The frost-covered waves of the Barents sea broke against the beach made from black glass pebbles. Azure glaciers sparkled in the distance, engulfed by swaths of cumulonimbus cloud formations. I stood on the beach, facing the ocean. The remains of Severny were behind me, an uninhabited village that stood only fifty five miles from the detonation of the Tsar Bomba, also known as device RDS-220.
The former fishermen's houses had been scorched, toppled over and the beach itself was melted, sand beneath my feet glassified. Everything in the small abandoned village had been rearranged, changed, wrecked as if a giant hand of God had come down from the sky and slapped the island of Novaya Zemlya with righteous fury.
The geiger counter in my backpack ticked slowly. The fallout wasn’t too bad, but the impact of RDS-220 had been truly devastating. The Tsar Bomba was never considered for operational use. Given its size of 8 by 2.1 meters and weight of 27 metric tons, it could not be realistically deployed by a ballistic missile. Instead, the thermonuclear device had to be transported by conventional aircraft, which could quite easily be intercepted before reaching its target.
Tsar Bomba was a weapon of pure propaganda, an idea that was meant to terrify the minds of Americans into submission. I wasn’t sure that it would work. I wasn’t sure that we could win the Cold War by the tactic of pure terror alone. We had not offered the West the carrot, only the stick… the biggest, most powerful, monstrous stick ever created by human minds.
“Truly, I am impressed. That was well done. Well done indeed,” commissar Gradensky clapped… her pale hands. Her boots crunched the black glass gravel as she traversed down the beach, approaching me.
“You’re not human,” I said, turning to the phantom.
“Does it really matter?” She asked, pointy teeth glinting as she grinned at me.
“I guess not,” I sighed. “What do you want from me? Why are you in my head?”
“You’re my best spawn yet,” she replied. “Not once in my vast lifetime has anyone managed to strangle an Archangel. Truly, I’m impressed. That was very, very amusing.”
“I don’t exist for your amusement,” I shot back. “What do you want, phantom?”
“I want to understand your power,” she grinned even wider, a hundred silver-blue eyes spouting on her head momentarily as her entire body warped and waned, shifting from male to female shape, revealing hundreds of jagged teeth flickering beneath warping flesh.
Her hair sparkled and moved on its own accord similar to Delta's phantom hunter threads.
“This? You want to understand this?” I waved my hand at the scorched, glassed village beneath the glaciers.
“No,” Sasha shook her head. “I understand destruction. Destruction makes sense. It is easy. Over one thousand years ago the enemies of Alania fractured much of Novazem with [Destruction], imprinting a great amount of magic and souls into the Astral. More than enough for me to sustain myself for millennia. What I truly want from you is your quirky mathematics. I want you to teach me how to break the System.”
“No,” I said.
I realized what she wanted from me. She wanted to understand fractal mathematics. The power to interpret and to bend the universe. Venerated knowledge granted to me by the research of Viktor Safronov combined with the discoveries of Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot, misunderstood by most of humanity. Hard to grasp even by this ancient creature, apparently. The ability to assess the probability of the future, to predict the stock market, to win in any lottery. The ability to utilize the language of the System itself, to design spells, to bend the Soul-Song to your will, to interpret the universe with mathematics.
“You’re going to do it regardless,” she laughed. “It is inevitable. I’m patient. You want to save Skyisle, don’t you? You want your little sister and new best friend to stay alive?”
I sighed. “Why not just eat us? Why this ridiculous game of cat and mouse?”
“If you are fully absorbed into me, dragged into the astral, then the mathematics will be lost, diluted by my essence of the multiplicity,” she replied. “It is in my interest to keep you alive. The Imperial Inquisitor is coming. You’ll have to kill him and then kill others that come after him. Eventually, the full might of the Empire will turn against you. It is inevitable. The goals of Equality cannot coexist with yours.”
“Are there seriously no fractal mathematics anywhere else in the Astral?” I asked exasperatedly. “Why me?”
“Alas,” Sasha shook her head. “You are unique, special to me. My bright, clever, little shark. Even your sister does not possess the necessary drive nor the absolute understanding necessary to wield fractal math. She is but a pale, corrupted copy of you, a phantom spawn obsessed merely with the beauty of flight.”
I gritted my teeth. This high-level phantom had checkmated me even before I knew about the existence of the game.
“This...” Sasha pointed her pale hand to the ruins of Severny village. “...Earth that you keep dreaming of. It isn’t fully connected to the Astral, it isn't tied into the System. The lack of magic drove your humanity forward over millennia to define the rules of reality itself! It is incredible how your kind managed to do so much wielding pure knowledge and understanding of the universe. I have gained and lost much over millennia... but nothing quite like this...”
“If my Earth isn’t connected to the Astral, then how the hell did I even get out here, with my mind full of memories from Earth?” I demanded an answer from her.
“From examining your life, I believe it took a series of improbable coincidences. You attended many nuclear tests at the Polygon. Each explosion momentarily pierced the barrier, imprinting you in the Astral. The test of the Tsar Bomba and your visit to Novaya Zemlya was the last metaphorical nail needed to permanently imprint your personality into the Ocean of Magic.”
“My soul remembers the math from Earth because I was there present during a bunch of nuclear tests? That’s it? What about the solders or other academics? Or the people who died in Hiroshima? What about Dr. Andrey Sakharov? The man practically designed the Tsar Bomba! What about my commissar, the real Alexander Gradensky?!”
“Andrey Sakharov didn’t volunteer to fly into the blast zone of the Tsar Bomba. You were the smartest man on that plane that day… and Alexander Gradensky didn’t kill himself in the same manner as you have, didn’t make it out of your Earth. Your imprint had accumulated gradually over the decades and was assembled during the last... explosion.”
“Didn’t make it out? Assembled?! What?” I asked.
“When you killed yourself, the non-nuclear, one kiloton explosion of Aralsk-7 flung your soul across all of your prior imprints, collecting and magnifying them. You were the brightest star, the most clever soul that died that day and the only one from your Earth to pierce the thick Astral barrier with all of your memories and full personality almost completely intact."
"Assembled... by an explosion? That's the stupidest thing I've heard," I said.
"It's just... what do your people call it?... a... hypothesis, Slava," she laughed. "The Omniscience might have helped assemble you, helped you avoid the pull of Samsara."
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"What is Samsara?" I asked. "Where does the Wheel lead?"
"To Arxtruria," Sasha said. "A world that devours worlds, collects all souls."
I frowned.
"No need to get so uptight about what I offer. It was your people that created the scientific method. I'm merely using your knowledge to try to connect with you better. You and I are bound now, our future entwined."
"And what if I refuse to connect with a phantom?"
"Spare me your grandstanding, Slava." Sasha flickered, a hundred pale silver-blue eyes flashing at me. "You would have become an Astral Phantom yourself, just like me, had the Omniscience not scooped you up and injected you into the soul of Destiny Alana Skyisle, the girl who was supposed to die."
“Supposed to die? Are you talking about Giovashi's prophecy?” I squinted at her.
“You’ll figure it out,” Sasha winked at me mischievously. "You're good at figuring things out."
"You goaded me into the body of Destiny Alana, correct?" I asked. "And you helped me get back into the tree? You have other children masquerading as people on Novazem, infected only partially?"
"See? Those are excellent guesses," she smirked. "You're a clever boy."
“Why aren’t you scared that I’ll figure out how to rearrange, destroy you with my fractal math?” I asked, glaring at her.
My left hand suddenly grew indescribably cold. I hissed in pain, rubbing it.
“My leash will make sure that you cooperate,” she said with a chilling tone. “You are far, far more accepting, more cooperative than any of my other children. Hell, you’ve turned your worst enemy into a friend. I don’t feel the need to punish you yet.”
“Why do you want to learn fractal math?” I asked.
“That’s a secret,” Sasha whisper-sang with a voice of a thousand dead.
“Then you aren’t getting shit,” I growled. “Delta said you eat the souls of people. This alone shows me that you’re irredeemable.”
“I’m a phantom, a being woven from the remnants of others, a persistent echo of the wars of men. Phantoms eat the nearest soul available to stay alive longer when they are hungry,” she shrugged. “I don’t judge you for eating cows and chickens. When your flesh dies, you too will feel the hunger and will have to feast on the souls of the dead and the living. It too is an inevitability. You are a phantom, just like me... Slava, you simply haven't accepted it yet.”
I shuddered.
“Beside that point, your immediate lack of compliance and understanding is irrelevant,” Sasha yawned. “The stronger you get, the stronger I get. It’s as simple as that,” she explained as if she was scolding a child. “The more you discover, the more I discover. You can’t get away. You belong to me. I’m the grossmeister and you’re my prized piece."
"You are mad," I stared at her, feeling increasingly unnerved.
"Perhaps," she shrugged. "What you define as madness is merely the result of being an endlessly stretched chain, a web of interconnected souls held together by my ancient, ghostly shell. In this grand game of chess between the denizens of the Astral, between the Gods and those who want to become divine, you are my little pawn destined to be a Queen," Sasha sang. "You are my little master key that will eventually be able to open any lock, get me through the doors beyond the Stars of Novazem. However, now it’s time to wake up and take a step forward.”
Her hand suddenly extended and flicked me in the nose.
I stumbled backwards, falling into the bone-chilling spray of the Barents sea.
----------------------------------------
My eyes shot open. My body hurt. My eyes chafed from within. I had a mountain-sized migraine. I groaned, focusing on my surroundings. This wasn’t the Alanian tower. Afternoon light broke through the blue stained glass window painting the grey stones around me in colorful fragments. I was located on a single-person bed, wearing my white linens.
[Dante! Oh thank God you’re finally awake,] Delta’s voice resounded in my head. [You’re seriously the stupidest man in the world or something. I don’t know why you do things sometimes... You’ve been asleep for a week!]
[Where am I?] I asked.
[You’re in the bedroom of our… lovely Overseer,] she sighed, making the word “lovely” sound like a sarcastic insult.
[Right... Delta? Can you do… fractal math?] I asked. [Would you be able to design a spell from scratch?]
[Urm, theoretically… yes? Maybe?] She mulled it over. [I understand the principles, but computing it all together is giving my soul-brain a gargantuan headache. Let me get back to my body. I've been hovering over you as a Phantom, repairing you with Chrysalis... and it's very tiring.]
I really was the only one here who understood fractal mathematics. I got excited. If Sasha was right, in my possession I had a key that could eventually open any door… any door at all. As I thought about it, my jovial mood crashed. Chernobyl safety test. The Tsar Bomba. The Aral Sea. Not every door should be opened. Some doors hid horrific monstrosities, nightmarish things behind it. The Soviets were excited about the prospects of opening new doors. Some doors could not be shut once opened, some led to death, destruction and catastrophic consequences.
Phantom-Sasha held the key to my soul, and had chained me to herself as an unwilling subject.
I had to be more paranoid, more careful about what I did. My self-elected grossmeister was watching my every move and learning from me. At the very least while she was watching me, she knew exactly what I was doing, but not HOW I was doing it. There was a certain dark parallel between the Soviet generals that I had worked for and Phantom Sasha.
The Soviet leaders also had no idea how I was designing my bacteriophage viruses, they just knew that my skills were incredibly rare and useful. They kept me alive, educated, entertained and well-fed in my golden cage that was Aralsk-7. Whatever I required, be it the latest scientific paper from Dr. Mandelbrot or National Geographic magazines about the Maori people, they would acquire it for me. In the same manner Phantom Sasha was now using me, letting me be free for the price of learning how I did things.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Um, enter…” I said.
The door swung open, revealing Kliss. She was wearing black, frilly dress. There was a soft smile painted on her face and the deep, dark circles were gone from her eyes. She looked genuinely happy to see me. Sparks of tears shimmered in the corners of her eyes.
“...Slava?” She said.
I smiled at her.
“Thank you,” she took one cautious step forward.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
She took another step forward. “You’ve done something impossible a week ago. You freed me from a Vow.”
“All in a day’s work,” I joked.
“No, no it’s not,” Kliss shook her head. “There’s not a single mention of someone freeing themselves or another from a Vow in the Cessna Librarium of Magic. Once I realized what the Citizen’s Vow was, when he started to hurt me, I... attempted to free myself from his clutches. I failed. He punished me for years afterward. There was no escape from the Citizen's Vow. Nobody’s ever broken a Vow before as far as I’m aware.”
She took another step forward and went down on one knee, bowing her head down to me. “I have no way of repaying you this debt. I cannot do impossible things…”
“Kliss, you don’t need to prostrate yourself in front of me,” I said. “I don’t think that what I did was impossible. We’re equal. I’d like us to be friends. You’re not in my debt, you didn’t try to kill me - the Vow confessed his crimes to me personally.”
“I... I'd like to know more about you,” she shook her red, curly hair.
I sighed. “Just come sit next to me."
She instantly stood up and sat next to me on the bed, glancing at me with shining emerald eyes.
“You still have another Vow on you,” I said. “I can…”
“Unnecessary,” she shook her head. “We need a single Vow on me so that the Inquisitor doesn't suspect anything. Besides, she doesn’t hurt me... as I have no desire to go against what she's asking. I want to be your friend. I want to protect you and your family. I will be your friend and not because of a Vow… but because I want to know more about you… about Earth… about science.”
"Sure," I said.
Regardless of the arrival of the Inquisitor, I now had a friend in Skyisle, a friend with power and deep knowledge of magitek. Someone that I could rely on, someone who could help me defend Skyisle from the poisoned breath of the magogenic fault. A friend that could help me pull apart the iron claw of the Gregarius Empire that collared, enslaved everyone capable and talented into obedience to the Archangels of Equality.
“C-can I hug you?” Kliss whispered after a long and deep pause.
I nodded.