Alator straightened his back, then threw his head back and howled to the sky. Perhaps he was some kind of werewolf — when the three moons of Barbican align and are all full at the same time, maybe he becomes furry.
Come on, you’re delirious. I shook side to side with every step, heading towards him, then a knee buckled and I fell flat to the ground. As the howl echoed through the courtyard and the last of the ugly flames dissipated in the thin high altitude air, Alator came to my side and looked over my body.
There were tears in his eyes — sadness, of course, but also catharsis — that he quickly wiped away and set to work like a handsy physician.
“It didn’t break the skin anywhere, did it?” Alator said as he unstrapped the Linothorax and started to lift the layers.
I was too out of breath to stop him; he just batted my weak arms away when I tried. He turned me over and prodded and I squealed as he pushed his thumb into the wounds on my ribs, and then the tension left and he blew out his cheeks and sat down heavily next to me.
“What in all hell was that about? I feel violated.”
Alator’s muscled form heaved with his own exhaustion and he leant himself backwards on his hands, looking at the wooden tier roof high above us.
“You felt the cold coming from the vampyri, yes?”
I nodded, blanching all over again. Alator continued without looking at me:
“You’re right to fear it; it’s a curse. If it gets in you — even just a few seconds’ exposure to an open wound is enough — it’ll eat at you from the inside. You’ll . . . lose yourself.”
Eyes wide, I groaned to sitting and checked myself over. With my stiff linen armour parted I tugged at the large armholes of my sleeveless off-white (I want to say eggshell) tunic. Beneath was a mess of deep red knuckle-impacts, but no torn skin. Bruises started to form even as I look at them, and I moaned and fell back to the floor.
Bzz.
// SYS : You gained 111 XP for defeating the Voracious Vampyri. You now have 143 and need 122 total for the next Level. //
A reflexive, cruel spark took my mind to a dark place for a moment, and I could not help but allow a thought to consume me:
I suppose one good thing has come out of this.
Allowing myself a little while, I let my blood settle and thought about my options. Strength was the obvious choice; every time I witnessed Alator accomplish the impossible, my envy of the power in his body is piqued. Strength also goes some way to improving my stamina, I remembered. Dexterity helped with that, too, and would give me more useful stabilising muscles — or fast twitch fibres — that might give me an edge while facing slower enemies and allow me to hold back on constantly firing off Skills.
The echoes of combat had calmed beneath and above us, though we still heard cries and panicked shouts, people searching for loved ones, or else grieving the lost. . . . Lying there, I felt entirely spent. Imagining more of these conflicts in future, of multiple drawn-out battles all over a city, I felt that reserving Skills would become paramount.
The Constitution Stat was up next. This was, as I understood it, my ability to withstand pain and extreme conditions, and perhaps even the durability of my own body. Against the Chrioptera minions, my Linothorax had held up beautifully, but when facing higher level fiends, my previous suit of armour, functionally identical to this one, had been torn to shreds.
Mind was my last concern. The thought of suddenly making myself cleverer was so appealing, but every time I thought about it, I could only bring concrete images of how to use it back in my old life, like compiling spreadsheets faster, or spotting diary inconsistencies, or something else mundane. Perhaps with enough, I wouldn’t have to use [Battle Tactics] at all, but I had no idea how far off that was.
At length, I decided to put aside my fears for my own body and focus on my DPS.
SYS, Level me up, I’m choosing Strength. . . . Hold on, maybe if I was cleverer I’d choose —
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// SYS : Congratulations and welcome to Level 9. Your Strength Stat is now 13. You have 19 XP remaining and need 130 total for the next Level. //
Oops. Ah well.
Bzz.
Lenya wobbled over to us.
“I wish I could help,” she muttered, knelt beside me, looking over our beaten bodies.
“You’re doing . . . really well,” I reassured her without thinking, pulling myself wincing up again with a sharp inhale of breath. “Is it great exertion, to use your magic?”
She moved her limbs heavily and drew her staff to her. Her knuckles were white over the polished black pine.
“Yes,” she said simply. I noticed her bright grey eyes were streaked with red veins, and there was a smudge of red blood beneath one nostril that she had wiped away.
“I appreciate it,” I said sincerely. “Thanks for the assist. How did you know it was still focused on me?”
Lenya reached out a little hand and a tiny ball of light appeared at one of her fingertips, and she played with it, moving it around in her hand.
“That’s another gift my mother bestowed.” She talked sadly, the light radiating warm colour over her curved features. “Through long hours of intense study of mystical probability and reading expressions that most consider imperceptible or hidden, we in the Fey Plains have developed the ability of foresight, though it comes at some great difficulty and with quite a lot of imprecision.”
Must be talking about her [Mysticism] Skill. SYS?
BUZZ.
PLEASE. It seems Lenya’s not aware of the existence of Skills. I understand most don’t have access to other people’s Stats and so on, like I do, but do other Systems not even talk about it in those terms?
// SYS : All who choose to pass through a World Gate are granted the same audience you had when you first left Earth — at least, to my knowledge. Give me a moment. //
There was a little quiet while the blue eye shivered. Small lines moved across it like splash ripples over a pool. Then it returned to inhuman stillness again.
// SYS : After conferring with other Barbican Systems, my best guess is that Lenya’s people have been visited by a rogue faction amongst our kind. In the liminal space between Worlds, we give those we choose a set of useful skills and bodily ability — after interfacing with enough of your kind, we have come to call these Classes. Afterwards, we assign Levels and describe Stats in this way, and separate the Skills as we do, for the ease of Earthlings; we draw on terms from your ubiquitous gaming culture and growing LitRPG scene to make the transition to these worlds easier for you. //
It is growing, isn’t it? I’m actually really impressed by a bunch of authors on one web novel site in particular.
// SYS : Yes, there’s some real talent there. . . . Anyway, this is probably why even Alator’s Level is marked with a question — we have no way of gauging his unknowable power. As you guessed a while ago, piggybacking on this process gives us sustenance. //
Wow. So you’re essentially a parasite.
// SYS : Excuse me, a symbiont. //
You just made that up.
// SYS : Humans cannot resist treading through the New Worlds, and with your meagre forms, inherently flawed personalities and inability to bring your weapons through the World Gates, you would not survive without us. //
I’ll choose to ignore those very petty jibes. Anyway, I can’t argue with that. Okay, that’s enough, now, shoo.
The little bronze sphere, with its electric blue eye, snapped shut and then with another buzz — notably quieter than the one made whenever She appears — it popped out of existence. Or maybe just out of sight?
I groaned up to my feet and patted my tunic down of dust and debris. I turned in on myself and reached into the stream of my inner power to find a few glinting points of light there still shining, and the water running with at least some clarity — the short breather had given me something, at least.
“The sharaan’s share of the fighting seems to be over,” Alator mumbled, his ear to the ground, closed eyes letting through a slip of dull yellow light.
“Sharon?”
“Long a. You know, the big rusty red sinewy beasts? Eight feet at the shoulder, massive silent paws, a stunning mane of cascading corded fur streaked with yellow? Jaws that chew iron? Blood-curdling roar? They’re . . . the coolest.”
Must be some kind of monstrous lion from Alator’s home World, I guessed. Didn’t think I’d ever hear him describe something as cool.
I wondered if I’d ever see his home World.
“Sure,” I shrugged, starting to tie up and secure my now battle-tested Linothorax. “Anyway, you’re right. I imagine the fighters at the arena didn’t do so poorly against these fiends, assuming there wasn’t a vampyri amongst them.”
“There will only be one,” Lenya said. Her head was tucked into her knees, her shoulders shaking, but she made her voice steady. “You heard it. It was here for you, Talbot. And the way it spoke . . . There will only be one.”
They know me?
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, truthfully. “We should head down through the tiers and help where we can.”
Alator nodded. I put out a hand to Lenya on the ground. She looked at it for a long considering moment, then took it and I pulled her to my feet. It was small movements like that which gave me perspective on just how much this New World had affected me. I had experienced sudden increases of strength before — well, once before, when I first started working out, before I . . . got tired of it. But this was absolutely night and day. Lenya was lithe — not short, certainly, though quite a bit smaller than Alator and myself — and I lifted her easily up.
She let go of my hand quickly, brushed ash from her robes, and mouthed, “Thank you.”