James watched as holy hell poured forth from those most putrid pustules in reality, the fizzing bubbles of air and warped light that had just before lanced their heinous, maladapted forms through the space between dimensions before unknown to humanity.

They were the finishing blow to a sanity before fractured by immaterial yet stubbornly stalwart words hovering centrally in his vision. They had read thusly:

Gestation Phase Completed. Beginning Phase One of Integration into the Universal Whole.

Such were the twelve fleeting harbingers to this newest and most dire quandary to face the human race.

James had been in bed as the message came, eyes wide with a startled injection of adrenaline and bucked off electronics lying scattered and forgotten by his side.

He had shot into ramrod erectness as he scoured those floating, block and bold letters for any illusory flicker, something to hint at a forgery, or his own madness. Yet they remained, a stark reminder of the changing world.

“The fuck?” He had muttered through a dim and fading fatigue as he once more rubbed his eyes. Yet cursing too failed to cow the words. The youth then made a tentative and stuttering hand wave to expel them from view, all the while eyeing them with a suspicious slant.

They melted away before him, diffusing into the air in a light and tinkling haze of black particulate. Then the barking had started.

It had been his neighbour’s dog first. That herculean, corded ball of territorial muscle and fur that so often sent wayward visitors off with a quick beating heart had sounded a call that soon engulfed the whole neighbourhood with an asymmetric symphony of frantic anxiety. They could smell the air, it smelt wrong. At least it had served to wake his house up.

As he had left his room, all pyjamas and bare-feet, he had come face to face with the groggily swaying and shadowed form of his hulking roommate, the overweight computer science major snatching a brief yet harrowed eye-contact in which he half wailed the following:

“What’s going on?!” James answered not, he had no answers to give and in the bug eyes of his roommate did he find the answers important to him, the other man had too seen the message.

He scampered to the door, stumbling on legs caught in the lethargic bolas of lengthy stillness and with the follow up questioning of Marc, the aforementioned roommate, replaced with the insistent drumming of blood in his ears.

He swung the door open hard, clattering the fly screen into a frigidly shuddering mess against the opposite wall and tore out into the ethereal, moon glow and dewy grass of the night. He had arrived once more at our beginning.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

They appeared first as a still rain, transfixed in place by some unseen force, slowly growing and becoming more reminiscent of spherical mirrors as they hissed their angry cry of entry onto this most unwelcoming plane. The air in contact with them seemed to burn in an invisible fire, the reaction emitting a pungent, sulphuric stink which hung heavy in and befouled the air. James placed a hand over his mouth as he stared enraptured at the sight before him, as did many others on his street, including Marc, who had found his way to James’ side in the stunned silence.

“Status.” Was muttered sheepishly by the rotund figure to his right before the man recoiled back in uncharacteristic speed. “No fucking way.” Said he, breathlessly.

James, as little a stranger to the worlds of fantasy and gaming as any other of his generation knew what his accomplice had just tried and, with bated, disbelieving breath, did he then attempt the same.

“Status.”

Name: James Peter Meade

Age: 18

Sex: Male

Ether: 1

It was spartan in layout, austere and without the gaudy embroidery the young would like to imagine a representation of their very being would come in.

“We’ve been hit with a system apocalypse!” Loudly proclaimed Mark with a growing grin that sank teeth of distinct unease into James as his eyes darted between the other man and the still growing and sinisterly spitting orbs hovering two feet off the ground. “It’s like we’re in an anime, or novel. This is fucking crazy.” He said in a verbal stampede, more to himself than to James, the latter still torn between the ending of the world and the fierce battle between fear and anticipation in his companion’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” In truth James knew what Mark had meant having had a transient interest in such stories a short while ago, he simply wanted something to fill the silence as he watched the pregnant blot closest continue its swollen, steady encroach toward the ground.

“You don’t know?” Spoke the other with cotton mouthed nervousness as his emotions once more flipped, cold sweat beading as he watched the orb approach the foot and a half mark from the asphalt road above which it hung.

“Evidently.” Spoke James, never missing an opportunity to be prickly even at the end of the world. Mark didn’t seem to notice, nervous energy overtaking him as he shuffled foot to foot, shooting the occasional longing glance back to the still open door, the threshold from which their two other roommates watched the events with open mouths and hushed whispers.

“It’s like, ‘what if an RPG system suddenly came into the real world?’ That kind of shit.” They paused, both struck by the sheer absurdity of their conversation. James looked back and his stomach fell into freefall as he caught the orb closest to them passing the 1-foot mark and bursting onto the home stretch toward the ground. He wasn’t sure what would happen when it made contact, nothing good he imagined.

“Then what are the orb’s for?”

“Maybe ether means experience?”

They both said at the same time and to themselves, Marc doing an about turn and careening off back toward the house whilst muttering in breathy, satanic tones about potential grinding and needing a weapon.

James couldn’t seem to move from his spot on the lawn however, as if worm like roots had bored down from his feet and deep into the ground, seeping themselves amongst the very earth as if clinging to some form of normality. He watched as a father from across the road attempt to usher a small flock of intermittently crying and gawking children back inside. The orb reached mere inches from the ground.

Marc returned a short while later huffing and red faced, wordlessly pressing a carving knife into James’ hand and with a cleaver in his, he took it and held it white knuckle, clutching it with the frantic intensity of lovers soon to be separated. The gleaming silver fang of mortal violence feeling like a lifeline.

The orb touched the ground.

For a time, it was quiet, and the moon cast all in the virginal white light of her fullness. Then, from off to the far-left end of the street where another orb had materialised did come a horrified dirge, a keening woman’s cry which shattered the before tranquillity.

James’ teeth clacked shut and his eyes sped over to the scene, in time to see a small green and wrinkled arm come pawing out of the reflective surface, a parasitic charge birthed into the world. He watched in macabre awe as the squat and violently expressive creature of hooked nose and mean eyes came sloughing out of the portal, then another, then another, and in an inhuman torrent did they come out and flop pitiable and steaming to the floor. He looked back to see his orb doing much the same.

He was almost tempted to go and inspect the things, help them even, that was before he watched their crusty lids flutter open and with a brutal, barbarous wail did they jump to their feet as one and, bearing yellowed nails and teeth dripping with viscous sludge, charge the stunned crowd of onlookers.

The night of slaughter had begun.