19

MAIDEN

"Where have you been?" Will demanded. He looked like he'd seen a spook as Sinead would say, and there was evidence of upchuck. There's nothing like the smell of vomit and the Kleepoth to revive you after a near-conversion experience with your Nemesis!

We were back in the Pride and Glory Time Stream and the hum of insects was deafening. Sacks of bones and eyeballs poked through the foliage. SuckerPunch dripped with sweat and fear. She cocked her weapon, and Will braced himself too. He stumbled.

"Will, are you okay?" I reached out to steady him.

"No, Regan, I am not okay. I am not okay because you are not okay!" He squeezed his sweaty eyes shut, and when he opened them, he looked into mine and said, "Dude, I can feel your feelings. All of them." He patted me down as if I were going through a metal detector and added, "Even when I'm not with you." He breathed heavily for a few seconds and then demanded, "Dude, are you okay?"

What the fuck? SuckerPunch’s thoughts drifted towards us. My muscle memory and the three-hundred-and-thirty-three-door rabbit hole I'd been down reminded me to flex my Sheath and extend my field. The reverb rippled into the domain as my sweaty palms reminded me this was real. Keromang, if you die there, you die there. Tata's words bounced around in my head.

“Talk about de ja vu," Will whispered. I was about to tell him to focus but remembered who I was talking to. While I tried to figure out the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, Will paid ninja attention.

“Will,” I said, feeling my oscillations increase as the compounded Passages cued up inside me. “As sidekicks go? You’re shaping up real fine.” His wave of affection ebbed over me, and just as I allowed it to lap onto the beach of my body, his screaming face was ablaze.

How could I possibly be here again? Mud and blood, fire and fear.

Dragons and Zombies in Pride and Glory; the internet went crazy! I was vaguely aware of the commentators and the rest of the world until I felt the surge. I tapped into the vein of gold coming from billions of devices and rerouted it to my Shadow Sheath. I swore I would pick better battles after this one, but if the Scarab wanted a fight, a fight is what she would get!

I registered a change in the programme seconds before square jaw winked into the game. "Lock and load, ladies!" said Square Jaw. "There's an enemy amongst us!" He aimed his handgun at me. "And it's time to take them out!"

He emptied the magazine as he winked away. The bullets bounced off my shield like pellets from a BB gun, but Kleepoth appeared faster than SuckerPunch could reload her weapons. She never left us. SuckerPunch fired wildly at the clamouring Kleepoth as Arche 77 joined the return fire against everyone, including their team. She injured a small dragon, then another and another. Her hit marker registered them as legit kills. They screamed and bled and burned. But the big one? It disappeared like it always did.

“Coward!” I screamed in its wake. “You fucking coward!” Fikile would have washed my mouth with soap and water!

I envisioned a shield around my hands, and the code rearranged itself. I dropped to my knees to put out the bits of Will that were still burning. He blinked and croaked, “Is it just me, or is it a bit hot?”

“Stop it!” I snapped, “You can’t seriously be joking about this!”

“She’s forgetting him.” Will wheezed while pointing the charred mess of his hand towards SuckerPunch. He repeated, “She’s forgetting him." He whistled in pain. "SuckerPunch," he managed.

Will, stop talking! I whined telepathically to help him conserve power. He nodded in understanding and said, SuckerPunch. Kagiso. He paused. She's losing her Wonder. Being Seth's Anum Cara allowed her to keep it despite being an adult. He stopped as a wave of pain washed through him.

I understood. I felt it all. Our bond strengthened as theirs weakened.

“Will,” I said. “I need you.”

But he was gone. My Anam Cara was gone.

This time I wasn't weakened by her tech. This time I had all my wits about me. And this time, I was angry. All the anger I had ever felt exploded out of every cell of my being.

Keromang was gone. He was not here to calm me down, hold me back, or pick me up. I tasted the rage on my tongue as it bubbled up from my belly. The oscillations tore through me as I sucked up the collective power coursing through the game.

"I aaaaaaaaam the firewaaaaaaaall, bitch!" I screamed. I wanted everything to burn. And this time, it would.

***

Time wasn’t moving the way it should. Ash drifted onto his face. Each flake took a thousand years to glide down and find peace on his broad shoulders.

There was timelessness.

The blue man had a smile of sunshine. “This is a game of such veracity, Regan Grace, it will change you.”

There was timelessness.

I felt like a Viking. Maybe I was already dead, and this was Valhalla?

MOTHER

The field was full of fiery orange monarch butterflies. The porch, a velvety carpet of geckos, their beady eyes focused on me. I sat back down to the Book of Brightness. The pot of ink and fountain pen lay neatly next to it. The butterfly flitted to the page.

I drank deeply from the glass of water Thando had left me, so Sophia and Ala could whisper sweet nothings to me. Picking up the pen, removing the cap and the cork, I dipped the bone of the Arche’s into timelessness. I would write a better ending for us than the one we would choose based only on our past.

The Book was the reference and the record, the highest and the darkest Truth.

“Be here with me now…” I said, picturing Regan. I called up her dark hair and her brooding eyes. I felt her Shadow Sheath flex, and I sent my golden thread to meet hers. I released the Utterance to tighten the knot that binds us.

All of Creation groaned in anticipation.

MAIDEN

Something, no, someone, pulled me back to a moment I had left behind.

I blinked. This was not a standard re-spawn. Will sat up with a massive groan and smiled at someone behind me. In disbelief, he touched the parts of himself that were blackened and bleeding moments ago.

Will had a golden thread. It snaked its way out of his heart and down his arm, reaching out to me. My tears carved clean grooves between the mud and the blood on my cheeks. Will's thread wove itself around my heart, and in the same way that his rhythm had syncopated with Tata and Lu in the cave, my heart syncopated with his.

“Will!” I threw my arms around him. I am not a hugger, you understand.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I missed you too,” he said, not pulling away.

“We don’t have time for this,” I said, drawing back.

“We have all the time in the world, Arche.”

"Blue!" I said.

He smiled. And I felt it in my bones.

“Get up, Will,” said a new voice. A dark-skinned Middle Eastern man with a big nose grinned at Will. “Bro,” said the man at the apex of a fist bump.

“Bro,” confirmed Will with his own. His clothes were still smoking, but Will was a picture of health. The domain rippled in code as it rearranged itself. Light and coloured fractals burst in at the seams.

“We do not run from the darkness,” said the man through the shimmering haze of dimension-splitting colour. He and Blue embraced like uncles under confetti at a wedding as the domain continued to act like a kaleidoscope.

“We walk in it, “ added Blue.

“Sometimes we wallow in it,” boomed the man!

“We definitely dance in it,” chimed Blue again. They laughed, remembering a party that had gotten out of hand. Something about a lot of water and a lot of wine.

“But we do not,” they concluded together, “Let it overcome us!”

They were old friends, ancient friends. The golden thread spun through the cracks in the domain, and the buoyancy of the quantum field flowed in like water.

Who was this guy? He hadn’t even made eye contact with me yet. God help me if he did because the pure love and adoration he cast over Will seemed even more honest and intense than the way Blue did it. It was unbearable. I felt my knees buckle and my heart kick into hyperdrive as he did the inevitable: he saw me.

I had to get out from underneath his gaze.

“Ow!” Will cried because I pinched him. “You’re supposed to pinch yourself!” He said, repeating my words to him from that first night. Then he whispered, “It’s not a dream, Regan,” His cheeky green eyes kept nothing from me.

My code bristled. Maybe it wasn’t just Will I had been underestimating. Do we all have help that we stop using because we grow up? As a blinding golden glow filled the domain, it hit me: Will's imaginary friend was Jesus. Not the white one. The anatomically correct one. The Jesus. Of Nazareth. Jesus, the wine guy.

***

We were at the bottom of the Peaceman tree. I want to say we were in the real world, but that would never mean the same thing to us again.

Between Jesus, Blue and the tree, they cast their shade upon us. It was lovely and drew my attention to my fatigue. I had lost all sense of time. I took Will’s hand with my clammy one to beam us up.

“I’m almost positive you don’t need to do that,” he grinned. He was right, but I needed to, and we both knew it. I felt the blush creep up my cheeks. But I decided that a) I was filthy, it was unlikely that anyone could tell, and b) I didn’t care. What mattered was that my first friend was still alive after I had dragged him quite recklessly into a fucking interdimensional mess.

Jesus surveyed the horizon and said, “I thought we might need some perspective, and this is one of our favourite places to get it.”

Will sighed peacefully. Maybe I could also have a place, a real place, a place in the world that made me feel safe. But maybe having safe people in our lives was even more important than safe places.

My oscillations increased, and I found my hand on Will’s chest.“William Peaceman," I said, "I Imbue you as Determined Protector of Regan Grace, the Game Changer and Arche of the Nine known realms.” My palm buzzed with energy. Will looked down into my eyes, and a ghost of something flickered there.

The Incident. We had been through so much since then.

“You were there?” I asked, “When it happened?” A small tear ran down his red cheek. He nodded, the shame oozing out of every pore. “I wanted to…” he started to cry for real.

“Stop it.” I finished for him because I felt it all. As if it were my memory, I heard Mr Peaceman's voice ringing in Will's head in the imagined disappointment he would feel when his dad found out that Will had not stopped the beating of Catherine Donaldson. Will was one of the spectators in the clip that went viral. There was evidence. Will's blessing and his curse were having Mr Peaceman's unconditional love.

Truth filled up all the space between us. Between Truth, Jesus and Blue, they absorbed it all. A great ball of energy pulsed around them with Will in the centre. When Will could cry no more, the ball dissipated, and a gentle rain baptised us all.

“William Peaceman,” said Jesus, his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Determined Protector of the Game Changer, Arche of the Nine Known.”

"Ten, " I interrupted. “I mean, it’s a WARS zone. Whether people are Onboarded or imported, the interent is a realm with enormous power up for grabs. I had a taste myself, and it's pretty intoxicating.”

My code did a calculated slide across my skin, from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine. My Shadow Sheath flexed and rippled, causing a cascade through the entire quantum field.

“Now, where were we?” asked Blue. The domain rippled and changed as he winked out of sight, but never out of mind.

We were right where we started in the Pride and Glory Time Stream and the hum of insects was deafening.

Will’s name change had registered on his HUD, and his skin upgraded with nifty magical items! The genre crossover was titillating and terrifying for his new fans. They went crazy, and now he felt the surge in the field too.

"Woah, that's crazy," he said.

"Right?" I asked rhetorically. I could see the benefit of this commonality. It was nice.

Jesus, or †#3 ][_060$ - The Logos' HUD snapped into place, and let me tell you, Jesus, the wine guy, had some serious stats. He was the highest-level Mage with an elixir for eternal life, which according to his backstory, was reputed to have come from the ink of an ancient octopus. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck as he said, “Let’s do this.”

What the fuck? SuckerPunch’s thoughts drifted towards us as she questioned herself. I flexed my field and drew from the First Force, Truth. She flooded every fibre of our beings.

“Kagiso,” I said. “Trust yourself.” She blinked and glanced over at me.

“You’ve got this,” added Will. The crowd went wild! Comments likes, and shares flooded in. Kagiso widened her stance and lifted her weapon. She braced herself for what her memory was losing, but her First Casing would never forget: she was Anum Cara to the Arche of the Nine Known Realms, and this was their last battle!

Will, knowing what he knew, stepped in front of me. I still wanted to save him, save everyone. I felt myself pulled into the quantum field like ribbons in the wind, threatening to spiral out of control.

“Regan,'' said my Anum Cara. "Be here with me now." His thread, now a rosy copper, reached out to mine. I took a steadying breath, and the reverb rippled gently into the domain. My thread sought out his and coiled around it. He was not my anchor, nor was I his. We held it together.

All is one, Blue, echoed in my mind.

"All is one," I said. Will, and I had known each other for eternity. The wave of emotion between us rippled into the field like a Mexican wave.

“Regaaaaaaaaahn Gracesssssssssss,” hissed that fucking dragon from somehwere behind me. A hot gust of wind flattened the foliage around us. Anger boiled in my belly, and I tried desperately to push it back down. I needed to stay in control.

Anger is not wrong, Arche. Blue said inside my mind. It is one of your most authentic, and therefore powerful, emotions. Do you see it? The code spiralled out of me in sporadic little tornados. What matters is what you do with it, Blue added.

I had caused a sandstorm when I was angry. I ran away like a deranged person when I was angry. I burnt myself to a crisp when I was angry. I let the wildfire run through me a little. “Will,” I said, feeling my oscillations increase as the compounded Passages cued up inside me. "If my calculations are correct when this baby hits 88 miles per hour." The Kleepoth splattered bits of blood, bone and gristle everywhere.

"You're going to see some serious shit!" finished Will, completing the Back to the Future quote. Will grinned. “I want to say good job." Then he grimaced and said, "But that was gross.” He wiped blood spatter out of his eyes and spat something out of his mouth.

Streaks of fire trailed behind the dragon as it fled, reminding me of Sinead’s hair when she ran down the passage. I smiled at the memory of her crudely drawn premonition and wondered if she had dreamed about this. I laughed. Joy rippled through the domain as I noticed The Logos.

Jesus, the wine guy, stood with arms open wide as he drew something out of the atmosphere. There was still a Divine Spark within each Poth, and the Logos caught them as the embers of their destruction fell. Light pulsed and radiated from his chest as he took them into his very being. I felt a new thing well up in me: empathy. ‘Casulaites of war’, Sekmeht had called them.

The Logos' HUD lit up like a Christmas tree and registered a serious manna increase! Will offered his fist for a bump, “Bro.”

“Bro,” said Jesus as the pixelation of the domain transformed the jungle into the last frame of the game.

Someone had found the artefact.

***

Seth wiped blood spatter from his face with the back of one hand, and with the other, he held up the artefact, turning to share the moment with SuckerPunch. There was whooping, cheering and swearing as the players winked out of the game. SuckerPunch had no idea that Seth had saved my realm, and who knew how many others in his tenure as Arche.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s the least I could do,” he shook his head “before I can do no more.”

“Are we done here?” Will asked. Showing his exhaustion and something else.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure we are done here.”

An advertisement rang through the domain: ‘In today’s world, you can’t afford to miss a minute or skip a beat! Keep your finger on the pulse of the future! Come on Onboard!”

I called a door to get us back to the cave, where I was sure Tata would be waiting.