Sebastian rode around the city on his stolen bike, hoping to run into an aberration or two, and perhaps even a monster.

He was a strange mix of anxious and eager. He could feel his new power, Death Is Not the End, and was eager to test it out. But he was also, quite reasonably, anxious at the prospect of dying. He certainly wasn’t going to just kill himself.

It did provide some measure of comfort, knowing that he would be okay even were the worst to happen. Though he found he had a hard time believing it would actually work.

Some of the city sounds had returned now, but only those of natural origin: birds, insects, voices, footsteps… crying. All technology had ceased to function. Whatever Osiris’s ‘Wonder’ had done to humans, healing them, curing all of their ills, it had done the opposite to life of the mechanical variety.

There was no apparent damage to any of it, it was simply that none of it worked any longer.

Despite this, Sebastian still had his phone in his pocket. He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of just throwing it away made his throat tighten.

He knew this wasn’t rational, that he was clinging to the past in a way that made no sense and probably wasn’t healthy, but couldn’t help it. He wasn’t in the best mental state.

He was probably in shock, but he did his best to ignore it.

It seemed to be working.

That, or Osiris’s gift had cured him of his shock as well.

Judging by some of the people he saw wandering around, hollow and vacant-eyed, he didn’t think this was the case.

Every time he saw a group of people huddled together, he felt a pang of yearning, and considered stopping, introducing himself, trying to join them.

Safety in numbers, if that could even be said to apply anymore.

But most of the people he saw—whether wandering the streets on their own, or huddled in groups—seemed like they would be the opposite of safe. They’d be a burden.

And then of course there was the fact that Osiris or its Scions were after him. Everyone, Anubis had said, but him specifically now that he had used that card.

Besides that initial encounter with Magnus, he hadn’t seen a Scion. Not that he was eager to, but it made him wonder how many there were, and what exactly had been done to them.

It made him wonder if his friend was okay, and if there was some way to free him.

Or maybe he didn’t want to be freed. Osiris’s message had made becoming a Scion sound like an honor.

Sebastian thought of these things, focused on them, so the roiling dread in his gut didn’t break free and cripple him.

∎ ∎ ∎

Nearly a half hour passed without event. He didn’t find any aberrations, nor see any monsters or Scions. Just people, milling about.

He did see a few using what seemed like magical powers, and wondered where they had gotten not just the cards, but the orbs to buy the deck initiator, and the Store itself. Or maybe Sebastian wasn’t the only one to find a heart card.

When he stopped to ask one particularly friendly-looking group, they just glared at him like he was crazy and hurried away.

“That was rude,” he muttered to himself. Did they not speak English? Seemed unlikely. They looked Dutch, not like tourists, and were young enough that they likely spoke it fluently.

He watched the group hurry away, glancing back at him once before disappearing into a nearby building and locking the door audibly behind them.

For some reason his eyes started to burn.

He shook his head and returned to his search.

A few minutes later he finally spotted another aberration in the middle of the road in front of a block of flats, near Sloterplas, a popular manmade lake.

Well, spotted was not quite the right word. More like found with his forehead, which slammed into it, spun him around, throwing his stolen bike a hundred feet into the air, and him into another realm.

∎ ∎ ∎

Sebastian was lying on his back. Again.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said to the statue above him.

He lay there for a moment, just staring at it.

Finally, he made himself get up and inspect it.

The statue itself was blurry, hard to focus on, but the glowing chains wrapping it weren’t.

“What kind of card is this going to give me?”

Eager to find out, he touched it, expecting it to work the same as the last one.

It did, in a way. But instead of turning to sand like the statue of the woman and her monster pet had, there was a loud snap and the chains turned to mist, then the statue itself shrunk in on itself, briefly floating in the air before dropping to the ground in the form of a card.

He picked it up and studied it. It had an image of what looked like a four-armed, blue-skinned woman draped in chains and surrounded by… ghostly chains floating and circling her, which looked like the same ones that had wrapped the statue.

[https://i.imgur.com/dKw52RH.png]

Text appeared after a moment, and he read it.

Sovereign of Gelandar

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

Rank: Base

Cooldown: None

Duration: 10 seconds

Uses: Unlimited

Card Slot: Core

Sockets: 1

Effect: Form chains out of any substance your hands are in direct contact with.

Current mass limit of chains: 5 pounds

“Sockets? That’s new.” Though this card did seem to have an empty one at the bottom, and he wondered if that’s what it was referring to. “What are sockets?” he asked the System.

Items with sockets may have certain stores of power placed into them to alter the item’s capabilities.

“Is this supposed to help me fight the monsters off, or am I meant to go around chaining them up?”

He recalled the man who had been hit by the car then taken over by Osiris. He wasn’t sure ten seconds and five pounds of chains would have done much to stop it.

He wondered if the thing was still running around the city, or if someone—maybe one of the other people who could now do magic through these cards—had managed to put it down.

He also wondered just what Osiris was, and what its ultimate goal was. For that matter, who or what was Anubis?

He grunted and pushed his curiosity aside. Now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t as though he could figure it out anyway, not with the information he had currently.

Though, he would think about it. He would gather more information. He wasn’t sure it would do any good. A being or entity powerful enough to do what it had accomplished was far beyond Sebastian.

Despite having spent the year since the shapes arrived devoted to researching them, the only true bit of information he’d found out were the names Anubis and Osiris. And it turned out those weren’t even their names, just ones they were happy to take on.

While he’d been correct about them being two separate things, he’d been wrong—along with everyone else as far as that went—about them working in tandem. They seemed to be if not enemies, at least opponents.

He put the card in his pocket and left the shrine.

While exiting took more effort than entering, at least he landed on his feet more often.

He was right back at the aberration, in the street in front of the apartment buildings. This time he watched as it faded away to nothing, its color singular rather than prismatic.

There wasn’t a trace of it left. One use only, it seemed.

A new message appeared.

You have discovered multiple aberrations during the first day.

Title earned: Looter

Effect: Apply to map cards to highlight the location of aberrations.

“Another title?” He again considered using one or all of them, but decided to wait a bit. At least until he expanded his deck from zero. Or found a map card.

Speaking of exploring…

He looked around. The street he was on was empty and he didn’t see his pilfered bike anywhere. He remembered it flying off into the air when he’d crashed into the aberration.

Had it landed on a roof?

Well, he would just have to steal another one.

His gaze fell on a nearby bike rack. “If there were classes in this System, I think I’d end up a thief.”

∎ ∎ ∎

Freeing the bike from its rack took more doing than expected, and he almost gave up in search of easier prey, but finally managed to free it.

By breaking the front wheel loose from the fork, the rod holding it in place snapping in half.

He sighed.

Then he collapsed to the ground.

When he got up again, his eyes were red and swollen, his vision blurred, his nose clogged.

“Focus. Survive.”

He couldn’t just ride around hoping to run into aberrations.

But what else could he do? What else was there to do?

He looked up at the apartment buildings, again considering trying to join a group. He wondered how many people were inside, taking shelter like the government suggested.

He wished he knew more people in the city. With how busy he’d been with his internship, he’d barely gotten to know anyone. He’d made some acquaintances at the LAN parties at BionicMuse, but he needed more than an acquaintance right now.

And his only friend was now a Scion, who was apparently out for his blood for reasons beyond his comprehension.

He could feel himself spiraling again and forced an end to that train of thought.

He would do what Anubis had suggested: get orbs, initiate his core deck so he could use the other cards he had, buy a communication crystal if he saw one, then figure out what clearing the first gate entailed.

In the corner of his… not vision exactly, but mental image, was the phase countdown, which he focused on now to check how long he had left before phase one ended.

Over three hundred seventy hours still. Fifteen days.

It seemed like plenty of time, but he had no idea what lay ahead of him. How long would it take to clear the gate? How long would it take to find it?

Okay then, he told himself, one step at a time. I can either find a World Store to sell the card I just got at and get some orbs, or look for more cards.

Though, didn’t both amount to the same thing? Until he got a map card and used his title, he didn’t know where the aberrations would be, and he didn’t even know what a World Store outpost was supposed to look like, let alone where one might be located.

Would there be a storefront with a sign declaring it a World Store?

He realized he could just ask.

“What does a World Store outpost look like?”

The nearest World Store is within seven miles of your current position.

Nice of it to use miles, he thought. Kilometers were still hard to visualize for him.

Testing out something, he tried thinking the next question rather than speaking it aloud.

Which direction?

It worked, which was even more unnerving than the idea that he was talking to something conscious and not just a chatbot. It could read his mind. Or at least his active thoughts.

Information on World Store locations is currently limited to radius.

Currently. Did that mean there was some way to get it to tell him more? Maybe by ranking up? Or was ‘currently’ referring to phase one?

He tried asking.

All authorized information on this subject has been dispensed.

He swore and kicked at the broken bike.

The anger was unreasonable, but he couldn’t help it. He was just so—

He didn’t even know what.

“Hey. You okay?”

It was a girl’s voice. Soft, concerned, yet still somehow upbeat.

He looked around, but didn’t see anyone.

“Great, now I’m hearing things.”

Soft laughter. “Up here.”

Sebastian looked up.

Across the street, standing on a second-floor balcony, was a girl around his age, black hair framing a wide pair of smiling eyes. It looked incongruous. No one should be smiling in the apocalypse. But here she was, wearing a frilly blue dress to top it off.

“Hey,” he replied, and hated how weak he sounded to his own ears, how broken. “I’m good.” There, that was better. He sounded convincing.

She continued smiling. “It’s pretty crazy out there. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but there are monsters.”

Sebastian’s mind flashed back to the car crash. “Yeah, I know.”

“Do you need a place to stay?” She motioned inside the apartment. “There’s seven of us, so it’s kinda cramped. But we can find a place for you.”

“She’s the seventh wheel!” came another girl’s voice from inside the apartment, heavily Dutch-accented. “She needs a pairing!”

“Ignore her,” the girl told him.

Sebastian realized something. “You’re American.”

“So are you.”

“I know, I just—” He shook his head.

“I’m Olivia.”

“Sebastian.”

“Sebastian, huh? Uncommon name. I like it.” She smiled. “So what do you say, fellow countryman? Want to come inside?”

Sebastian was still staring up at her, considering her offer, when the knife pierced his skull.