A blur of messages and notifications scrolled by, but I couldn't concentrate on any of them. Nothing hurt any more. My body felt buoyant, expansive. Like gas. Bright light flooded my remaining eye. I drew a deep, whooping breath as the light spread, consuming me.

"Nooduu!" Lulu's squeak rang out from somewhere.

It was alright. There was no pain, just the sound of my heart pounding. Drowning out the rest of everything. If this was what people saw and felt when they died, it wasn't so bad. Shards of the past flickered through my mind's eye at lightning speed, like a film running backwards.

… The highway. The blond man, smoking, cyberlines glinting on hard cheekbones. His boot coming down…

… The crash, holding my guts in, fleeing the warehouse into the dark…

… Restless nights, somewhere hot and humid. Endless nightmares about insects. The gun to my kidney, staring down at the tortured body of my friend.

… The nightclub, the girl on my lap. Gold bikini, a dust of gold freckles across round cheeks, perfect tits. Tiny woman, maybe five and a half feet in her stilettos, but too heavy. Heavy enough to put my legs to sleep. That girl... she was a robot. They all were. The dancers on the stage and the waitresses serving our drinks. Puppets made real with lobotomized human minds, copied over and over again, uploaded into gynoid bodies. The man across from me knew it, I knew it. He was anxious and upset.

"You can't ask me to do this. You can't. You know what they'll do."

A wiretap, fine as spider silk, curled around the shell of my ear and down into my collar.

"And you know what my people will do if you don't."

Time kept flashing in reverse. Tattoos etched into the backs of my hands with ink made from boot soles. Private airplanes and too much vodka. Parties that turned into beatings. Beatings that turned into drunken limosine rides. Crammed on a bench in a van with six other guys, all in tac gear, doing a last check of our rifles. Smashing in the door of an old apartment, red-lit. Deepdiver junkies, strewn on the floor on oily cushions. Thirty or more people with vacant eyes all lost in worlds that didn't exist. Wires from their temples snaked across the floor, connected to a slim black tower. Before we could reach it, the server’s hardware exploded like a grenade. An IED. It fried the junkies' neuraports.

"Jesus!" Suddenly, the apartment was full of the smell of cooked brains and shit.

Me, beating the shit out of a man in my sister's kitchen. Sam, terrified, trying to get between us. Trying to stop me.

… “You asshole. You fucking asshole! You stay the fuck away from my sister! I'll you, I’ll kill HIM, I’ll…”

… Sam, before the violence, before any of it. Her fingers and face bathed by gliding orange streetlights while I drove her someplace. She was excited, happy.

Talking about her wedding.

The gaseous feeling faded. I was flowing into a liquid now. My body flowed, morphed, growing larger. I opened my eyes, both of them, and saw Angel hovering over me. Her expression was complex, mixed with fear and wonder.

"Noodles?" She signed.

"Gah..." My paws paddled against the wet floor as I struggled around, trying to push up to all four feet. My brain was trying to tell me I was a human man again, and I flailed around on the ground like a starfish. "Angel? Are you okay? What happened?"

"I'm fine, you big drama queen. We beat the boss." Angel was scuffed up, soaked, her hair a frizzy mess. She looked like she'd been crying. "You, uh... I actually don't know if you died or not. You and Lulu both hit Level 25 and evolved."

"Lulu?" I shook my head. It felt bigger than before. "Is she alright?"

"Uuhooo…” A large, rotund shadow loomed up behind Angel.

Lulu was... much larger. She looked like a big giant blue marble now, clear on the outside and blue in the middle, with a vaguely eye-like structure in her core. She was also about seven foot around. Big enough to Absorb large Legions, maybe even huge ones.

“Ooo!” Her voice was still bright and sing-song, but much clearer. "Nuuduu! We goot biggoo!"

"Holy crap. You're huge.” I pinned my ears back. Even I was mildly intimidated by what was, essentially, a lean mean digesting machine. “And hey: you learned two new vowels."

"Hah hah," Lulu deadpanned. “Veru funnoo.”

"Whoa. Three new vowels and some consonants. We’ll make a Thespian out of you yet."

She trilled with amusement. "Foo yuu."

I cracked a weak grin. Made to roll up to my feet, and nearly propelled myself . I'd been strong before, but in a greyhound-like way. Now I was just straight-up jacked. Hard muscle flexed and rippled through my flanks, my legs, the base of my tail. I was longer, too. The new length was mostly tail. My body was now plated in sleek, light-absorbing armor that reminded me a bit of samurai armor. And the tentacles... the four noodles of Noodles were now significantly thicker. Girthier, one might say. The scales along the length of them had changed. They were flatter, sleeker, with sharp bladed edges and a forest of retractable venomous spines. I could now use my tentacles to slash as well as wrap and crush. Feeling experimental, I contracted and released the muscles along their length. Venom oozed from the obsidian claw tips. They were hollow, like hypodermic needles.

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"Damn. Now I guess the M.T stands for ‘Monumental-amounts-of Trenbolone’. I feel like I got hit with a course of roids." I went into my character HUD, and was mildly surprised to see I still had all nine lives. I'd evolved JUST in time, and unlike other levels, all my HP had returned with the change in physique. The alchemical triangles for me and Lulu had gotten some fancy decorations around the symbols to indicate our elevated status. And my stats... my stats were wild.

REAPER (NEMESIS): LEVEL 25

Prime Element: Body

Mundane Elements: Psionic/Poison

Class: Legendary

Vitality: 15,250/15,250 HP

Carry Weight: 900kg (1985 lb)

Strength: 1800

Speed: 3111

Stamina: 661/2260

Damage: S

Defense: B

Instincts: S+

PRIME ABILITY:

Soul Drain: Temporarily harvest one selected ability and 5 stat points from other Legions on a successful tentacle attack. Tentacles do x2 piercing damage when crushing/grappling enemies, plus double damage on a critical hit. Soul Drain abilities are 50% faster.

REAPER ABILITIES:

PREDATOR TREE

Needlegun: Explosively eject spines from your skin to puncture grappling enemies and cause them to flinch.

Lifesteal: Plug your tentacles into an enemy on a successful attack and steal HP during Soul Drain.

NIGHTSHADE TREE:

Psychostimulant: The user concentrates and Psionically boosts its attack by 20% for the duration of battle. Can only be used once per battle.

White Noise: Emit a disorienting blast of sound and kinetic force that savages Gladiator concentration-based abilities and deals x2 damage against Earth, Air and Blood-type entities.

Poison Cloud: Release a toxic cloud that deals damage over time and Poisons susceptible enemies.

Misdirection: Plug your tentacles into the earth and channel a Psionic blast that attacks enemies from the ground in any direction or angle.

My head spun a little as I queried all my missed system messages.

[You have obtained a new Mandala: Vāyu, the Air of Earth.]

[You have 30088 unread messages. You have 2 new patrons: Lily_of_the_Valley and Fucksmith6969.]

[You have earned new loot boxes. See your inventory for details. I HIGHLY recommend you make a show of opening these on camera in the next realm.]

[You have earned the right to Ascend. Proceed to the Gate of Ascension once you have absorbed the power of the third mandala.]

"We made it." It was slowly sinking in that we'd actually pulled it off. "We actually did it."

"All things considered, I think we did good work beating the hardest boss in the game with no real advance strategy or useful information to craft one," Angel signed back. "Well, technically the hardest boss. I thought Rachini was a good technical boss, but Karkinos was a lot harder. Rachini's only as difficult as she is because of the way it divides and tests all three members of the gladiatorial team. That, and, well... no one knows how the fight progresses until they're in the arena. And you only get one shot at it."

I looked around. There was no sign of the destruction the storm and the battle had wreaked on the arena. No dead bugs, no water. The broken and blasted floor had returned to pristine gold-veined black marble. We were still within the circle, but there was no pressure to leave it and flee. "What about Merc and Doc? The other prisoners?"

Angel glanced away for a moment.

"I don't know," she signed. "I sent a message, but no one’s replied. After we beat Rachini's first stage, it unleashed 'the swarm'. I... don't know what that did. We haven't been outside to look, in case you were trapped here."

I grunted aloud, and signed acknowledgement with one claw. "Well, let's do the mandala first. Then we can head out and see what havoc we wreaked on the island."

"Yuu!" Lulu trilled agreement. "Doo worru: Maroons uu stroong! Thoo sheltoo in muunes!"

I squinted at her. "You know... it's kind of weird to hear you speaking more clearly. Enunciating and shit."

Lulu hopped around a bit. She now had enough mass that the ground shook each time she landed. "Eeee! I knoo! Uu loook~"

The Limne paused, and extruded a pair of little 'hands'. They looked like those gel slappy-hand toys you got out of vending machines at gas stations. She was able to haltingly, but clearly fingerspell her name with them. L-U-L-U. "Uu still looning! Buut soon!"

Angel laughed. She looked exhausted, but the lines of strain on her face relaxed for the first time in days while she watched our antics. "Yeah, we'll teach you how to sign in no time, Lulu. And Noodles, you're the team lead, so... the mandala is in your inventory."

I rumbled, flicking my inner eyelids across, and went into my menus again to pull it out. Rachini's mandala was flat, etched with a spiral of symbols. The flecks of light were the same brilliant blue-white as her swords. As one, all three of us went still: Angel in front of me, Lulu to the side. We gazed at it, letting the energy and its message soak into us.

[Draw a slow, deep breath. Feel it, as it fills your lungs. Exhale.]

[Vayu, Air, is the animating force. The medium which binds Fire to cold flesh and sustains the warmth of being.]

[Air is the element of the sword, the double-edged medium of life and death. The wind carries both the wildfire and the rains which quench it. The flashing blade of the Divine Intellect both protects and wounds. From your first breath to your final death rattle, you are sustained and destroyed by Air. The oxygen you breathe keeps you alive. That same oxygen eats away at your DNA, aging you. Every breath is an abrasion, a tick of the clock of mortality.]

[Air is the element of death. The Failsafe. The great limiter to Fire's endless expansion, and thus the element of Mind.]

[Breathe in. Breathe out. And know Vayu.]

[You gain 15% special attack power. You gain 500 bonus maximum HP. You gain 15% to Instincts.]

[You gain the Gift of Pavana. Movement speed increased by 30%.]

[Air, Water and Spirit attacks are 10% more powerful.]

I let the nictitating membranes slide back over my eyes as the haunting narrative ended. Angel still had her eyes closed, lips parted, her hands resting on the mandala. She let out a small breath as the power of the artifact sank into her, strengthened her.

“That was definitely interesting,” she signed. “No new damage resistances, but-”

Her face exploded over mine in a wet red spray.