Ross awoke with a start, character sheet zoomed in onto a random, off-center spot in his vision. There was another pop-up window in front of it, which he minimized for the time being. His first instinct was to read over his character sheet, but when he tried, he couldn’t focus on it in the slightest. His head throbbed and his body ached far worse than before. Tentatively trying to stand, Ross caught his breath as a sudden muscle cramp pulled him right back down to the carpet.
The realization of where he was took Ross a bit longer than he would have liked.
He looked up to see the concerned faces of Ruth and Luda hovering over him.
“You alright, Ross?” Ruth asked tentatively. “You, uh…”
“You look very different.” Luda said.
Ross, confused, looked down at himself and let out a sharp, high-pitched yelp. His skin had gone from a slate grey to a pale copper color. His hands had grown a decent amount, and as he readjusted himself, he felt his height had significantly increased - he’d grown at least a foot taller. His first pair of arms was not his only pair; the first set were still resting on the floor as he went to remove rheum from his eyes, and he let out another quick screech.
“Wh-what the hell!?” He said, looking at his new pair of hands. He lifted his second pair off the floor to look at as well, but immediately hit the back of his head against the wooden floor. He groaned in pain before blinking a few times and staring at his multitude of arms.
“I’ve never seen this sorta thing before!” Ruth said, poorly hiding her awe. Luda shook her head.
“Me neither. Olsen, what happened before you passed out?”
Ross rubbed his eyes again with one pair of arms, the other tenderly rubbing the back of his head as he sat up.
“I… I think I went through Racial Evolution?” He said.
Ruth and Luda looked at each other, concerned.
“Are you sure?” Luda asked. “You know, it isn’t uncommon to dream of false system messages here.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that later.” Ross said, raising an eyebrow. “For now, I’m positive it actually happened.” He looked down at his lap.
“It… finally clicked.”
Luda, confused, scratched the back of her head. Ruth, however, gave Ross an empathetic look.
“I remember when that first happened to me, too.” Ruth said, sitting next to Ross and resting a hand on his shoulder. “I remember it like a vivid dream. I was fighting my first boss, and Everest was trying to give me directions on a fighting style I hadn’t even become a novice in yet.” She smiled fondly, leaning back onto her own hands and looking to the ceiling.
“He was calling out all these terms I couldn’t remember, and I froze after every other offensive move. It was terrible, and I got by butt kicked horribly.”
Ross noticed as she gingerly rubbed her outer thigh, where a tattoo was covering up a scar he hadn’t seen before. The tattoo matched the scar’s dull navy blue color nearly perfectly, but with the angle of her leg, he could tell where the scar dug into flesh. Out of the corner of his eye, Ross saw Luda nod quickly to herself before stepping into the back room. He turned his full attention to Ruth.
“Is healing magic not able to heal scars?” Ross asked. Ruth shook her head sadly.
“I took too long in the fight. Everything functioned just fine after the healing, which is pretty much the extent of healing magic in this world. If you leave a wound open for too long and it starts to scab over, it’ll remain as a scar. It won’t hurt or anything, and isn’t some sort of weak spot. Just…” Ruth trailed off. She looked back up to the ceiling, frowning.
“Just a reminder, that’s all.”
Ross nodded, concern evident on his face.
“Do you wanna talk about it..?” He said, voice tentative.
Ruth didn’t speak for a long while.
“I think I do. Not here, though - not now. Right now, I want to help you figure out all… this.” She said, gesturing to Ross’s entire body. Ross laughed.
“It’s coming back to me now. I think if I-” He started, then suddenly, his extra arms retracted. Ruth sat bolt upright.
“What in the..?”
“Ah, alright. I think it’s something called Hundred-Handed. New trait from the Racial Evolutions.” Ross said. “I just activated the Trait, and I think that’s how you toggle the arms. I get more the further I level the trait, up to 100 arms at once.”
Ruth nodded, awe overtaking recollection in her eyes. Ross toggled the ability again, and his second pair of arms burst from each shoulder blade with blazing speed, nearly flipping his cape over his face in the process. It didn’t hurt, but the feeling of ‘remembering’ the limbs was uncanny.
“This is going to take some getting used to.” Ross muttered, spinning all four arms in circles. “Definitely cool, though. Just not immediately after a concussion.”
Ruth nodded her agreement before sending over a request to see his character sheet. He obliged, giving the deep fae time to read the information. He’d be lying if he said the cascade of expressions over her face weren’t interesting or cathartic for him. After what felt like an hour, she finally spoke.
“Hundred-Handed ones. That’s a throwback.”
“You know about Greek mythos?” Ross asked. Ruth nodded, her typical toothy grin once more appearing.
“I was working at my fifth book of Greek myths when the accident happened.” She tapped the side of her head with a finger.
“Got a whole hell of a lot left over in here. More than anyone probably should, to be honest.”
“Well, you’re gonna hate hearing my options for Titan’s Subracial Evolutions.” Ross said, smiling. Ruth raised an eyebrow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The cyclopes aren’t even titans!” Ruth cried, throwing her hands dramatically into the air as the pair left the shop. “They’re giants! So are the Hecatoncheires, for that matter!”
"Yeah-huh. Real curious about why I'm not any bigger right now, too." Ross muttered. Ruth shrugged.
The pair had decided to make their way to the militia’s infirmary, where the shopkeeps had taken Everest - as a teacher for an entire universe, he had one of the highest priorities of survival out of anyone in the realm. They ensured he was alive, which Ruth told Ross to great relief from the latter, and had him set up in a reserved area within the medical bay. The guard was intense, and Ruth had been given both hers and Ross’s identification stones. These would allow them in to see their mentor, make a plan for the immediate future, and move out.
“I’m just glad they didn’t have Gaia or Uranus in the options.” Ruth continued. “They aren’t even titans, more undefined entities that-”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She trailed off, gazing into the distance. Ross followed her gaze, only to feel his stomach drop.
Everest, limping and huffing, was pushing past the guards to his room.
Ross and Ruth bolted over to him, and when the guard tried to stop them, Ruth shoved the stones into his hands. Both of Everest’s proteges hooked one of his massive arms over their shoulders and balanced him on his feet, and despite his ragged breathing, Ross noticed something in his eyes he’d only seen once.
When he was younger, Ross got into a fight at school with someone who was picking on his friend. He always stood up for his friends, regardless of what it took to do so, which meant he was in a regrettable number of fights post-elementary school. During one such fight in high school, the kid he was facing was hit way harder than Ross had intended, resulting in a bloody nose and a loose tooth or two. The kid he’d hit staggered for a moment, but screamed and ran at him with a fist raised. In that kid’s eyes, Ross saw something that made him falter long enough to get put down for the day. When he talked about it later with his grandfather, Pa Olsen had told him that it was something called the ‘fighting spirit’. He’d gone into a rant about how fighting for something you really wanted in whatever way you’d have to fight for it would dig into some form of intense human potential.
There was, however, a bit of terminology Ross had learned about a year and a half later that fit the description of that kid’s gaze.
“Your eyes are alive…” Ross muttered, awestruck. Ruth looked at him in confusion before returning her attention and concern to Everest.
“I’ll be fine.” Everest groaned, withdrawing his arms after finally grabbing stable footing. “I’m more concerned about the town. We need to leave.”
“Leave?” Ross asked, before realization hit.
“No.” He whispered. “The reset didn’t… Did it?”
Everest looked up, pride fusing with exhaustion and grim assurance.
“‘Fraid so.”
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” Ruth said.
“The Titan Flux has moved up the timeline. If I had to guess, the ‘clock’ - whatever that may be for this whole system - got reset alongside everything else. Since Otectvurce’s been busy with stabilizing everyone and everything again, he couldn’t correct the clock before it messed with timed events.”
“It gets worse.” Everest muttered, turning his head to look at Ruth. “Remember what I told you about when the realms first began the Fluxes?”
“Yeah.” She said, eyebrows knitted together. “You said they all happened at once. Like the Purge, but way worse. Way, way worse.”
“Well,” Ross said, picking up the explanation, “When a clock is reset on Earth, what is it always set to?”
“Midnight, which is the first hour of the day..!” Ruth pieced together, realization dawning on her face. She gasped, covering her mouth. “You don’t mean-”
“It’s unlikely.” Everest cut in briskly. “Best case scenario, the Flux hits in the next few minutes - it could be the only ‘clock’ that was affected, since Otectvurce doesn’t typically set up those events with the rest of the pantheon until the year before it hits. That hopefully includes their ‘clocks’. Worst case, though, we face every damn Flux at the same time at midnight tomorrow.”
“If the Titan Flux hits in a few minutes, then what makes you think leaving now is gonna buy us any time? You can hardly move!” Ruth argued. Everest furrowed his brow, sighing. Before he could speak, Ruth continued.
“Besides that, why doesn’t Otectvurce just stop the Titan Flux? He’s the god of the system, right?”
“Ruth, I don’t think he can.” Ross said, face turning grim. He turned to Everest.
“I’ve been thinking about it while here, and it doesn’t seem like even an omnipotent person could do all this work alone. So many things feel procedurally generated, which I’m assuming it is. That means either he’s manually pushing an uncountable number of buttons every second, or he has some form of AI controlling it. I also take it the AI controls the methods of the Flux delivery system, whatever that may be?”
Everest simply nodded. Ross shook his head.
“I did some reading in my free time here. Isn’t Otectvurce meant to also be the god of logic? Why is he doing so much illogical bullshit with the system?”
“It isn’t up to him alone.” Everest mumbled. “The pantheon has a voting system they use, and he’s always heavily outvoted because the other gods are prejudiced against him. They don’t think he can stay objective in regards to the system, so he might mess with their political ideas.”
“Political… They’re gods! What kind of politics could they possibly have? They are literally walking embodiments of physical laws and ideas!” Ross cried. “Plus, how can logic be prejudiced? It’s logic!”
“Does that stop people from claiming they’re right even when they’re blatantly wrong?” Everest retorted. Ross grew quiet.
“Listen, kid. The gods aren’t just their ideologies, but their followers’ ideologies. The larger the church, the more complex the concepts and the more complex the god. More followers also means more power since, for our pantheon, more of any given ideology means more of the corresponding god. They constantly try to convert people whose views are better aligned to their goals than the clergy’s current church’s. Hell, they even trade high priests like goddamned baseball cards sometimes.“
“That doesn’t excuse hindering someone’s job for no good reason.” Ross said.
“You’re right. It doesn’t.” Everest said.
The group walked in silence for a while, Everest finally finding his footing after a few more steps. They made it past the front gate and into the mile-long tunnel before the group was stopped by Everest.
“I think you should meet Otectvurce yourself.” He said. Ross looked up at him in curiosity.
“Why?” He asked.
“Well, as much as I hate the bastard for my life of servitude, he did kind of get me out of worse servitude. He’s not a bad person, and his clergy - while sometimes cold and calculating - have more than enough common sense and empathy to grant him a pleasant demeanor.” Everest replied. “Plus, he’s wanted to talk to you for awhile now, but can’t have a proper communication line until you visit a church of his. He’ll be able to activate that class of yours - the Cleric of Otectvurce - and he can commune with you through that.”
“How did you-” Ross asked, before cutting himself off and face-palming.
“Of course. Otectvurce.”
Everest nodded with a half-hearted smirk.
“Well then,” Ross continued, “I assume he told you about the Racial Evolutions?”
“The what?” Everest exclaimed, his voice reverberating through the tunnel.
Before Ross could say a word, he got an alert. Looking up at Everest and Ruth, it seemed they did as well. He swallowed hard, knowing exactly what the alert would be about. Even as Ross opened the message, however, Everest’s face contorted into rage and confusion at something else.
[The Titan Flux has begun.
Time remaining until the Portals close: 2:29:56]
“Uh, Everest..?” Ruth said. “Shouldn’t we get moving?”
“You’re a sick fucking bastard!” Everest suddenly cried, eyes blankly staring in front of him. If he didn’t know better, Ross could have sworn they were growing red and wet.
“What are you-” Ross asked, before a chill began to crawl up his spine. He shuddered involuntarily, looking at the village behind them once more. He couldn’t shake an unwelcome feeling of imminent danger, like a lightning bolt striking five feet away from him.
“You know damn well I can’t do a fucking thing about it!” Everest spat, every word oozing with venom. Though his body was fully tense, he wasn’t moving an inch. Ross felt further confusion, until a sudden shaking overtook the trio. Everest stood strong, but Ross and Ruth struggled to keep their footing. The former, after a long moment, simply screamed before stumbling forward. It almost seemed as though Everest was being held back and had put too much weight forward when he was let go.
Ross opened his mouth to speak, but froze when a massive wall of what seemed to be perfectly smooth, red-orange crystal erupted from the ground in front of them. He ran up to it and tried to bang on it, but the recoil from the first impact was so great that he cried out in pain as his hand dangled limply for a few seconds. His regeneration had yet to return after the massive expenditure prior, which made the process far more excruciating. Hissing through his teeth, Ross returned to Everest and Ruth. The pair were talking in hushed tones, Ruth looking aghast while Everest seemed absolutely miserable.
“What the hell is going on?” Ross said. “What’s with the-”
Before he could continue, another wall made of the same material as the first burst from the ground on either side of the tunnel. Then, in a decagonal shape, more walls launched around the interior of Sathenkura. Fortunately, no houses were in the path of any of the walls, but flower beds and a variety of brickwork were flung around half a kilometer into the air. Ponds were severed in two, water evaporating instantly upon contact with the walls. Finally, the tops of each wall grew into further crystal slabs that interlocked with one another at a ninety degree angle, creating a ceiling over the top of Sathenkura made of what looked like relatively opaque, flame-colored glass.
“A Trial.” Everest replied, voice devoid of any mirth or optimism.
Ruth looked up, horrified.
“What god would start a Trial for Ross now? Why here? It’s a populated area!”
“I’m glad you asked.” Said an unfamiliar voice.