The Elder One had never been in an alliance with anyone before. He was generally the reason others forged alliances. Things were different though, The Elder One was different. His near-death experience hadn’t exactly humbled him, but it had shown him the advantages of an alliance. If Autumn was stronger she could have at least delayed Ares.

“Why didn’t you help me?” The Elder One asked critically.

Autumn sighed before asking, “What was I supposed to do? He could kill me with one hit probably!”

The Elder One frowned, but he knew he would have probably done the same thing in her position. He could see now, his vision was hazy, but he could see well enough to tell that Autumn seemed to be distressed.

“I’ll forgive you this once, but next time I expect you to assist me,” The Elder One said.

Autumn nodded. “So, you are proposing an alliance? Fine, next time if I can help you I will.”

The Elder One smiled and nodded. He didn’t believe her, but he wanted to.

“You need to grow stronger Autumn,” The Elder One waved in front of himself. “It’s like a game, so use it to grow, and the next time you can do the killing.”

“You’re right. Why is it like a game anyways, do you know?” Autumn asked.

“I made it this way obviously. It’s based off my personal library of entertainment. Although there are several things in here I don’t recognize.”

Autumn gasped, “You made this? Why? How?”

“Well, I didn’t make this. I just set the parameters it was supposed to operate within. Honestly, I’m not sure what all the changes have been.”

Autumn stood up and started pacing across the bloodied floor. “You set the parameters based off games, right? I bet the humans are freaking out!”

The Elder One grimaced, “I think it brought monsters to the world. How else are we supposed to level? Kill each other?” The Elder One shook his head. “No, I’m almost certain there are monsters.”

“You want me to go out there and kill monsters?” Autumn asked after she inhaled.

“Yes, you’re too weak, you need to grow stronger. This alliance is too one-sided,” The Elder One said as he slapped his hand in the blood for emphasis.

“I’m not that weak, watch!” Autumn walked over and held her palm over the blood.

The Elder felt a chill go through his body as he saw something streaming out of Autumn's hand. The blood below her started to freeze and he could hear it crackling. She let out a sigh and sat back down on the ground breathing harder.

“How did you do that?” The Elder One asked with wide eyes.

Autumn snickered, “What don’t you know? You created this,” she waved her arms around her.

The Elder One just glared at her.

“Fine! I just thought about drawing out the heat and directed my thoughts at the blood. Watch this.” She held her hand palm up and a flame appeared in it. With a wave, it vanished.

The Elder One held his bloody palm up and thought about creating mass friction and adding a combustible. A flame appeared and The Elder One stood up, still staring at the fire. He pushed it to grow larger, and then he tried to throw it at the wall. It fizzled out about halfway there as if absorbed.

“Cool, huh?” Autumn asked.

“Yeah, it is. Come.” The Elder One started walking towards the passage. “Let’s go find some monsters!”

He took one final glance at the room he was born in before they left. It was a series of plain stone walls in the shape of an octagon, with a stone ceiling and floor. It was completely empty of anything except Autumn, The Elder One, and the remains of the two corpses.

They both made their way through the passage after a couple of minutes. They descended the stone steps and made their way to the apple orchard below. Before they got there though, they noticed a man sitting and watching them. The man was on an ATV with its engine running. His mouth and his eyes were both opened extremely wide.

The Elder One, still naked and covered in blood and gore pointed to the man. “Human! Tell us, where are the monsters?!”

The man on the ATV revved the engine loudly and took off disappearing between the trees.

The Elder One turned and looked behind him. They were standing on the side of a massive pyramid.

“That’s odd,” The Elder One said. “He ran from a pyramid?”

Autumn laughed, “No, I think he ran from us.” She stared at The Elder One for a couple seconds before adding, “We’re naked and covered in blood.”

The Elder One looked down and he could see the glistening blood that completely coated him. There were lumps of meat, bits of splintered bone and hairs interspersed.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Right, we need to get cleaned up and grab some clothes. Where do you think he went?” The Elder One asked.

“He probably went to tell others what he saw.” Autumn laughed again, “I doubt they’ll believe him.”

“Look! There’s a canal next to the orchard we can rinse off in there. Then we just need clothes,” The Elder One said.

As they made their way to the canal The Elder One explained to Autumn about the puzzle, and how he’d solved it. He didn’t give her any technical information, but he gave her an overview of everything that had happened. He knew she wasn’t one of his kin who had allied against him and he figured if she was going to be his ally then she would need this pertinent information.

As they were rinsing off, the Elder One told her about the restricted access to the Galactic Internet. He told her about how he had been named the Controller of Earth and the changes he had accepted. She was shocked when he told her his theory about the puzzles creator. He finished his story with how he had been forced into a human body. He even told her why his body was so durable.

She told him a similar story about being forced into a body. She was upset that she hadn’t done the same as The Elder One and packed the atoms and molecules together. Although she had spent more effort customizing her artificial brain, while The Elder One had just accepted his without any customization.

“So, what does being the Controller of Earth mean exactly?” Autumn asked as she pulled herself out of the canal.

“Seems that I have a tab devoted to that, it shows that it’s being contested though,” The Elder One said as he held the edge of the canal.

“Interesting, so can you do anything with it?” Autumn asked.

“I think so, I have access to a small percentage of Earths energy production. It looks like I can create quests, but everything else is greyed out. I probably need unrestricted access for them,” The Elder One said as his eyes roamed the windows before him.

They heard a car driving down the side of the canal so The Elder One pulled himself out of the water. It was a pickup truck that stopped about fifty feet from them. Four men got out, two holding rifles.

Autumn leaned closer to The Elder One and whispered, “You think you could create a quest for them to bring us clothes?”

The Elder One shrugged then nodded before listening to the men as they walked closer.

“Holy shit, Jake, you weren’t lying! I thought you said they were covered in blood though?” Said one of the men with a rifle.

“They were, musta washed off in the canal,” Jake, the man The Elder One recognized said.

“Humans,” The Elder One said, “bring us clothes and take us to the monsters.” He navigated through his menus and created a quest for the four men to do just that.

They all stopped and looked at each other before one of the men leveled his rifle at The Elder One.

“Why were you covered in blood, naked, and where’d that come from?” The man gestured with the barrel of his rifle up at the pyramid. “And what was that ‘system initializing’ shit? This health, mana and so on? And pardon my French ma’am but you’re naked as hell.”

The Elder One turned to look at the pyramid again. “It came out of the ground obviously; can’t you see the dirt?”

“What of the blood, and the large man?” Jake asked.

“I killed Ares,” The Elder One answered.

The man pointing the rifle laughed, “You killed the god of war, in your birthday suit?”

The Elder One puffed up his chest and was about to answer when Autumn put her hand on his arm. Until then she had just been standing there totally naked with her arms to the side. She gave him a look, but he couldn’t tell what message she was trying to convey.

She cleared her throat and looked back to the men, “Did you get the quest?” Autumn squeezed his arm.

The men looked to each other again, a few of them nodded.

“Good,” Autumn said as she stopped squeezing his arm. “Well let’s go then.”

The man who was talking pointed his rifle at Autumn as she took a step forward. The Elder One pulled her back behind him. He knew those bullets could kill her, but not him.

“Now hold on a minute,” The man with the gun said, “Who are you, why are you naked, and what are you doing out here? Are you some kinda psycho devil worshipers? Is this the end of the world?”

The Elder One started stepping towards them. “Put down the gun,” he said.

Now both men were pointing their guns at The Elder One, and they were backing up towards their truck. The man who had been speaking started yelling for The Elder One to stop where he was, but he didn’t listen.

A shot rang out and The Elder One felt a strong pinch on his chest. Compared to what Ares made him go through it wasn’t even enough to make him flinch. He stepped up to the man who’d shot him and swiped the gun out of his hands. He turned and glared at the other man pointing a rifle at him. He was amused watching the trembling man urinate his own pants, but he didn’t let it show, he kept glaring.

The one who urinated in his pants dropped his gun and The Elder One turned back to the speaker. His eyes were wide, and his mouth kept opening and closing, but he wasn’t saying anything. He could see the man holding his hand, it looked like his finger was broken. The Elder One held up the rifle, realizing he’d bent the barrel.

“I’m The Elder One,” he said.

“And I’m Autumn,” Autumn announced as she picked up the other rifle and started to inspect it.

The Elder One handed back the bent rifle as he gestured at the truck, “Shall we?”

The men were suddenly eager to do as they were told, and it didn’t take long for them to head out. The Elder One was sitting opposite to Autumn in the bed of the pickup truck, it was sagging heavily under his weight, but it seemed like it would probably hold up. He could hear the four whispering to each other inside the cab, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying due to the wind. He looked down at his chest, there wasn’t even a mark on it, but he did remember losing health when he was shot. Now he was back up to full health.

“Thanks,” Autumn said as The Elder One fingered his chest.

The Elder One gave her a quizzical look.

Autumn rolled her eyes, and after a moment of silence she said, “I know we could have probably resolved it peacefully, but the chances of me getting shot were unacceptably high.”

The Elder One thought about that, and not just the fact that no one had ever thanked him for anything before. He wondered why he had done things the way he had. Sure, his body was powerful, and it was exhilarating to use. He could understand why humans would want to drive high-performance vehicles. It was like she said though, the odds of her getting shot were unacceptably high.

He nodded to her and smiled.

They fell into a peaceful silence until the truck came to a stop in front of a two-story house. It was surrounded by the apple orchard on three sides, with the front connected to a poorly maintained road. The four men got out and the one who had urinated himself went in the house first. The speaker approached them.

“I’m James,” said the man who’d shot The Elder One. “This is my house, you can get a shower upstairs and we’ll find some clothes for you. But we don’t know anything ‘bout no monsters.”

“Very well, James,” The Elder One said. “After we get clothes you will take us to look for monsters. They’ll probably be in locations with a higher population density if not here.”

“You mean the city,” James nodded. “Alright, first the clothes, follow me.”