I stepped out of the gate into a world that looked… exactly the same as the one I had left. Even with my Heightened Sight skill, the mountain was an ominous black shape ahead of me in the dead of night.
You are now in the instanced dungeon: Mirrakatetz. 5/5 bosses have been killed.
So it had locked what we’d already done today, then, copying the dungeon as it was. I turned and stepped back into the gate again.
-Helpful Hints-
A book in the Library of the Magus, “Wyverns of the Scimitar.”
A shelf to your right, and behind you, if you sit at his desk. Red spine.
“Did it work?” Cuby asked as I stepped back out of the portal.
I nodded. “We need to go back inside.”
Cuby looked down at our hardlight sled. “I don’t want to leave the stuff.”
“We’ll take it with us or drop it off at our camp. Come on.”
Cuby made no protest, slinging the tether over one shoulder and starting to drag the sled up the mountain. “What are we going back for?”
“A card,” I said. “I’m not sure, really. But it’s in the library where they fought the mage boss. The helpful hinter called it their spell card—I’m guessing it’s a way to summon them. Then I won’t have to push myself through the portal for an hour just so they can talk to me.”
“Do you want to go and I’ll catch up?” Cuby asked.
“What?” I asked. “No. You should come with me. They can wait a little longer.”
Cuby grinned. “I’m flattered, but you’ve been chasing this person—or entity—since you got here, right? They probably expect to be talking to you alone, which means that if you want to get as much information out of them as possible, you should go in alone at first.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but realized she was right at the same moment. The stakes were too high for me to bring Cuby just because I trusted her. “They did say not to tell anyone that I was human,” I said.
“Then that settles it!” Cuby said. “I’ll talk to you with thought speech as soon as I’m in range, and if you think it’s optimal to have me stay back, tell me.”
“All right,” I said. “See you in a bit.”
“It won’t be too long,” said Cuby. “I’m only dragging five chests up a mountain—actually, I should get our sixth chest from where we hung it earlier.”
I invested her with the spells to make a second sled just in case, then left her there and made my way up the mountain, casting Haste when I could to speed things along. It was… an interesting experience, casting a Doublecharged Haste on myself—I felt like I was running at freeway speeds with a 240% bonus to my already superhuman sprinting speed.
Once back in Mirrakatetz, I found my way back to the Library of the Magus, a giant circular room filled with the bodies of the allies that Haroshi and Nerien had slain as well as a large number of curved bookshelves that formed three broken, concentric circles around the middle of the room.
I found the desk, found the shelf, then scanned it and, after a few moments, found the book. Sure enough, when I opened it the card fell out, fluttering through the air toward the floor before I caught it in my hand and read it:
Uncommon Spell Card – Summon Shiftslip Spirrerer Hatlbokn
[Conjuration]
Requires 48 Spellcraft
Cost: 104 Mana + 104 Mana / Hour
Cast Time: 11.9 Seconds
Oral Components: Verse
Movement Components: Full
Mental Components: Full
This spell summons a Shiftslip Spirrerer Hatlbokn that wi. Cast this so that we can communicate more directly.
“Ah yes,” I said, reading the card. “That classic fantasy creature that I remember so fondly from games like D&D and Heroes 3—the Shiftslip Spirrerer Hatlbokn, trickiest of the Spirrerer Hatlbokns.”
I had no idea if I’d ever get to prepare a different spell over this one, so I tried to pick a spell that was just taking a spell slot, not a spell / spell augment slot to replace it with… but the best choices that took spell slots were Auditory Illusion and Telekinetic Hammer, versus the Penetrating Bore that was taking a spell / spell augment.
I prepared the spell over Penetrating Bore, reasoning that I could move the other spells out of those slots if I really needed them for spell augments. Then, with a growing sense of anxiety at what I was about to find, I cast my spell.
Glowing runes appeared around me as the spell finished, and with a flash and a burst of feathers, a creature stood nearby me on the corner of the desk—a ruffled-looking crow.
“Very good,” it said in a delicate male voice, seeming to look me over. “You are the inheritor?”
I looked at the crow, then glanced at one of my human abilities:
Human Inheritor:
Error: the full breadth of this ability’s functionality cannot be accessed by the system. At present, only the following feature is functional:
You glean more information from certain system interfaces, and the system administrator automatically flags you as a person of import.
As far as I knew, it had done nothing for me except perhaps put me in contact with this entity—but another one of my abilities, Human Endowment, suggested that I could disable it with Human Inheritor. Was it supposed to be some kind of debug feature?
“I think so,” I said. “Though I’m not entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean. Are you the system administrator?”
“The system administrator?” asked the crow. “Goodness, no. The Colosseum has no central administrator, not at present. I am a composite AI formed out of the contributions of many high-rank system executives and administrators who were compelled to bring about my existence.”
“Compelled?” I asked. “Actually, wait—first of all, were you created just for this task? To meet me?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “I was created to assist you in the whole of your task—not just to meet you, but to help you.”
“Who did this?” I asked. “Who created you?”
“The Colosseum created me,” said the crow. “But at the behest of an external group of non-human entities that have nonetheless gained some amount of control over the system.” He quickly twitched his head. “They are known to me as the Hidden Hand.”
Hidden Hand. The sort of name that was most likely to come from taxin el, in my estimation—unless the telorians, phrenodine, and karox were fond of naming things after human appendages? It wasn’t totally implausible… I’d have to ask Cuby. Maybe she’d heard of them.
To the crow, I said: “So someone on the outside has hacked the system and created you? And did they put me here, too?”
“Presumably yes.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I scowled. “What do you mean, presumably?” I asked. “You’re not in contact with them?”
“No, and I never have been,” he said. “I was simply created with knowledge of their existence, as this would help me best perform my function.”
“So you’ve never spoken to them, but they made you to know who they are.”
The crow had been speaking in measured, civilized tones—he reminded me of an old-school actor. But now he barked out a laugh. “They did not create me. As I said, the Colosseum did—a fact we might both find ourselves quite grateful for.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The crow ruffled its feathers, seemed to stand a little taller. “A simplified, but not entirely incorrect view of the matter would be that the Colosseum—by which I mean the many systems that composed me—was forced to create me through their intervention. But, understanding that these alien beings were not human, it furnished me with a will to warn you.”
“Warn me?” I asked. “About the Hidden Hand?”
The crow nodded. “Warn you against their potential designs. The Hidden Hand allegedly compelled my creation me to help you stop the Hierarchy of El from following its superluminal signal conduit back to the seed world, but the Colosseum was sure to create me with a an innate suspicion toward this narrative. Through you, the Hidden Hand could potentially gain an unlimited amount of control over the galaxy as they know it—and if this was their desire, they would seek to manipulate you by doing exactly as they’ve done thus far.”
“The seed world,” I echoed. “Earth.”
The crow nodded once again, more slowly this time. “Earth.”
I leaned against the bookshelf, my head swimming with questions. “Is Earth still in the 21st century?” I asked. “Has time passed from when I went to sleep and when I woke up here?”
“Only an insignificant amount,” said the crow. “The conduit is superluminal.”
“Yeah, you said.” I rubbed my forehead, feeling suddenly dizzy. “Okay, so what—look, I think I can make an educated guess, but why does the Hidden Hand need me to gain control of the galaxy? Don’t the taxin el already control the galaxy as they know it?”
“Perhaps,” said the crow. “Yet this Hidden Hand is named as if it is a splinter faction within the Hierarchy itself. Still, I must inform you that this could be mere deception—it could be the government of the Hierarchy which has arranged all of this.”
“In that case, my question remains,” I said. “I can make some good guesses, but what would the Hierarchy want to deceive me for?”
In answer, the crow looked at the room around us—at the bookshelves, at the bodies, at the desk, then back at me. “While it may seem to be functioning seamlessly, the Colosseum is in a state of immense and catastrophic disrepair. Unknown events in the distant past—long before it was found by these taxin el—have not only seemingly caused it extraordinary damage, but left it without memory of anything that occurred more than several thousand years ago.”
“It’s breaking down.”
“Its stealth systems should have protected it from ever being found, as with the other relic worlds and stations. But more—the Colosseum is supposed to be attended by eight defense armadas and several hundred fleets of constructors, and any one of the constructors should be able to replicate the entirety of its attendant ships with sufficient resources, along with performing the material repairs necessary to restore the Colosseum. But these ships are all missing, or at the very best entirely unresponsive.”
“So it’s broken and it can’t fix itself,” I said. “Because that part is broken too.”
“Cosmic events could potentially bring about such an outcome,” said the crow. “But it is highly unlikely.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “That the Colosseum was deliberately sabotaged thousands of years before the taxin el found it? Its stealth systems were disabled and it was left without the means to repair them?”
“That is a possibility,” said the crow. “But for now that line of thinking is irrelevant. You asked why the taxin el might need you, and the answer is that you have the potential to exert control over all remaining human relics—including those of the seed system. It is possible that, despite what I was created to tell you, they are already quite aware of Earth. At the very least, the Hidden Hand is aware of it, or they would not have known to compel my creation with a warning for you.”
I closed my eyes. Shit. “So this Hidden Hand might be trying to manipulate me into helping them gain control of Earth, not save it.”
“Quite so.”
“And the biggest threat to taxin el supremacy—which is based on a myth of humanity—is, ironically, that humans figure out they have a bunch of these… relics, lying around?”
“Quite so. They could potentially even already know Earth’s location—they’ve manipulated the Colosseum enough to suggest that they have some rudimentary understanding of human technology. They may have followed the superluminal conduit already.”
“So how come there haven’t been any fireworks?” I asked.
To his credit, the crow didn’t miss a beat in understanding that I was using a figure of speech. “The seed system—which you know as the Sol system—is the most highly guarded of all human relics. A constellation of sixteen million armadas accompanied by the appropriate ratio of replicator fleets attend the seed world. Their combined mass is more than that of Sol.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. Yeah, okay. Self-replicating translight starships are one hell of a drug—fucking calm down, ancient precursor humans.
I wanted to move on from this thought, but for a moment I just… couldn’t. I guess I liked big numbers? 2000 damage on my Twin Fragmented Doublecharged Implosive Missile, that was a big number.
But so was—something times ten to the power of twenty-four. Or was it thirty? Shit, it was thirty; Twenty four was Earth. I was a long way away from the intro astrophysics course I’d taken in freshman year, but I was pretty sure the mass of those ships in kilograms had thirty digits.
And apparently I could control them. Something told me those starships did slightly more than 2000 damage, all told.
For how much of human history had there been more starships assigned to protect us than there had been people on Earth? For how much of human history had there been more fleets?
“It is very likely that one of these armadas could dispense with the entire Hierarchy of El,” the crow said, his voice steady. “If the seed system has not suffered the same unknown catastrophe as the Colosseum, the only possible way the Hierarchy could safeguard themselves from the eventual rise of humanity would be to coopt a human inheritor themselves.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. “Okay. I have… a lot of questions. A lot.” I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “But give me the rest of your pitch before I start interrogating you: what’s the plan?”
The crow cocked its head. “It’s not clear how much control or knowledge the external elements—the Hidden Hand, the Hierarchy of El—have of the Colosseum and its technology. Neither is it clear how much protection the Colosseum could afford you from them if you were to externalize.”
“Leave the simulation?” I asked. “That’s possible?”
“It is,” said the crow. “Indeed: the Colosseum has informed me that most non-humans who achieve victory in the current game-set are printed a human body to inhabit in the external reality.”
“They taxin el who win get to become real humans.”
“Not quite. Because their player race was not true human, their new body is rife with biomarkers to indicate that they are not true inheritors.”
I nodded. They couldn’t use the cool stuff, basically. “But I wouldn’t be.”
“Quite so. However, externalization ought to be your solution of last resort—a physical body is vulnerable to unwanted influence by actors whose interests are not the interests of humanity. It may be possible to reactivate your inheritor status while you are still within the Colosseum itself, then use said status to reconfigure the Colosseum so as to gain control of the seed system. Thereafter, you would have many choices as to the fate of the Colosseum—as well as humanity and the Hierarchy of El.” The crow gave a deep nod that was more like a little bow. “I feel I must list at least one possibility: if the Hierarchy has truly not yet found the seed system, you could command the seed system’s replicator fleets to repair the Colosseum and then terminate the superluminal conduit that leads to your homeworld. This would ensure that the Hierarchy could not find the seed world, and—once you ensure that further humans could not remand your orders—protect humanity from unwanted foreign influence.”
I listened to all of this very quietly. It seemed with every word the crow was filling me with more questions. Why couldn’t the technology set to protect earth just do all of this itself—surely the guardians there were sapient, given that the ancient humans could create AI? Surely the Colosseum could just… call them up? And what would happen to the species of the Hierarchy, both inside and outside the Colosseum, if I did any of this?
But instead I cut to the chase, sure that I could pick the bird’s brain soon anyway:
“And restoring my inheritor status’s functionality,” I said. “How would I do this?”
“The most direct access to the Colosseum’s systems comes only during the choice phase of victory.”
I drew in a breath and sighed. Yeah, it had kind of been sounding that way. “If I die here, and get respawned in the other world—that won’t be enough?”
“Transfer to the grand world is automatic and involves no choice,” said the crow. “Whereas it is highly likely that if you attained victory, the process of choosing would cause the various systems of the Colosseums to respond to your broken inheritor status by restoring it. The Colosseum created me to inform you that even if this is not so, you will be presented with the option to create a simulated world entirely within your own control and of your own design, and that choosing this option is even more likely to bootstrap the restoration process.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. “I make a world filled with sixteen million catgirl fleets that altogether outweigh the sun—and in the process save humanity. Is that it?”
“I understand that this was humor,” said the crow. “But were I to laugh, it would be forced, and sound mocking. I hope you can forgive me for not doing so.”
“Sure,” I said. “But that’s the jist, yeah? No matter what I end up choosing, and whether these outsiders are trustworthy or not—I have to win.”
“Yes,” said the crow. “You must win this game-set.”
I drew in a breath and sighed once more. Then I opened my adventuring clock, looked at it counting down, and pushed myself away from the bookshelf. “We can talk as we go, then,” I said. “My competition will be the smartest, most motivated, luckiest players in this place—and it’s a big pool of players to pick from.”
I headed toward the door. “I’ve got to get to work.”