At least Marc had been partially right, if one were being charitable, for despite the nigh Himalayan incline in ether, it having doubled, James felt no stronger and remained as he had been before, worse than even. His body being increasingly chilled and quivering as the now numb wound scraped across his ribs bled in a most fatal, crimson outpour onto the floor of his room. He watched as the alabaster carpet flushed an unattractive burgundy before he once more returned to searching the minimal status screen for the answers the absent tutorial had denied him.

“Level Up.” He spat the words like a venomous and contemptable sludge, having been whispering like a zealot for the past while in an attempt to make anything happen. Slimy, cold fingers pressed the before grabbed pillow case closer to his chest.

“Ether.” He tried again in forlorn tones as he craned his ears in an attempt to hear the licking tongues and gnashing teeth of the awaiting ambush cowing him from going out in search of help or a first aid kit. He thought he heard a bone crunch; he might have been delirious though.

“Tutorial.” There were sirens blaring off in the distance, their rhythmic wine tearing up and down the streets, a single taught and fraying thread of order amongst the maelstrom, a portable eye of the storm trying to go where they were needed.

He wanted to call them though James wasn’t sure where his phone was, nor did he trust the steadiness of his legs in a search.

“Attribute points.” He heard the metallic grinding and thunk of a lock and door opening on the far side of the house and the tepid sally of curious footsteps into the deserted and, James assumed, gory front room.

A warlike cry sent them back where they had come with a panicked squeal and thudding slam, James flinched as he listened to the faux wood’s evisceration from his own ensconced safety. At least now he knew where his other housemates had gone, one of them at least.

“Use Ether.” They were persistent bastards, was a thought that cut through the bickering of pain and self-pity that warred within his mind, only momentarily however, the former two being persistent dogs willing to battle through attrition. Much like the goblins, he countered once more as the before feeble door scratching morphed into a far more bodied and bass cracking as their claws found purchase in the shredded wood, catching deep within its flesh like meat hooks and wrenching out that matter unfortunate enough to find itself caught upon them.

“Allocate Ether.” His heart jumped with an electric jolt and disbelieving butterflies infested his gut as the status screen flashed away to be replaced with a far more laconic, yet superbly new and inherently helpful single word:

Where?

“Heal.” He forced himself to whisper still, casting a noose over the neck of his excitement and bringing it to heal. That being said he wasted no time in answering, nor in casting a tentative upward twinge of expression across his face.

Assign Ether to the Paradigm of Vitality?

It definitely sounded healing adjacent, especially so to the pain infused and blood-loss addled mind to which it was presented.

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“Yes.”

It was at that moment everything changed.

James had, as a child, watched the carrying of the Olympic flame, watched men and women running in alien cities and on foreign soil. Different colours and creeds yet all with a nigh religiosity in their eyes and determination to their gate as they ran, fire brandishing arm cast high and heavenward as if daring god himself to snuff out the signifier to human athleticism, nay, human achievement.

It was, he mused, an akin sensation he felt now as a small firefly sized thimble of ethereal and miasmic, wafting and wavering flame, barely more than a cinder, broke of from the centre of his being and began a journey into the void.

It faded quickly from this earthly plane and yet sight of it was never lost to James, his doe brown eyes transfixed and moistening as he watched the small spark flitter and fly its way through cosmic winds and cyclopean cities that lay, carved as they were from unknowably dense and indomitable stones, between dimensions.

Finally, and after what had felt like eons, did the flame come into the shade of a large and smooth tree, all subtle curves of ivory bark and sensual swirling wood grain. James looked up and through the canopy of auburn and playfully tangled leaves to the dappled yet warm shafts of honey gold sunlight peeking through.

He closed his eyes and even through the spaceless void between them could he feel the melting warmth of its rays. He opened them again and saw the small flicker of light press itself against the trunk and, with all the grace of slipping into a mother’s embrace was it engulfed.

The Paradigm of Vitality has Accepted Your Offer.

James groaned in near orgasmic ecstasy as a cleansing summer warmth bore down upon him and sealed shut his wounds, scabbing them over with what at first looked to be an amber treacle before fading away into more mundane scabs. The light had also returned some of the flush of life to James’ cheeks, yet he did not know it.

When the time came he was loathe to see the light go, almost reaching out with his mind to savour the last few moments of its tenuous presence, yet when all was said and all was done he felt the effects of the light linger, for not only was he healed he felt better besides, as though he had just woken from a good nights sleep, rested, energised, in a word, Vital.

“Status.”

Name: James Peter Meade

Age: 18

Sex: Male

Ether: 1

Rapport: Vitality (1)

Marc was right after all. Thought James as he stared in abject wonder at the scabbed over and coagulated stump of his finger, the pain relegated to a dull throb rather than the screeching cacophony it had once been. Not entirely right however, countered James to himself, ether felt less an indication of his strength and rather a resource with which he had just paid a price, given away as an offering to some vast concept or deity a universe away. He swallowed hard at the implication.

He was faced with a far more worrying reality however, and as his mind was dragged back from that most pleasant glen and into the iron stink of his own blood soaked room and clothes, the final dying, choked sobs of the far flung roommate bathing the housemates that remained in an unhappy reminder of their own mortality was he faced with the realisation that be they cosmic, Lovecraftian horrors or not he would require their boons for the struggle that now loomed heavy on his horizon. And he still had ether to spend.

“Allocate Ether.”

Where? Did once more the text in his vision demand of him.

And yet, as he stared at those letters as a blind man does to the world, he realised he didn’t know. His last decision having been made out of naked desperation rather than any good sense. He was unsure of where to go from here.

Then, on the nape of his neck, with the warm kisses and sweet scent of the warmer seasons did come and breeze and wafting leaves. He knew they were but a mirage and yet they had served him well before and so, with the echo of vitality in his ears did he allow them to lead him once more through the breach of reality, a helmsman for his treacherous voyage through and across the tenebrous depths of the between space.

Finally they led him to a shadowed and heavily wooded environ, a place far darker and with a more sinister atmosphere then before, all with a pervasive note of rot permeating throughout the scene. There, framed by the tightly packed pine walls to either side and back to a fallen stump was a boar, yellowed tusks and skin slick with a foul mix of blood and slather. It was hemmed in, back against the wall by gnashing teeth and barked rage by a pack of skinny ribbed and wild-eyed wolves.

Survival. A suggestion wafting on the breeze.

It felt similar to vitality yet different, where vitality had felt all at once like a raging bonfire of life yet no matter how close one came to it the heat stayed gentle and inviting. However here, though the fire still remained, now it was a flaring, spitting, defiant rage of heat and sparks. Where vitality had struck him with a profound and awesome beauty here all that stuck out was the brutal ugliness yet undeniable necessity of the scene which was playing out before him.

The Paradigm of Survival has Accepted Your Offer.

It felt like the right choice for a man grasping at straws. He turned his head back to the door and there decided that he felt ill at ease dying in a shitty, slanted share house. He had work to do.