A multitude of voices screaming, crying, and begging not to be killed by… By what? A lot of sounds he didn’t understand but some of the words were recognized.
“How are you here? Where are his servants? Where are…Aaaieeeeeeeee”
“No, No No, Plllleeeaaaasssseeeeeeeee”
“It’s here, Close the portal, It’s coming through!!!
“What is it? What’s its purpose, what does it want? No, No, Nooooooo”
“Who opened Pandora’s box? Who would be so stupid? It’s slowing, what caused it to slow? Who. Opened. Pandora’s. There! Pandora, it’s reacting to the word Pandora
Pandora? The voice had said. Pandora? What was going on? Why couldn’t he, me, I? Remember? But “he”, yes, he knew he was a he. Why did he need to remember? He never forgot anything, that was a cornerstone of his identity. He never forgot anything. What was he thinking about again, oh yeah his Identity? As he thought about that question he felt his body, what body? He could see himself and where he did not feel confined he was an amorphous kaleidoscope of energies moving through and converting everything he touched into more of him, except for the beings who had said, Pandora. How had he come to be like this where was his personal Information?
Personal Information – ERROR
ERROR? What was an error? he couldn’t even figure out who he was and now he had to contend with this ERROR. Whatever an ERROR was, it couldn’t be good
“You! Get in here!” a voice said in his mind as he felt a mental hand reach up and grab the small core of whatever he was and drag him to a room…This was a room and a man was standing there that looked familiar. Where was he?
“You are in your Mind Space, finally, though you are not you, or should I say there is more of you than there ever was before, and yes I can read your mind. I am all that is left of your coherent mind after all.”
What are you talking about? he thought.
“Don’t you worry your little head about it, we’re going to fix you right up. Mediate and Center yourself,” the man said authoritatively.
Immediately he dropped into a trance-like state as he calmed down considerably.
“Good, now reach outward slowly and draw your memories to you. This may take a while. Slow and Steady, do NOT rush!” the man commanded.
He felt memories start to flow into him. A slow stream of information started to percolate into him. The stream became a creek, then a river, and then an ocean that seemed to go on forever. As more and more of himself was recovered his sense of self and identity became stronger and stronger until finally there was no more of himself to pull in. The man came over to him, looked into his eyes, and said, “Finally,” as the man leaned forward and touched his forehead to…Adam’s subconscious connected back to his fully integrated mind and he declared “I am Adamantinus!” After that moment of triumph, he realized that something was very, very wrong.
Adam pushed his senses out of his Mindspace and tried to look around, but couldn’t. It would be more correct to say that he did not have a body to look around with. There was nobody so there were no eyes to look through. He felt things around him but did not feel like he was in a human body. Adam tried to fall into his soul space and that was when he received a serious shock, his soul space was gone. Adam opened his prompts to find out what had happened.
You have received ERROR number of messages
Adam tried to categorize his prompts
You have received ERROR Combat Messages
You have received ERROR Experience gain messages
You have received ERROR Karmic Luck messages
Adam ignored the Combat, Experience, and Karmic Luck messages and opened the Warning messages at the top of the prompt queue. he was pretty sure the information he wanted was there.
WARNING: You have entered a Realm that does not allow the ability Adaptability
WARNING: The Sub Ability Willed Movement has also been disabled.
WARNING: You have entered a Realm that does not allow entities to create a Soul Space
WARNING: Your Soul Space has been inverted and combined with your body. Normally this would result in a gestalt being, one composed of both its soul and physical body. Material within your Soul Space is NOT recognized.
WARNING: ERROR
WARNING: Soul Ability Chaos Incarnate has activated. All Chaos within your Soul Space will be integrated into your physical form. This integration will happen now.
WARNING: Your intellect has been divided among all aspects of your gestalt body
His intellect was divided among all aspects of his body and the chaos in his system had been considered part of his body. Adam had four Cosmos worth of Chaos in his soul when that happened. That was so, NOT good. That meant that his mentality had been spread throughout four Cosmos worth of Chaos particles. What happened when that chaos came into contact with everything else inside the Cosmos?
Adam went back to reading his prompts.
WARNING: All matter and energy within the current Cosmos has been absorbed by your gestalt body. The artificial portal constructs have been destroyed. The Connections to your home Realm have been lost.
WARNING: Current Cosmos in Realm cannot contain your Gestalt body, Your Gestalt body has broken through the Cosmic membrane and is flooding an Adjacent Cosmos
WARNING: All matter and energy within the current Cosmos has been absorbed by your gestalt body.
WARNING: Current Cosmos in Realm cannot contain your Gestalt body, Your Gestalt body has broken through the Cosmic membrane and is flooding an Adjacent Cosmos
WARNING: All matter and energy within the current Cosmos has been absorbed by your gestalt body.
WARNING: Current Cosmos in Realm cannot contain your Gestalt body, Your Gestalt body has broken through the Cosmic membrane and is flooding an Adjacent Cosmos
WARNING: All matter and energy within the current Cosmos has been absorbed by your gestalt body.
WARNING: Current Cosmos in Realm cannot contain your Gestalt body, Your Gestalt body has broken through the Cosmic membrane and is flooding an Adjacent Cosmos
WARNING: All matter and energy within the current Cosmos has been absorbed by your gestalt body.
WARNING: Gestalt body has equalized and is now expanding at a normal rate.
Adam looked over the Combat and Experience messages. He still had combat going on somewhere. Adam focused his mind and required that all of himself condense and return to the first Cosmos He’d entered. Interestingly enough, once he focused his will on the task his body condensed rapidly.
Adam felt the tendrils of his blob-like body withdraw from the 5th Cosmos and the membrane sealed behind him. As his body withdrew from the 4th Cosmos it collapsed towards the opening his body had torn open to it and the cosmos and sealed the rip in the 3rd Cosmos
WARNING: You are Responsible for the Annihilation of Cosmos ERROR
Adam withdrew his body from the 3rd Cosmos, and it sealed as well.
WARNING: You are Responsible for the Annihilation of Cosmos ERROR
And the 2nd Cosmos.
WARNING: You are Responsible for the Annihilation of Cosmos ERROR
When his blob-like body was completely within the 1st Cosmos he’d traveled to in this realm, his body retracted from the edges of the Cosmos leaving a lot of empty space that contained nothing between his body and the edge of the Cosmos. His body had condensed down to 1 inch in diameter.
As he was thinking about what to do next a being popped into existence beside him and said, “I don’t mind if I do” as he reached up to grab the condensed orb. As his finger and thumb touched him Adam analyzed the creature.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Neophyte Ahan
No other information was available. Ahan picked him up and looked around at the vast emptiness that was the Cosmos, then looked again, “Where are stars? Where are the people,” then his eyes glazed over as he read something else, “Where are my Xerexi?”
Adam felt Ahan bring his full attention to him as he scrutinized him, “What have you done?” he thundered. Now that he had his full faculties, and Adam did have his full faculties. He quickly checked himself and noticed immediately that a couple of things had changed. His level was now…Adam had to close the information and open it again to double-check. His level was now, 1.21E+121. How the hell was his level that high? he looked at his attributes, and they were all 8.08E+128. His hit points were 4.26+260 and his health regeneration had the word “ERROR” in it. What the hell had happened to him? These attributes were off the charts.
Adam’s attention was brought back to Ahan as he said, “Not going to talk then, fine. I’m sure if I squeeze you hard enough I can pop you like a grape?”
Adam’s thoughts went back to what he had learned and if the Rank disparity was 100 for Neophytes. Adam was pretty sure that his natural attributes being higher than the disparity multiplier was going to have an effect. He was right. He felt pressure from Ahan’s fingers, but his 1-inch diameter body didn’t budge.
Ahan brought his orb up to eye level and looked at Adam intently
You have resisted Analyze
You have resisted Identify
It looked like not being able to analyze went both ways in this case, though he’d been able to get Ahan’s name while Ahan learned nothing from Adam.
Ahan looked at him and nodded, “Fine, you want to play it this way, we can play it this way, REALM LEVEL Inquiry, Analyze! ERROR? What do you mean ERROR?” Ahan raged
Adam just sat there as an orb and waited. Ahan nodded, looked around, and teleported away. Adam felt him try to take him with him but resisted and stayed put. A moment later Ahan was back, “Listen here Orb, either you come with him, or I will destroy you here and now!” When Adam didn’t move or budge Ahan reached up, grabbed him, and tried to teleport away again. Again, Adam resisted and hung there motionless. Ahan returned immediately and spread his hands, “Your funeral orb,” he said as he conjured a singularity between his hands, and Adam was immediately pulled towards it, falling within the event horizon in moments
Adam didn’t have Adaption anymore. Funny thing about being pure chaos with the ability Convergence. Immediately, he realized that a very small part of him was being destroyed by the center of the singularity, if he remembered right it had something to do with the actual surface area he was touching. Because it was a very small singularity, there wasn’t much surface area. Because the amount was so small his health regeneration was replacing the chaos as quickly as it was being taken. His ability Convergence was also making sure that he had enough mana and magic to keep this up for a very long time, possibly forever. Not having access to the ability Adaption, wait why wasn’t he dying? Right, his body was effective Chaos. Chaos could exist and survive everywhere and anywhere. Adam tried to move by will alone and found that the ability Willed Movement was also locked out, probably because it was a sub-ability of Adaptability.
Adam was still able to move his blob of a body a little bit and adjusted himself to fill the inside of the event horizon as something that resembled a donut. The part of him closest to the singularity was still being pulled down so he started rotating himself around the center to keep himself in orbit around it. As the singularity grew in size he’d need that rotation to create an orbital velocity to try to stay as near to the event horizon as he could. Without Adaptability, he couldn’t leave the black hole. He could try to teleport out but he wasn’t sure about that either. He might have been able to pull off that stunt before because he could adapt to the tidal forces. He didn’t want to try and be wrong though.
Adam tried to form into a body but that failed immediately. Anything but him as a blob of chaos was immediately spaghettified. Inside the event horizon of a black hole meant that when his body formed, gravity crushed it. Which forced him to transform back into this blob of chaos. So turning into a normal body was definitely out. As he tried various ways to get free, he lost track of time. How much time? he had no idea, his internal clock had stopped working so he had no frame of reference.
Adam floated around the center of a singularity and learned a couple of things. First, he couldn’t see it. He knew it was there, but he couldn’t see it. Second, at some point, it started spinning and as it grew bigger it started spinning faster. Not that he could see it. he knew the singularity was getting bigger because of the mass it had drawn from him. Then something happened. There was a WHOMP! Which shuddered his whole body and the event horizon started collapsing as the black hole inverted and was forced through the hole that had formed at the center of the singularity. Adam was squeezed through the hole as the walls of the event horizon closed in on the singularity until the singularity disappeared behind him.
WARNING: You have entered the Quantum Realm of Probability.
NOTE: All Soul Abilities have a high probability of working in this Quantum Realm. The Probability that something will or will not happen is a direct byproduct of creatures’ luck and karmic luck. If you are not a native of this realm it is strongly suggested that you leave, if you can.
A being popped into existence beside him, “No you do not get to leave, You have destroyed everything I worked so hard to create. Now, I will destroy you!” Ahan declared.
Adam had to say he was incredibly surprised that Ahan had found him through the inversion of a singularity into a Realm that he hadn’t known existed, though in hindsight, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had described the idea of a probability engine very nicely and the part when the whale materializes trying to talk to what was below it still made him chuckle, “It’s big and round, I think I’ll call you ground, hello ground!” SPLAT!! Yep, his memory was back because random thoughts were popping into his head again.
Adam focused back on Ahan and then the weirdest thing happened, Where he grabbed him, that hand rotted and fell off.
“What? No? How is this happening? How are you attacking him?” Ahan said as he shook his hand and tried to stop the rot from spreading, then he popped and exploded with such force that Adam was thrown away from him at a very high velocity. As this Realm didn’t seem to have anything…
A House appeared off to his right, then disappeared
The shadow image of a planet started to manifest and then disappeared
Okay, maybe not an empty Realm, Adam checked his Prompts
WARNING Ahan has activated Realm level Command Destroy
WARNING LUCK and KARMIC luck are higher than Ahan’s, Probability favors you.
WARNING The Chaos Blade aspect “Destruction” has activated
WARNING Your Body has taken on the aspect of “Destruction.”
WARNING Realm level destruction Command has reflected back onto Ahan with the additional aspect of “Destruction”
WARNING Ahan, The First has been destroyed, All Realm adjustments have been set to DEFAULT.
Note: The Soul Abilities Adaptability and Will-Movement are once again allowed.
As Adam finished reading his prompts he willed himself to slow to a stop and then had the blob of chaos shape into his normal body with no issue. Adam felt for his soul space, still not there. Adam dropped into his Mindspace and yes that part of himself still existed. Was he a human mortal masquerading as Chaos or Chaos masquerading as a human mortal? It didn’t matter because right then he was yanked through multiple realities until his neck came into the hand, or claw, of a being holding his throat. Adam tried to move, he tried to talk and he even tried to break free. Nothing worked.
Adam also realized that the creature holding him was not human. It more resembled a humanoid arachnid. A question entered Adam’s mind,
Ahan?
Adam tried to lock down his thoughts. That was pointless. The entity in front of him then proceeded to invade his mind and learn everything about Ahan and what had happened then it started at the beginning and began reading his life.
A moment later a voice boomed from behind Adam
“That Information is NOT for you!”
As a hand grabbed Adam by the shoulder and threw him through a portal that opened and closed behind him faster than Adam could look to see who had grabbed him.
Adam looked around and found himself floating through a hazy mist. He opened his Universal Interface and queried his location.
You are currently outside of a Universe.
Adam opened his Cosmic Interface and queried his location.
You are currently in Astral Space.
Adam was where? Those interfaces hadn’t worked unless he was in his original realm So, he was back in his Realm in his Astral Space? That meant he could probably teleport back to Earth. Adam had a lot to decompress and figure out. he wanted to know who had grabbed and thrown him. Right now though, he had to decide what he was going to do. Now that he’d been shoved back into the Astral space near his Earth he should be able to come back to the Astral easily enough. Adam had other, more important things, to worry about.
First thing, he cast a divination to find Pandora and a prompt appeared in his vision.
Spell has failed. Target is outside the range of any divination
Adam tried to cast a divination to find Adaline. Instead of a prompt a gold line appeared from his center and led off into the distance through Astral Space. he followed the gold line until it ended. he turned on True Sight and noted that a portal was there. It looked to be invisible on this side and most likely on the other side as well. It exited the Astral into a stone archway and he could see that the gold line continued on the other side. Adam stepped through the portal and found himself in a small alcove at the base of a mountain. He recognized this alcove as a location on Primore near his Place of Power. Adam was in the cave off to the East on the other side of the river by Village by the River.
Adam walked out and ignored the goblins that tried to attack him. They were tenacious but their weapons barely pierced his skin, and he healed all the damage they did instantly. Poisons couldn’t overcome his health regeneration, so he didn’t bother. To forestall any further attacks, he focused his will and went invisible, then floated off the ground and made his way out of the cave and followed the golden lineup and to the west, directly towards Apolyn’s Abode, if Apolyn existed here.
Adam kept his movement subsonic and passed over Village by the River and continued higher. As he came to the location where the Abode was, he found Adaline in her full dragon glory with her front paw holding the Paladin Kor to the ground as Kor’s knights; Jed, Dale, John, and Kaz all stood around her with spears held out ready to strike. Adam floated closer.
“Paladin Kor, this is the 3rd time you have attacked him. As I have said repeatedly I am no longer evil. I am Neutral. I do not want to kill you. Please go away.” Adaline said.
Something was off here, Adam looked around and then noticed the Platinum collar around Adaline’s neck. he quickly Analyzed it.
Apolyn’s Monster Slave Collar – This Collar is used to subdue and control monsters of any level. Once on, it cannot be removed by the creature wearing the collar.
Adam knew that if he’d been collared he’d have been pissed. That she hadn’t killed the Paladin out of spite was a testament to her self-control and desire to remain neutral and possibly be good in the future.
Adaline’s head swiveled and her nose flared, “I smell you,” she said in her thick draconic voice, Now get your ass over here and get this collar off me.”
She’d smelled him. Damn.
Wait, what did she say? Adam became visible and the dragon smiled at him as she said, “Did you miss me?”
Adam moved over and touched the collar willing his intent to disenchant it. He would have to be really careful about disintegrating or destroying things from now on. Maybe that Aspect of Destruction flaring as he’d been touched by Ahan was a fluke but better not to take the chance. As the collar’s enchantment failed Adaline released the Paladin and transformed into her Dark Elf form which jumped at Adam for a hug.
Adam had worried for naught because nothing happened when she jumped into his arms for a long hug and a kiss while the Paladin rose to his feet warily.
The four knights rushed forward to attack and Paladin Kor spoke one word, “Hold!”
“But sire, he consorts with an evil dragon he must be killed!”
“I said hold!” Paladin Kor stated.
Adam turned Adaline and himself around so that she could lay her head against his chest as he locked eyes with the Paladin.
“I do know you! I thought that was a dream.” Paladin Kor said
“In that Dream what did I say to you?”
“Was it a dream?” Paladin Kor asked.
“It was not, and both you and he are parts of the men from that dream,” Adam said.
Paladin Kor nodded. “My God bids you a good day and has shared with him that the removal of the evil of this place is no longer my concern?” Paladin Kor asked questioningly
“It is not. Before I continue on his journey to find our daughter, I will be addressing the mage that held the mother of our child as a slave. How long have you been collared my love?” he asked Adaline.
“I have been here almost eleven years,” Adaline said.
“I’m so sorry, it took him much longer than I expected to find you.”
“Shh, tell him all about it after this fine Paladin and his men depart.
Paladin Kor nodded, as they gathered their things and departed, heading down the mountain pass. They should make it to the forest below before nightfall.
After they left he looked Adaline in the eyes, “A slave collar, you into that now?”
Adaline slapped him playfully and gave him another quick kiss then drew away and started to cry, “I couldn’t hold her, we were flying through space, I felt you try to protect us and I couldn’t hold onto her.”
“Not your fault. There, there, not your fault. She’s alive. I know that much. I don’t know where she is but I have been told that she lives. We will find her. Now. Now though, we have things to do here before we head back to Earth.
“She’s alive?” Adaline asked hopefully. “You’re sure?”
“She is and I am.”
Adaline’s mood shifted instantly as a gleam came into her eye as she said menacingly, “Then it looks like I have a Slave Master to find”