Jacob found himself in the Forgotten Green, surrounded by endless ranks of drooping trees.
That’s a shame. I was hoping to go back to that meadow. I was going to ask Magpie about his sister or daughter or whatever he was talking about. I kinda feel like a bad person for not hearing him out.
Oh well, it sounded like he’d made some kind of deal with the Guild about it, so I’ll just ask Thatch. I figure I’ll look into it if it’s not too out of the way. Ease my conscience if nothing else.
But while he was in the Green, he had three items on his agenda.
The first was to track down Tarim's grandfather, Ibrahim. The second was to find Starman and gloat a little. He figured he’d earned that much, after what Starman had put him through. Depending on how long he spent rubbing it in, he’d see if there was time left for the third item.
He didn’t have the Deady Bear on him, which was slightly disappointing. He wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway since it was currently full of demon. Still, it would have been nice to get the first step out of the way towards his eventual goal of bringing souls back from the dead.
Wandering through the forest in search of Ibrahim, he found himself swept up by a serenity he’d never experienced in the Forgotten Green before. For the first time in a long time, it felt like everything was moving in the right direction. He was close now. Only a few more hurdles to knock down. Then he'd get to see Becca again.
Ibrahim was not very hard to find, but he also was not very alive, or alive by afterlife standards. The Forgotten Green had left him nothing but a vague mound of bundled roots protruding from the undergrowth. Only part of his pale, lifeless face was sticking out, and that was the only reason he could tell it was Ibrahim at all.
Damn. Bummer.
He pivoted onto finding Starman while he thought about how he was going to break it to the kid.
Soon enough he saw a man sitting on a rock in his path and readied a pithy insult to fire off. But it wasn’t Starman. It was just some guy. Stubbly, broad, dressed in rugged clothes suitable for manual labor. Roots had wrapped around his ankles, and his feet were slowly being pulled into the dirt. He wore a large ring on his right index finger.
Jacob had no idea who he was, but the look of recognition in the man’s face suggested that maybe he should have.
“Jacob!” he said with a hesitant smile. “It’s been a long time since I saw another face. Was starting to think I was all alone out here. Do you know where we are?”
Jacob gauged how much to tell the man. He figured it couldn’t hurt to be upfront. “Sorry oldtimer, but you’re dead.”
The man looked disappointed but not entirely surprised. He looked down at his rough hands and sighed. “I guess I knew that already. Still hurts to hear it said out loud.”
“Sure. I bet it’s rough.” He hesitated for a moment. “Sorry, but do I know you?”
The man frowned deeply. “Jacob, I know we didn’t leave off on the best of terms, but I don’t think now is the time to do this.”
“Do what?”
“That. The games. Please stop it—I don’t have the energy to deal with it right now.” A sharp edge gradually entered his voice as he spoke.
Jacob shrugged. “I’m being serious. Who are you?”
“Jacob…”
“Full disclosure, I’ve got this, uh, let’s call it amnesia. A memory thing. So don’t take it personally.”
The man put his hands over his ears as though to block out Jacob’s words. “Please. I just want to get out of here.”
“And I’ll decide whether or not to help you after you tell me who you are.”
“I’m your father, Jacob. Is that what you want me to say? I know you don’t like it, but that’s how it is. You’re the one that ran away, not me.”
Jacob chuckled. “My dad is some loser who didn’t know how to pull out. I’m guessing you’re one of the temps who came after.”
The man went silent, apparently giving up on the conversation, and his gaze drifted away aimlessly, fixing on some point in the distance through the trees.
Based on the way he’s talking, I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly father of the year. That tracks, considering the other upstanding men and women I got put with.
When the sight of the man became too pathetic to watch any longer, Jacob said: “Right. What can I do for you, Father?”
When the man looked up, his eyes swam with tears threatening to fall. “Forgiveness. Forgive me, Jacob. I know I should have been better to you. You think it’s not been on my mind every day since you left?”
Jacob shook his head. “Whatever you’ve done to ask forgiveness for, I can’t give it to you. The son who could have forgiven you is dead. I don’t know that guy.”
“Jacob…”
“Goodbye.”
Jacob strode past the man. He tried to get up and follow, but couldn’t budge his root-bound feet. Jacob walked a ways, then turned back. “If you get out of that, you should try to find a pond. If you can find a way to get rid of your guilt and live with yourself, it might help.”
“I get it,” the man said, teeth gritted. “I know why you’re here. To poke fun.”
“Nope.”
“You always were a cruel boy. I tried to straighten you out, but you are stubborn as a weed. It didn’t help that you had that little whore egging you on.”
Jacob had heard enough. He walked away. His step-father’s alternating pleas and threats were quickly swallowed up by the oppressive silence of the forest.
I should have asked for his name. I’m guessing mine isn’t Jacob Doherty…
Man, this is getting confusing.
Continuing, he kept his mind trained on Starman. It didn’t take him long to wander out into the clearing with the pond at its center. When he left and picked another direction, he soon found himself right back there. A third attempt yielded the same result. He reckoned that if the Forgotten Green guided him here in his search for Starman, that likely meant that he had already passed on through the pond, or had been brought to some lower realm on death.
An urgek hell, maybe. One can only hope.
With that endeavor a total bust, Jacob only had one thing he wanted to try before returning to life. Instead of a person, Jacob went in search of an item. A lighter. It didn’t take him very long to find one, tucked in a hole in a tree with little bundled bits of grass and moss that suggested a bird had made a home in there. He took the lighter and kept going, this time looking for a rope. He found that too, tied around the trunk of a tree. He untied it, looped it over his shoulder, and went in search of his final item; a gas can.
This one proved elusive, and he eventually had to give it up rather than waste too much time. He leapt onto a thick and reasonably high branch protruding from a nearby tree. Not knowing the right knots, he tied the rope in his best attempt at a noose, managing a crude variant. He secured the other end around the branch, placed the noose around his neck, and jumped.
The sudden deceleration as the noose went tight caused his neck to snap. Barely conscious, he choked, desperately spluttering and sucking for a breath that wouldn’t come, despite the entire idea being to kill himself. His body didn’t agree with that memo, and he struggled weakly against the rope, all hot in the face, only really able to move his head. Then the strength went out of him and his limbs fell slack.
*****
Success.
Jacob fell from the giant rotted ash tree and landed in a heap on his side, a broken noose snaking out from him like an umbilical cord. He pulled it off his head and sat up, looking out over the dreary black-and-white landscape, all barren rocks and dust devils, pale lightning racing across the sky.
Not many places more depressing than present-day Earth these days. This place is definitely in the running, though.
Jacob wandered beneath the corpse-laden boughs in search of that terrible serpent he’d run across before. He was careful to avoid any roots that looked hollow or dark, shadowy places under rocks—he could do without a run-in with the spiders that inhabited the place.
It actually worked. Kinda proud of myself for that one. Saved me an actual death by hanging, at the very least.
When he found the serpent, it lay on its side by the nearly dried-up pool of golden gods’ brew. It breathed in raspy, irregular gasps, and its flesh had begun to peel off the body in wet sheets, fragile like soaked tissue.
As Jacob approached, the serpent turned a golden eye towards him and shifted ever-so-slightly in his direction, but otherwise remained still.
“A snake-friend?” it hissed, those human lips contorting with pain. “Does it come… to fulfill its bargain?”
“It does,” Jacob said. He produced the lighter from his pocket and held it up. “Let’s light this baby up, yeah?”
“Yes?” the serpent said in its usual querying tone, but Jacob thought it was meant as a statement.
“Good. But I want my payment first.”
The serpent turned its gaze towards the pitiful dribble of gold that still poured from the tree. “Is it thinking about trickery?”
“No. But if the tree burns, there’s a good chance my reward will get ruined with it, right? Besides, it doesn’t really look as though you can stop me.”
The serpent’s eyes narrowed. “Will it do as it wishes?”
Jacob took that as tacit permission and walked over to the dregs at the foot of the ash tree. The serpent watched him, silent apart from the flicking of its wet tongue. He knelt down, filled his cupped hands with golden liquid that clung to his fingers like a watery sap, and raised it to his mouth.
It tasted like fire and numbed his throat going down. It was extremely unpleasant, but he forced himself to cup another mouthful, swallow, then another, then another. When he stood away, panting, his hands were dripping with the stuff, and his lips tingled hot
A thin needle of pain pierced his temple and came out the other side.
[ERROR ERROR ERROR]
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
[WARNING: EXTRA-SYSTEM INFORMATION DETECTED]
[INTEGRATE?]
[Y/N]
Yes. Obviously.
[CONFIRMED]
[INTEGRATING INFORMATION WITH EXISTING SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE]
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More needles poked him all over, dug around in his head. He stumbled, steadied himself against a root, and waited it out while grunting and groaning. He had gotten fairly used to these by now.
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[EXTERNAL ASSET ADDED:]
#009: Agari
Agari? What’s that supposed to mean?
“Hey, uh, snake,” Jacob said, licking his fingers clean while he turned back towards the serpent. “It gave me something called ‘Agari’. A piece of information or data, I guess. Do you know what that means?”
The serpent smiled a very human smile, which contorted its serpentine face most unnervingly. “Is it One-Eye’s wisdom?”
“Okay. A little more specific please?”
“Is it a pattern?”
“A pattern?”
“Is it?”
“A pattern, like a symbol? Or a rune? A rune, which means…” Jacob and the serpent shared a villainous grin between them. “Magic.”
The serpent wriggled weakly. “Is it pleased? Is it?”
“Fuck it, sure. I don’t think I have much of a head for magic—I don’t even know how much of a head I have left, period—but I won’t turn my nose up if I’m getting it for free.”
The serpent just kept on smiling.
Right then, Jacob felt like Adam having just been tempted into eating a tasty-looking apple. He swallowed that feeling. “So… what does it do? How do I use it?”
“Did it forget its bargain?” the serpent spat, then screwed its eyes shut as though that little outburst had required a huge expenditure of effort.
“All right, all right. Once I’m done, will you tell me then?”
The serpent didn’t reply.
“Are you not allowed to say?”
No answer.
Jacob had the feeling that silence usually meant ‘no’ for questions the serpent couldn’t respond to.
“All right, don’t sweat it. I’m used to figuring out a bunch of cryptic System shit anyway.”
With that, he set about fulfilling his end of the bargain. Sparking the lighter to life, its flame a splotch of orange in the washed-out hellscape, he put it to the nearest root.
It only took a second before the dry, powdery wood caught fire. It spread quickly, traveling up the root. It burned so wild and so hot that Jacob was forced to step back, feeling the small hairs on his arms get singed off.
Before he knew it, the fire was spreading up the impossibly wide trunk, a blazing inferno that raged against the black-and-white and forced it back, creating a beacon of untamed beauty amid the gray.
Jacob went and sat down next to the serpent, knees drawn up to his chest. They watched the tree burn together. Great smoldering sheets came off, whirling with sparks, and crashed to the ground. They were definitely too close, but he didn’t have a chance of moving that serpent anywhere, so they were staying put. If he ended up getting smushed by fiery debris, it wasn’t like he would lose much. Unless dying by fire would send him to hell or something.
Over the loud crackling and popping and roaring flame, Jacob could make out the shrill screeching of dying spiders. Good.
“Do you have a name?” Jacob asked.
The serpent didn’t answer.
“Can’t say or don’t have one?”
“Is a serpent prideful?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Is…” The serpent hesitated, then fell silent.
“Do you want me to think of something to call you?”
“Is the snake-friend a good namer?”
“Not really. But I figure it can’t be worse than nothing.”
The serpent was silent and still. Jacob worried for a second that it was dead, but then it sucked in another labored breath. “Will it try?” the serpent asked.
“Sure.”
Jacob was about to come up with one, but just then fatigue began to pull at him. He only had time to work out a slurred apology before he fell against the serpent’s soft bulk. Just as the tree began to tilt and topple to one side, he passed out.
*****
When Jacob returned to his body, he was staring up at a sooty gray sky. No sun. The Earth had apparently not gotten the memo that the apocalypse was over.
He sat up and found himself on a small patch of ground that had been cleared of corpses. Most of the other heroes were there too, resting. Drakemyth fussed over a still-unconscious Paragon. Jacob had no idea if he actually knew what he was doing, or if everyone else just deferred to him because he had ‘doctor’ before his name.
Jacob also noticed, with some consternation, that he was wearing no pants, and that his penis had undoubtedly been on show for a good chunk of that battle.
And here I was hoping to get a few heroic legends spun about me. Now they’re going to turn me into the comic relief. Awesome, love it.
Jacob immediately set out to rectify the situation. He’d already found his pants once before in retrieving the Deady Bear, but somehow making sure he was properly clothed had been less of a priority then. The Relic was still in his hand, transformed back into the button.
“We still have an hour or so before pickup, but don’t go too far,” Steelfeather called out to him as Jacob began to wander. “The last thing we need is someone getting lost or caught out by stragglers. We owe it to the ones that didn’t make it to survive.”
“Sure, sure,” Jacob said absently over his shoulder with a wave. “I’ll be careful, Steeldad. Dadfeather.”
His death sense was still strained like an overworked muscle, but he engaged it as best he could, sent out a sweeping pulse of perception. It was fairly low-definition now that everything was already dead, but the ambient hum of death was enough to guide him somewhat. His death essence was a faint whisper now, giving him no clear trail to follow, only a general direction at best. But with his body restored, he didn’t mind the busywork of trawling through the bloodsoaked battlefield for a bit.
Fenris stood off Jacob’s trail a ways, gorging himself on demon corpses. He was going to tell him off, since their flesh was already stinking and spoiled, but held himself back. It would do no harm to the monster’s belly, surely, and he had earned all the treats in the world after what he’d been through.
Knowing Becca, she’ll probably spoil him rotten when she sees him.
With a bit of perseverance and dirtying of hands, Jacob tracked down his legs. It was a very odd feeling, undressing his own remains, but there was nothing for it. The pants and boxers were in rough shape, covered in both bloodstains and the singed burn marks left behind by demon blood, but he didn’t have much in the way of options. At least they fit him perfectly. With his task complete, Jacob turned off his death sight to give his brain a break.
While I’m at it, I should probably find a souvenir for the kid. One for him, and one for Becca. Bob too, if there’s time.
He made his way towards the white fortress that still loomed like a garden of bones in the distance. On the way, he found a spiked, open-faced helmet that he pried off its previous owner’s decomposing, sunken head. He figured it would make a nice piece for Bob if he wanted to branch into more of a post-apocalyptic, wasteland-psycho kind of vibe. Very topical, but maybe a sensitive subject PR-wise. With a shrug, he decided to leave it up to Bob and stuck the helmet on his head so he wouldn’t have to carry it around.
Getting closer to the demonic stronghold, Jacob was able to clearly make out what Drakemyth had been talking about at the very start of the battle. The entire structure was made up of tens or even hundreds of thousands of fused human bodies, dried into strange, calcified husks. They screamed silently, reached out in their frozen last moments for a savior that hadn’t come. They glared at him with empty eye sockets, accusing him.
Why didn’t you save us?
You try being a hero and see if it’s so easy.
Jacob passed under the huge, domed gate that led into the fortress. It was wide open, with no doors to worry about, so he stepped right in.
The inside was almost as bloody as the battlefield itself, probably two hundred dead demons scattered about the rectangular courtyard and strewn over the battlements. Starman’s work.
He went out a hero, that fuck. I should’ve thought about that before I killed him. Now, when people talk about him, they’re gonna say ‘Oh, he did some bad stuff, but he redeemed himself in the end! He sacrificed himself for us!’ Yeah, right.
The black absence of space still hung far overhead, a dark sun that had begun to contort and oscillate in confusing patterns. He considered what would happen if he went inside it—it was supposed to be a portal, after all, and Thatch had thought that Akor-Goram was probably headed for Mars. So if it worked, that would save him the whole headache of finding a way off-world.
But he dismissed the idea almost immediately. He didn’t know much of anything about portals, but it didn’t take a trained eye to see that this one was unstable. It was also made for a demon’s constitution—he had no idea what it would do to a human, but probably something like stretching him out into infinite strands of sentient spaghetti. The thought was not a pleasant one.
Yeah, I’ll pass.
Besides, he already had an idea for his travel arrangements. Starman wasn’t going to be needing that ship after all, so…
Going up a set of high steps, Jacob entered through a smaller gate into what looked like an audience chamber. A throne of bones stood at the center of the room, sharpened ribs protruding from the top of the tall backrest and fanning outward. His footsteps echoed in the corpse-strewn hall, the only sound in an otherwise dead place. To no surprise, calcified humans lined the walls here, too, and sensing their stares coming from every direction in an enclosed space like this was making his skin crawl.
He went and sat down on the throne. It wasn’t very comfortable. All the overlapping bones poked him and dug into him in the most annoying places.
That aside, it was intensely satisfying knowing that Akor-Goram couldn’t do anything about him stinking up his favorite chair. Once he was finished with it, he hit the thing with a well-placed kick and reduced it to pale splinters.
There’s got to be some treasure or something in here. Unless the other heroes already got their hands on it. They did have a heart start.
They all looked pretty beat, though. I think Titaness is the only one with a healing factor. I might be the spryest of the bunch since I got a full regen.
There were valuables of a sort in the room, or at least what he thought might be considered valuables to a demon thane. Mostly corpses of exotic animals, lions and giraffes and moose and wolves and even a dolphin or two. They lay haphazardly about the place in stinking droves, arranged with about as much aesthetic sense as Cullyn’s shelving technique. There were less savory creatures mixed in with the animals, too—monsters. Most of them had probably been created during the apocalypse from the surge of Chaos energy. More impressive than the basic twisted humans Jacob had encountered, like a bear with five heads, a tree trunk with a face and six arms, and a shark with wings like a bird.
Going through a long hall that adjoined the throne room on the left-hand side, he peeked into several large dugouts in the thick walls that might have been intended as rooms. Nothing of value in there, just the suspended, gory remains of tortured humans.
Having to face that stomach-turning sight repeatedly almost had him declare the place a complete loss, but then, in an uneven alcove at the end of the hall, lay a pile of actual treasure. Gold, glittering gems, fine jewelry. Shoved into a corner and covered in a fine layer of ashy dust, it looked almost like the demons had barely considered it worth keeping, just some random garbage humans seemed to like carrying around. It wasn’t even locked up.
Jacob was about to start stuffing handfuls of loot in his pockets, but stopped himself short.
A demon treasure hoard… There’s no way this shit isn’t cursed or something, right?
Then again, does a curse always have to be a bad thing? Wouldn’t it be kind of like the Chaos equivalent of a Relic? I bet there are some useful ones out there.
That being said… I don’t know anything about curses. Or demon treasure. Or Chaos in general. Maybe it’s best to leave it alone. If I report it to the Guild, Thatch might give me a finder’s fee. Well, I’ll take that on top of whatever I can squeeze out of him for killing two of Akor-Goram’s lieutenants and sealing the fucker away. It’s not like the Guild has a lot of heroes to pay anymore, so they should be able to toss me some reward money. Anything else would be extremely stingy, I think.
Just in case, he reached his hand out towards the treasure and said: “Agari.”
Nothing happened. He hadn’t really expected it to. He figured there was more to doing magic than saying the magic words. Still worth a try.
Well, nothing for it.
With that it was settled, and he turned away from the treasure. Going back outside the fortress, he resolved to keep looking for souvenirs. While he was walking away, a sharp wind buffeted him and knocked him back. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t wind at all, but suction.
Letting his gaze roll up the fortress to its pinnacle, he saw the black spot grow outward into a terrible, gaping mouth that sought to drag everything inside itself. Pieces of human brickwork were pulled off the fortress and floated up into it, turning black and melting away as soon as they brushed against it. The portal continued to grow outward, desperately eating into as much reality as possible. A gluttonous void.
And though he couldn’t see anything through the impenetrable darkness—or lack of existence—inside, he thought he felt a black hand reach out for him.
Jacob began to back away.
The void collapsed into itself all at once, condensing down to a tiny black dot. Then it exploded in an invisible shockwave, tearing the fortress apart at its foundations and sending Jacob flying. He bounced off the ground once on his head, once on his ass, and once on his side before he finally came to a stop against an ironclad demon's back.
Jacob lay there for a minute, panting, staring up at the empty spot in the dreary sky where the void had been a second ago. He felt through his tattered shirt and let his fingers trace the depressed outline of the handprint left over his heart.
You’re watching me, huh?
In the end, he resumed his hunt for trinkets and tried his best not to think about the void anymore. He got a blade for Tarim—a small knife for a demon, but a large dagger for him. The handle would be a bit thick for him, but he’d probably like it all the same. He couldn’t find anything for Becca, but he figured he’d get the remaining heroes to sign their autographs on a shirt for her or something. She’d never take it off.
The vehicles arrived not long after.
It was a quiet ride back to the Resort. The rush of victory had faded, and everyone now had plenty of time to agonize over all they’d lost.