Numbly accepting things as they are…
That was a skill in this world. In fact it was the secret to living happily.
Declan did not live happily. He was quietly and deeply angry at all times, except when he slept, and the exhaustion of work faded and the numbness of sleep soothed everything.
Declan woke up somewhere over the atlantic ocean to the chime of a cool, calm voice. At first, as he pulled the plugs out of his ears and blinked himself awake, he thought the captain must have made an announcement. But as he looked around the cabin of the airplane, there was a small blinking blue spot on the edge of his vision.
It looked like a tiny exclamation point.
As soon as he focused on the dot, it expanded out into a blue panel that rippled and flowed like water. A voice repeated:
Disaster looms. Your home planet ‘Earth’ must undertake the Supreme Conflict within the next year, or be condemned to the Petrification of Worlds.
You, who are about to die, have been drafted. We will spare you from death so long as you join the fight.
We require an answer within 00:02:17.
Your service can take one of two forms:
* You can become a Civilian, who labors on a Workworld. You will have a safe, comfortable life, minimal autonomy as you are accustomed to in corporate-consumerist culture, clear guidelines, and no risk. You will live 100 years before your life is terminated.
* You can become a Player, who fights on the frontlines. You will have no guarantees, no safety net, and a long way to fall. 90% percent of Players will die.
He turned his head left and right. The window followed, tracking to the center of his gaze. It was only when he tried to look past it that it instantly shrunk back down to a blue notification in the corner of his eye. Only now it had a grey ring around it that was slowly turning black. Looking at the exclamation mark, it expanded back out, and this time he read it.
His immediate assumption was this was a dream. Half-awake, it felt totally unreal to see the laws of reality casually changing.
“Ninety percent of players will die…” Declan read that and asked, “When?”
The water rippled and the words reformed.
Within 100 years.
“And the remaining ten percent?”
Another 9.9% will eventually die, but lifespans of a thousand years are not uncommon. The remaining fraction of a percent are currently alive and have survived for millennia. Following the pattern of conversation, the answer to your next question is:
Potentially infinite.
Incredible. It can guess what I’m about to ask – ‘What is the longest player lifetime?’
Declan smiled. “I’m sorry. This is a really good dream. This is everything I could have asked for. But I’m not going to pretend it’s real. Believing in this, then waking up… That would sting.”
Reading your emotional state and factoring in your personal medical history to cut off a miscommunication.
When we say we will spare you from death we do not refer to your diagnosis.
But to the fact your plane is about to crash.
We can provide proof that this is real, but it will be unpleasant.
The plane shook violently, a sudden tremble passing from the nose to the tail and the baggage rattling angrily inside the compartments. People startled awake, all the people who weren’t already mumbling responses to the same message.
His awareness of the world broadened as the sleep was forcibly shaken out of him, and snapped Declan into realizing he wasn’t the only one seeing this message. People all up and down the aisles were shouting at nothing.
“This is a prank. Calm down, this is a prank.”
“Who are you?”
“Civilian!”
Someone vanished. Their body sparked with blue light, which wrapped around them and then shrunk down to nothing, leaving behind a scattering of bright blue sparks.
“Holy shit is this real–”
“Civilian!”
Someone else was gone. Actually, more than one. The lights were coming on and someone screamed.
Are verbal responses necessary?
No.
If this is real – prove it.
Declan felt electricity travel through his body. It started in his legs and traveled up his body in a wave of violent, bone-shaking pain, making everything spasm and tighten until his own muscles were crushing themselves. He could barely force anything to move, because every fiber of his body was already moving under the voltage crackling through his system.
That was 50,000 volts, roughly equivalent to a taser shock, in terms of your modern weaponry. If you are unconvinced we can apply fire.
Oh fuck. Let’s say I’m convinced.
Another violent buck rocked through the aircraft with a shuddering boom of wind striking metal at great velocity. They started to tilt, a sickening sensation of weightlessness lifting through his stomach. The air masks dropped from the ceiling.
The intercoms crackled with static as they came on. “This is the assistant captain speaking. Uhm. The captain is gone. He was gone when I woke up. So I think this is, like, really real. I’m going to assume he chose one of these options. I… I think I’m choosing Civilian so… I think we’re really going to crash. I suggest choosing soon, one way or the other.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
And then the intercom went out and the first real wave of turbulence hit.
The plane’s wing tore off with a metallic sound that echoed and echoed, flying away as the nose tilted down and the world went upside-down, the windows turning into a sickening spin of colors.
As they all lifted against their seatbelts and choked, the cabin filled with shouts and one word, repeating over and over.
“Civilian!”
“Civilian!”
“Civilian!”
“Civilian!”
One by one the chairs emptied. In a second it was half-cleared, except for the people too busy screaming to read or hear the message. In another half-second the cabin was
Fuck.
I know what I want.
I know what I want.
And all I have to do is take the risk.
He felt the absolute fear of dying rocketing through him as the airplane crashed. He felt the shock of rolling through the air and the fear of the approaching water.
But Declan was just angry enough to feel like he deserved a chance, not just to survive, but to win.
Someone shouted over the scream of air cutting across the hull – “I’m going player! Come on! Who’s with me!”
They wanted to sound confident but Declan heard exactly what they meant.
Please somebody take this leap with me.
“Player!” He shouted.
“Civilian!”
“Civilian!”
“I’m in! Player!”
“Player!”
A third and fourth voice echoed through the screams and Declan felt their chances of survival rising. He hadn’t vanished, and neither had the man who’d shouted player ahead of him, a young man with a broad face who was pulling on his yellow lifejacket and buckling the straps. That meant that whatever was coming, the players would be together to face it.
We applaud your bravery and welcome you to the Supreme Conflict. Your world is being altered rapidly by the accumulation of negative energy that will transform the dead into monsters. We will contain this energy, forming a Rift out of the natural environment around you, which you must overcome within 14:00:00. If you do not, the Rift will overflow and spill into the ‘real’ world that remains. Those players that close their Rifts will then be tasked to exterminate the overflowing vermin.
As a new player, you granted two lifelines:
* 00:10:00 duration Pfleurobreathing spell.
* 00:10:00 duration Guiding Thread spell.
Extend your right hand to begin your class assessment, which will provide you with your powers as a player.
The situation was only getting more dire, until Declan was reading with his legs jammed against the back of the seat that was originally in front of him, but was now directly below, the entire cabin turned vertical with a sickening feeling of rapid descent. He held out his right hand.
A tattoo like a double helix burned across his forearm, and a kind of hologram sprung from his open palm. It was a series of rune-inscribed rings nested within each other, each rotating in a different directions, spinning to form the illusion of a sphere. Over a split second, the rings snapped into place one by one, forming a flat design of like a clock face covered in rings of runic characters.
We sense great anger in you…
Class Granted: Advanced Fire Mage.
Spell Granted: Summon Flame (Basic)
Spell Granted: Scorching Spear (Advanced)
Skill Granted: Spellbinding (Basic)
Skill Granted: Weave-Gathering Meditation (Advanced)
Passive Granted: Pyroclasm (Basic)
Passive Granted: Fire Ichor (Advanced)
Affiliation Granted: Ring of Cinders and Embers.
Starting tokens credited to account.
All at once the hologram shrank down to a single point of utterly brilliant light, and ignited into a ball of molten flame like a tiny drop of lava floating above the palm of his hand.
Declan felt a total sense of wonder just as strong as his total panic flood through his chest. Magic existed. He was doing magic. There was magic, and some tiny portion of it belonged to him.
Holy fuck.
Then the plane slammed into the ocean, and water flooded into the cabin as the windows burst open, utterly extinguishing his flame.
The impact – plane against water – cracked the nose apart and flattened the forward cabin, where no pilots remained to be crushed. The force whiplashed his head back against the hard plastic seat behind him, and sent it bouncing forward, just in time to be caught by the rising wave of water and slammed back again, giving him a quick double concussion.
By the time he was conscious again he’d already taken his first breath of water. It filled his lungs with a cold, heavy sensation, but he found he could still push his breath up and down in his chest, bubbles pumping out of his mouth as he simply breathed the water.
“I think I love magic more than I hate this…” Declan breathed out, watching the bubbles float past. It was strangely calm. The worst possible thing had happened – his plane had crashed – and here he was, totally alive. Bleeding a little. He reached up and felt the split in the back of his scalp with a wince.
But alive.
“We can talk? Holy shit we can talk!”
“We’re alive motherfuckers!”
“Guys how many of us are there?”
“I count six!”
Declan glanced around, counting – six – but seeing something wrong with the picture. One of them was totally limp in her seat, head floating with a long trail of hair drifting up eerily behind her. The water was flowing past them, pulling on them with a huge sinking force, and she was being pulled limp along with it.
But even more worrying was the man who was kicking and thrashing, his face white-red and his lips clamped.
“No!” Declan shouted. “Some people didn’t choose! I don’t think they heard the message before the panic hit!” He grabbed his belt and unbuckled it, grabbing the edge of the triple seat and pulling himself out into the aisle. The force of the water was even stronger here, and he didn’t dare let go and try to swim across, so instead he grabbed the armrest of the far seat and pulled himself forward with his feet on the back of the chair he’d come from.
He went to the woman and began to shake her, while shouting up at the man. Already the weightlessness of the water and the chaos of the crash had combined to distort his sense of direction into non-existence: he just thought of wherever he was looking as ‘up’.
“Listen to me – listen to me sir, you, in the white shirt, listen now. You need to say or think civilian. You just need to do it and do it now, I don’t have time to explain.”
“Do it!” A woman with blonde hair was clambering down the plane from above, handwalking between the rows of seats.
“Number four are you with us?” Another voice shouted from below Declan.
“Just-- just groggy– I just– need a second. I can’t– the feeling– water in my lungs–” Short-sentences interspersed with gasps told Declan their fourth player was probably hyperventilating. It wasn’t surprising. Actually, only one of them regretting the choice– That’s pretty good.
Just as he thought that, Declan turned back towards the unconscious woman. He saw, through the broken shards of the window, something moving towards them fast. A glimpse of slimy tendrils spotted with luminous blue rings and a rubbery bulb-shaped head and then – SCHHHLAP! – it grabbed onto the side of the broken plane, revealing a pink and visceral underbelly with a central, ringed mouth, a ring of teeth yawning open so a spike-tipped tongue resembling a harpoon could whip out at lightning speed.
It pierced right through the woman, punching into the back of her neck. A spray of blood drifted through the water as the point shoved out through her open mouth, layering over her tongue as her eyes briefly shocked awake, right before she was wrenched back and swallowed with a meaty crunch.
Declan reached out his hand – not sure what he was doing – and tried to throw fire at the octopus. He shouted, “Scorching Spear!” Instead an explosion of steam and boiling water vented from his palm, launching him backwards and down into the luggage rack. It was only because he’d reacted to quickly and been flung out of the way, that he escaped being caught as the octopus spat its tongue out again, reaching into the cabin to grab for him.
Monsters incoming. Use your abilities to defend yourself.
“NO SHIT SHERLOCK! EVERYONE, AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!”