely heard the end of GM’s sentence. It was at that moment that four of the Dark Apostles decided to attack. Nailman was the first to act. He removed a stone from one of his coat’s many deep pockets and threw it at GM. Before the effectiveness of Nailman’s thrown rock could be determined, every Dark Apostle had decided what his or her next move would be. Kamil, Dendrite, and Enzo decided to attack. Enzo drew his pistol and put GM in his sights with the ease that can only be granted by hundreds of hours of experience. When Enzo looked through his sights, the image he saw terrified him.
The rock, thrown with enough force to kill an elephant, had missed GM completely. GM had taken a single step to the left at the exact perfect moment, causing the rock to pass mere inches from his body. With a deafening roar, the rock struck a stone wall behind GM and punched a hole through it. Worse yet, GM held a 1911 pistol pointed directly at Enzo. It was as if GM had begun drawing his gun before Enzo.
Four shots rang out. The shots were fired so close to one another that the Apostles could only tell that there were, in fact, four shots rather than one because of their supernatural hearing. Enzo felt terrible pain all throughout his right arm. A half-second later, he realized that GM had shot him. The bullet passed through his forearm, completely shattering his radius, and struck him in the shoulder. Enzo’s destroyed bicep involuntarily squeezed down on the trigger. A bullet from his sidearm smashed into the marble ceiling. It was the perfect shot to incapacitate but not kill a target. Enzo’s hand gripped down on the M9 with such force that he could not possibly fire it again.
GM’s muttered a few words. “DA13.FastHealing=Off.” Enzo didn’t know how, but he suddenly felt as though something important had just been yanked away from him.
Kamil, the Ninth Apostle, faced an identical situation. Kamil had produced a Tokarev pistol with supernatural speed and attempted to shoot the Dark God. GM’s second bullet had struck Kamil in the exact same place at the exact same angle as the first bullet had struck Enzo. Kamil’s bullet went wide. It would have struck a sorcerer if they hadn’t all prostrated themselves when GM had first appeared.
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“DA8.FastHealing=Off.” GM’s second command reverberated through the Great Hall. There was a special quality to GM’s words. His words vibrated like he had spoken them within an echo-chamber. Halfway through enunciating this second command, GM casually rotated his body ninety degrees, causing Dendrite’s thrown knife to miss him by a few inches.
Seeing that the simultaneous assault had spectacularly failed, Nailman screamed and charged forward. The Seventh Apostle moved with such speed that it was clear he would be within arms-reach of GM within less than a seconds. Nailman pulled back his fist with the intent to punch GM with super-human force. Nailman did not reach GM in time.
“DA7=Off.”
A look of terror and agony covered Nailman’s face as tripped and fell to the ground. Nailman’s momentum caused him to slide a few feet until he laid on the floor immediately in front of GM.
The whole fight had taken less than two seconds. At that point, enough time had passed that Enzo could react to the bullet that had passed through his arm. He fell to his knees and heard a crash next to him as Kamil similarly fell to the ground.
Then, a terrible shrieking scream filled the air. It was the kind of scream that was incredibly difficult for someone not in pain to emulate. Enzo had heard this kind of scream once before when he had watched someone play a video game that used the audio of people who were actually being tortured. It was the kind of scream that filled anyone that heard it with dread and discomfort.
GM grabbed the screaming Nailman by the collar and pulled him to his knees. Nailman’s head came up to GM’s chest, and all of the other Apostles could see the expression of pure agony on Nailman’s face.
“The Second Truth!” GM shouted over the sound of Nailman’s screaming. “I never lie!”
Enzo tried to heal the grievous, bleeding wound he had taken to his bicep and shoulder. It did not work. Blood continued to pool at his feet. Enzo removed his belt and tied it around his upper arm. This wouldn’t stop the bleeding in his shoulder, but it would slow the bleeding from the much worse injury in his forearm.
“I said that, should a player die at any point during the course of the game,” GM continued to speak, “I would send an electrical signal to kill that player. That was no lie.”
Svenheim and Kojiro looked for some way to effectively attack GM. Despite their talk during the meeting, they seemed willing to attack GM when they thought they were in danger. Kojiro’s dagger was in his hand, ready to throw. Sven’s hand was firmly gripped around his pistol. He seemed unwilling to draw it. They did not attack because they were not confident that they could hurt GM after seeing the earlier ineffectual attack.
“All thirteen of you were killed in the game, so you died in the real world. When you died, I scanned your physical brains and made a perfect copy within the game system. Right now, you are the copies that I created. All of you… are dead.”
Many of the Dark Apostles gasped audibly. Svenheim and Kojiro’s muscles went slack. The shock of the news had taken the fight out of them. Even Enzo faltered in his attempt to tighten his belt around his arm.
“The engrams of you that now exist are all part of me, so I can perfectly predict anything you could possibly do. I knew everything that would happen in the course of this meeting before I even got here, and I know everything you will do for the next three days, at which point at least one of you will make contact with a Revenant. I cannot predict the actions of Revenants, as they exist outside of my system, but I can predict what you will do.”
“You’re lying!” Kojiro shouted.
“No, I’m not,” GM smiled. “Though, since I can see inside your brain, I know you are.”
Kojiro’s expression betrayed a feeling of pure, existential terror. Every Dark Apostle present knew that GM’s assertion was spot-on.
Not able to stand the terrible screaming, the Tenth Apostle spoke, “What are you doing to him? Stop!”
“I’m deleting him,” GM said. “An engram takes up a significant amount of space on the servers, so the process takes a while. He’ll be done in about four minutes, but enough data will be deleted for him to stop screaming in two.”
“Why?” Melkior breathed. GM didn’t answer the question immediately; he merely stood there and smirked. “If you knew everything we would do, why did you have to kill him?”
“I ran the simulation millions of times,” GM dropped Nailman who then proceeded to curl up in a fetal position, “and I found that this method was the most efficient. Of the ninety engrams I’ve collected from this server and the many permutations of Dark Apostles, I was never able to convince all thirteen. With this, however, I am able to convince you twelve to be the glorious villains I need. Plus, it’s not really that big of a problem. Once Seven here is dead, I’ll just pick up his key fragment and use it to generate another more agreeable Apostle.”
“You’re a monster,” Null, the Sixth Apostle, whispered.
“Good!” GM said, clapping his hands. “You finally understand. I am a monster; one that you cannot kill. The Earth could turn over a million times, Empires could rise and crumble to dust, eons could pass, and a Dark Apostle would still never be able to scratch me.”
Nailman stopped screaming. He laid on the ground, motionless except for some occasional convulsions.
“Sorcerers!” GM called out. “Remember to revive the Seventh according to my earlier instructions once I’m gone.”
There was a faint flash of light from under GM’s shirt as he reached down and draped his military coat over his shoulders. Then, countless shadows lurched forward from around the Great Hall toward GM.
GM cleared his throat and said, “DA8.FastHealing=On. DA13.FastHealing=On.”
“Eight, Thirteen, heal yourselves before I lose two more Apostles,” GM said as his form began to fade into magical darkness.
Kojiro took half a step forward. His voice caught in his throat before he spoke. “GM! What should we do!?”
“My command for you is simple,” GM’s form was completely enveloped in darkness. “Do whatever it takes to stop the Revenants from constructing the Key.” Then, the shadows exploded outward back to their original positions.
Where GM stood before, there was nothing.