Benjamin – Sal’Yiu – Epsilon Zone #1
Blurring through the tear in reality a new blue box fleetingly intrudes on our sight to inform us of our location:
You have entered Delta Zone#4 Level 80 – 99.
Willing away the nuisance my eyes frantically lock on the bubbling surface of the volcano before using the power of jolly cooperation to leap into the welcoming inferno of magmatic soup.
Funnily enough my's hair manages to hold out longer than the remains of our armor as after twenty or so seconds we feel it follow the shredded plate mail suit. However the effective scouring of all our bodily hair does nothing to assuage the universally niggling notion that we are still unclean, leading a me to more than a little reluctantly open our mouth.
One of me is awed by the fact that we just didn’t instantly vaporize from the super heated liquid rock mouth rinse we'd just partaken of. Another me counters with the fact that we were able to speak in the crushing depths of a highly acidic ocean and not melt, so why would any of us combust in a mere spa of magma?
Now having sufficiently catered to our wholly founded fear of still being contaminated in some way by the poop monster we just slew. A me extracts us from the infernal Jacuzzi and shakes of the remaining clumps of more solid chunks of lava like a dog and its acquired mud. Once situated back on igneous firma though, the triumvirate gets to deliberating on whether or not we should take the trait. Making some elementary level deductions based off of its name whilst giving greater data weighting to our first hand experience with the oh so heinous GFS.
All of me having tabulated what we now know of the effluent genus beastie, it’s reasonably clear that matter manipulation likely relates to how it was able to make its irksomely effective projectiles and also recollects its shit themed parts.
When we get right down to collectively considering the advantages of such a boon versus my current pilfered passives however, the three of me agree that whilst super strength is indeed stronk, already having over a thousand in the attribute is sufficient to paste just about anything we will likely face in the immediate future.
One of me also points out that strength in and of itself has not really been a deciding factor in many of our fights to star date and another mind concurs that [Lesser Insectile Musculature] is indeed the weakest space link in our current trait repertoire. The third me also posits that even if this trait turns out to be a bust, we can just replace it with something else later on and joins in to form unanimous consent.
Mentally intoning our choice to the minimized box blinking in my's periphery, another expected box takes center stage:
Trait retrieved, please select the trait you wish to override
>Lesser Primordial Blood
>Heart of a Lesser Dragon
>Lesser Insectile Musculature
A warmth that the still bubbling lava spa fails to equal, suffuses our naked and hairless chest as the system works its juju in line with the Triumvirates decision:
Insectile Musculature trait removed.
Lesser Matter Manipulation trait inherited.
Eagerly pulling up the traits details one of me tries to jinx it by hoping that its not a dud like the so many that have preceded it:
Lesser Matter Manipulation: You are able to manipulate a mass of matter based off of your Intelligence attribute. The field of your influence over the manipulated matter is based off of your Wisdom attribute. Mana is expended proportionate to mass moved and also influenced by wisdom attribute.
We collectively stood there for a while as all three of me were struck dumb.
Half formed thoughts came and went as our skin prickled despite the sulfurously toasty environs.
Eventually one of me displayed some initiative as it focused on a rock about the size of a motorbike, at the edge of the volcano’s black belching lip.
Intuitively the me flexed a part of our selves that felt like it was meant for this exact task...
You know how in the movies where the guy looks like he’s lacking fiber in his diet as his blood fights to escape the raised veins on his head whilst straining right down to his colon to levitate a measly pebble?
Well this was not that.
This was not that at all...
Certainly the result was not what the me had intended as like with any muscle, you know what your mind wants it to do and it flexes. But contrary to popular culture and its take on telekinesis, the result of what we thought would be a herculean feat of the mind, turned out to be more akin to an unmanned space probe launch as it in no uncertain terms left the alien worlds gravitational influence with a booming crack of sonic pressure waves.
In the bubbling susurrations of the nearby semi-active volcano that followed the eye bulging even felt like the biggest atmospheric misstmatch in non-cinematic history. Eventually though, the triumvirate managed to pick our collective jaws off the floor and inspect our utterly unaffected blue bar of mana-e goodness.
Mentally tripping over ourselves in anticipation, we turned our minds to a nearby boulder the size of a two story house.
With the sonic nature of our most recent spacial discharge fresh in our perfect memories. A me ever so slightly, ever so infinitesimally nudged the dwelling sized rock from is situ to near seamlessly lift it from where it rested with the barest of clacking pebbles and a scrape.
One of me absently classified the ‘grasp’ of the skill as something more akin to a mental hand than surgical tweezers as another mind busily tried to coax bits of wafting ash together then compress them. The resultant spec of black sand unfortunately didn't seem to be able to compress further with our finite applications...But if we harvest improved versions of the trait then maybe we can go derper to the level of atom control in the future?
We’re about to conduct more thorough geological manipulations for great science when a muffled and irritatingly familiar elfin voice issues from just in front of our still open portal.
“Human, just what do you think you are doing at a time like this!?”
Reflexively releasing our hold on the multi-ton boulder and snapping our collective attention to the sneaky if unfairly attractive elf. One of me swiftly mounted a cunningly complex defense by way of retorting.
“What?!”
Her silvery eyes bulged with renewed vigor as she instructed with her bafflingly Germanic accent.
“I knew you were intelligent deficient Human, but this is below even my most base of expectations! You have just initiated Sal’Yiu’s transition to a Phase 2 world and instead of going to brief The Elected as is proper! You take off screaming like an infant to the most uninhabitable of all our Zones! Worse still, you seem to have completely taken leave of your hair, which if I’m being honest was your only redeeming feature…Also where is your armor, and what is…”
Her words trail off ominously and even with the magmatic red hue everything is painted with, we still collectively make out Euy’La’s normally porcelain like skin pigmentation, rising to match where many me’s just took our hygiene related skinny dip.
One of me groans internally that we were likely close to becoming friendly with her before our flashing, whilst another me confirms that she still seems to be in a mild state of catatonia. The third me instinctively mimics Toni’s method of resolving awkward situations into practice.
My's new trait pays dividends as it flings the uncomfortably transfixed elf through the portal at a speed that hopefully wont cause permanent injury.
Collectively breathing a superfluously sulfurous sigh of relief, a me opens Mr Pocket and retrieves [Green Doi’kol Moss] to re-plug our nasal passages post haste. Next comes a set of [Elevant’s Essential Gear] and we don it, before also retrieving a thematically appropriate red tinged [Fav’Sou’s Plate of Impasse] to affix it over top.
Dignity returned we universally clank in resignation toward the portal as if it is the final stretch of road before my hanging at the proverbial gallows:
You have entered Epsilon Zone #1 Level 100
We find our flashee with her leather clad arms crossed as she pointedly refuses to meet my's gaze, whilst admonishing in a muffled tone.
“It is good to see you have managed to find your sense of propriety Human... Now we must go to th-“
But a me interjects.
“It’s been fun and all, but with the quest complete and the…Dubious bargain between us fulfilled, I have to return to make sure things haven’t gone sideways at home.”
The surrounding marsh gas is disturbed when Euy’La stalks closer whilst holding out an accusatory finger as she adds.
“You will not leave me to clean up this mess you have created! You will come wi-“
Shaking my head a me counters.
“Sorry love but I never agreed to that. The only reason I agreed to take you along this far was so I didn’t get into any further misunderstandings with the rest of your kind.”
She advances further till she’s within about two feet as she jabs her now drawn and elegantly curved short sword toward me in threat.
“Hear my words Human. I have tolerated your lack of etiquette long enough! You cannot just walk off into the night and leave us hel-“
Time slows to a perceptive crawl as one of me offers to remind her of the power imbalance as another me votes we just [Lesser Dimensional Portal] to the Citadel and get the fuck out of here all together. A third me elects to not display cowardice and proffers a toned down version of the first option and the second me grudgingly agrees.
Course of action found by majority, a me uses my [Lesser Matter Manipulation] to pluck the elf who was just about to annoyingly poke our armored chest who in turn begins to float in mid air. One of me points out the distinct difference in the sheer amount of control we have with this as opposed to just making someone weightless and watching them flounder about like a kitten.
The alien’s eyes seem to convey a new kind of terror as she gains first hand experience of the effect, unable to lift a finger without any of me willing it. Another me explores the sense that with just an infinitesimal flex of the traits power we could pulp her as easily as a rotten bit of fruit.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Then one of me points out that we’ve entered the fringes of megalomaniac territory and effectively taken away her free will.
More alarmingly some of her kinds silvery blood seems to be leaking from her visible orifices and she drops to the sludge like ground when the me flexing our nu-trait hits the off switch. All right before an all too familiar wave of self loathing permeates the triumvirate.
For a more un-enhanced being it would be difficult to make out Euy’La’s heaving prone form within the swirling toxic miasma as she coughs and gasps into her filtration mask, yet unfortunately for our mounting self recriminations, her every spine wracking convulsion is clear as and earth summers day.
And like so many times before the moment of stricken fear overtakes her, Euy'La recovers enough to scramble and squelch in uncoordinated haste amidst her bid to get as far away as possible from the monster we've become.
Another potential relationship wrecked by an errantly childish excision of power, none of me seem to be able to summon up the courage to try and correct our mistake as we've have long since learned that any action we now try and take will only multiply her suffering and by default, our own.
Unilateral depression sets in while a festering thought takes root in a mind that if we ended ourselves and this planet, these feelings and what we'd just made the frantically fleeing fragile creature feel, would no longer exist.
Our tear ducts begin to malfunction as we gaze upon the three moons. Attempting to find some way of completing the scouring of all that is feels, one of me eggs the others on to see if our new trait can arrest a moon from it’s orbit with sufficient velocity on the fungi world and make it all stop.
The me is outvoted two to one as the brief unified rejection results in [Lesser Matter Manipulation] being used in the opposite fashion to what the mind insidiously suggested.
To all three of me’s bulging eye’d astonishment, our mental sense of the object when a me applies the trait results in something akin to placing a metaphysical plunger the size of a respectable national park on its surface as we get a sense we can most definitely have some kind of actionable cause and effect. Our shock grows further still as reality acquiesces and the planetary satellite accelerates away at the break neck speed of ‘what the actual fuck’, till it no longer inhabits the nights sky.
All myopic thoughts evaporate as my blue mana bar plummets to a fifth full for the first time in years. Following which, a me frantically looks around to make sure no one else has been made privy to our unwittingly audacious game of extraterrestrial marbles.
The three of me relax as it seems there was indeed no witness to it and an internal debate springs up as to how specifically said individual would have tied any of us to such an impossible act in the first place.
Letting out a chuckle at our collective guilt driven stupidity we take one last look around the stinking Epsilon Zone an-
“HUMAN!”
Unilaterally freezing, our redundant sphincter commences its involuntarily clenching with post sonic speed.
Focusing on the originator of the hate filled shout, we take in the now sprinting form of Euy’La throws up flares of mud and gas as she goes at what is likely the fastest speed her uncoordinated limbs can tolerate.
The me's of a couple of years ago would likely only make out the faintest of blurs in the gas, though he would likely also be dead from said gas.
The me's of now however…
Even without dedicating a mind to parsing every single minutia of reality with a fine tooth comb, knows that we could run rings around the supermodel come angry killer as she paces towards us in her respective earnest.
One of me slows our perception of time further still as another me tries to figure out how exactly she knows we're responsible for just accidentally-ing the moon. Meanwhile another me tries desperately to think of a way to make the whole murdery vibe she has going on, go away in such a way that causes her the least amount of physical and psychological harm.
Further confirming her lack of self preservation and murderous intent, her Germanic accent bellows.
“I KNEW YOU WERE NOT TO BE TRUSTED! YOU CAN CONTINUE TO HIDE IN YOUR FLESH SUIT ABOMINATION! BUT THERE IS NO DENYING IT N-“
For her own well being, one of me casts a quarter strength [Reduce Gravity] as she darts into range and follows it up with as light an application of [Lesser Manipulate Matter] as it can.
The three of me relax slightly, relishing the fact that we didn’t accidentally just make the painfully attractive elf, pate.
Slowing to a stop a couple of feet from us, with her blade still outstretched in murderous resolve, all three of me are slightly confused at the look of shock, plastered on her minimally restrained form.
Hoping to restart constructive dialogue a me asks.
“Did watching my fights teach you anything….I mean what exactly did you think you would accomplish by trying to kill me?”
Much to my's collective annoyance, Euy’La demands.
“Rrreeellleeeaaassseee mmmeee!!!”
Feeling a fresh wave of guilt at the unfair way our form of restraint retards her speech a me tries to employ reason yet again.
“Yeah but if I do that, you’ll just go all stabby-mc-kill-kill again…”
Like a broken record that compounds my guilt, she renews with her patently German tinge.
“Rrreeellleeeaaassseee mmmeee!!!”
Groaning outwardly, one of me points out that with her strength and skill she wouldn’t even break our skin.
The sound of mental crickets permeate our skull before a joint effort of proverbially smacking our forehead in unified self admonition takes place.
Releasing the skills effect we bask in self repudiation of our deeply ingrained human-esque assumptive reasoning’s.
Unsurprisingly the supermodel of an alien’s intricately runed blade glows yellow as it unerringly strikes for our unarmored neck.
It bounces off ineffectually as Euy’La tries the other side with the same comical result.
Undeterred by her initial failures she maintains a steady stream of strikes all about my's person.
The three of me try not to laugh outwardly at the fact that we're not even budging on the clearly unsteady ground from her considerable skill and mana expenditure, lest we incense her enrampagement further.
Then she activates the way of the hamster and goes for our right eye. Trying to assuage some of our earlier guilt, we unilaterally, if suicidaly, make no move to stop her.
It is hard to do justice to just how weird it is to look at the point of a blade from so close up.
Certainly, the instinct to bat it away from our once oh-so-poppable ocular organ has to be continually suppressed. But once my's fragile human habits are reigned in, the three of me just look at the stock still and wide eyed weapons owner with budding bemusement.
The glow of yellow around the blade evaporates as it falls from her grip to the marsh bellow and she backs away as she stammers.
“M-m-monster…”
Hoping to blunt her fright a me offers.
“I bet you use that pick up line with all the guys you try to stab in the eye.”
Confirming the Comedian class was never going to be on our list of future class options, she collapses to the mud and mumbles.
“S-stop toying with me fiend…I will be no party to your heinous plans any longer…E-End me...”
Rolling our eyes a me counters.
“Stop being so dramatic lady! I am just gonna to do what I said I wa-“
And a me has to apply [Lesser Matter Manipulation] to the dagger she tries to plunge into her neck.
Despite our supposedly ridiculous intellect and wisdom scores, we’ve clearly universally misjudged the alien temptress.
Thoroughly out of our depth as the elf struggles against my restraint by using both hands to increase the force behind her attempted blood letting, all of me look on in perplexed shock.
Then the mind in the fore is taken back to right before I failed Kelly for the last time.
It was a year after I’d gotten sober, and we’d been dating on and off for a couple of rocky years.
Despite my abysmal job prospects and constant mood swings borne of perennial hallucinations, we managed to make it work for a time.
She too was not without her own demons that stemmed from precipitously low self image and legal/illegal drug abuse, but inspite our mismatching malfunctions, to me, there was no finer female specimen in the whole god forsaken world.
And so it was that one day after having been let go from the warehouse job I recently managed to un-secure for ‘being a fuckin loony toon’. I’d used the remainder of my meager severance that wasn’t devoured by rent, to splurge on a pair of burgers and some chips from the local fish and chip shop.
What can I say.
I’ve always been a strategic planner.
With burgers coddled in not so greaseproof wrapping, sweating beside similarly sequestered chips inside a wafer thin plastic bag. I whistled the pop-song of the month as the rain smattered my mismatching clothes and bag alike, as i made my absent minded way along the two and a half k walk through the urban city sprawl to the cramped flat we shared.
Like with most situations back then, I somehow managed to remain blissfully unaware of the warning signs present in those around me.
In my naivety, I’d believed that if I told my substance addled, anorexic girlfriend she was beautiful, vehemently and frequently enough, I could, if not cure her, at least in part help waylay the thoughts of destructive self hate she clearly harbored within.
Fiddling the door lock open, with sweaty and waterlogged hands, I announced my arrival and the bounty I’d procured to the flat at large.
When naught but silence greeted me I was only mildly dejected and told myself, Kelly could nuke hers in the microwave when she got back.
No stranger to eating alone, I sat down on one of the mismatched chairs about the table and tucked in to my luke warm and half sodden prize as the fat and salt content just barely ameliorated the loss of ingredients cohesive demarcation.
I was halfway through my feasting when I wondered why I could hear the tap dripping.
Shrugging off the sound I munged more excessively chicken salted chips whilst my taste buds luxuriated in the sodium overload.
It was when I was down to the last few bites of mush come burger with the lot that my irritation piqued.
After having just been told for the umpteenth time that ‘you’re a useless faggot’ my mind zeroed in on the persistent drip of water as something I could potential control and correct.
Grumbling mild obscenities I narrowed down its source not to the kitchen sink, like I had been expecting, but the bathroom instead.
The strangest things stick with you from events of the past.
The sound of the door creaking open, though likely barely a whisper of a fart at the time, in my memory it rings louder than any overtaxed pneumatic drill ever could.
Finding the grimy porcelain of the wash basin to be innocent crimes against Benjamin’s lunch, my attention turned to the bath and it’s obscuring, black mold infested shower curtain.
I almost slip on the soaked through bathmat as a voice tells me I’m a ‘fucking looser’.
After sufficiently correcting the incorporeal taunt, I slide back the unclean partition to try and correct some small wrong in the world when my heart stops.
I don’t remember actually slipping on the bath mat, yet I clearly must have because next thing I know, I’m on the unevenly tiled floor with my head having hit and broken the wooden towel rack.
Half scrambling, half slipping my way back to the pink tinged bathwater I fumble for the pale hand lolling near its full brim.
The owner is the young woman I told was 'The hottest girl in not just this suburb but the next one over as well’ just this morning.
Yet her current condition tell me she doesn't think all that much of my opinions.
Her excessively scarred forearms leak from where she opened them the almost-correct way.
Her nakedness so slippery my trembling hands almost don’t manage to get her free of her intended resting place.
Floundering about on the too slick floor, I poorly mirror a triage-ing nurse as I use both our none too clean towels, to administer tourniquets on both her still leaking wrists.
Shes colder than ice as my jittery grip almost drops my mobile when I hear the voice of the emergency services operator.
Numbly mumbling out the address and my stupid beautiful Kelly’s condition, it thankfully isn’t long before I hear hammering on the apartments front door.
And like a woefully orchestrated dance, we’re separated by people better equipped to deal with such thin-
As another mind attempted and failed to reassure the mind reliving the event that it was not in fact happening now. My other mind maintained its grip on the dagger with [Lesser Matter Manipulation] whilst wondering how not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Leaving the broken being to her own devices is certainly a way to wash our hands of the predicament. However Euy’La quashes that escapism as she releases the knife and makes to rip off her filtration mask. This in turn leads a me to restrain her movements more completely.
The me that is still present has the strangely comforting realization that as monstrous as we've have become, none of us appear to have reached the level of callousness that allows us to abandon a short term companion to her self destruction so easily.
Path of action clearer, the me opens a [Lesser Dimensional Portal] to City #181 as my's perfect recall dictates that was where the uncoordinated space elf had tightly embraced with another of her species before she noticed we were watching and broke the contact in a flurry of self consciousness. Still adjusting to the fact that we can move shit with our mind, we gingerly step through the tear in reality, willing Euy’La to drift in lockstep beside us:
You have entered City #181.
Stepping out into the white utilitarian architecture of system generated buildings that populate the City’s HUB area, a me notes there seems to be some sort of sizeable elf gathering taking place directly in front of the City’s looming dome of administration.
We move us and our much more unobjectionable companion closer at a sedate pace, so as not to alarm the already apparently agitated gatherings participants.
Coming to the back of the loudly arguing crowd, relief floods us that our arrival in the artificially lit evening, seems to have gone completely unnoticed.
Our relief multiplies three fold as the me trapped in the past and its consoler in chief have returned to more actively partake in the now.
Just as the triumvirate reaches a consensus to ask one of the crowd why the fuck everyone is out of bed and angry about it. A silver bearded figure takes to a circular black wooden dais and holds their hands up, instantly quelling the irately German accented elves.
“My fellow Sal’Eir! The time that has been prophesied by the Initiate Mystic Hap’Tur has come to pass!”
Murmurs spring up from those gathered as robed grandpa elf motions for silence once more.
“The betrayer from the void has come and claimed the second moon, Jeq’Rut, the sleeping life mother! And in doing so has doomed us all!”
The shouts of anger and disbelief ripple through the crowd, each one louder then the last.
However, the speaker doesn't seek to shout over them, taking to simply holding his arms aloft in stoic patience until they're quieted once more.
“But fear not my brothers and sisters, for despite the foretelling we shall live to see the secondary phase and survive it just like the thousand cycles of the last! And if any am-“
As he was sweeping the crowd, to search the unfairly attractive faces of the audience his silver eyes met mine and went wide.
Holding my's collectively redundant breath for what was going to happen next, the old bearded elf did not leave us waiting long.
Sticking out an accusatory finger right at yours' truly, anger contorted his unjust features as spittle flecked his yell.
“THE BETRAYER IS AMONGST US!”
There was dead silence as one of me looked to Euy’La who seemed to have just recovered from her fugue state by way of struggling like a live worm on a fishhook.
Releasing the reinvigorated elf, in the vain hope that she would be able to speak on our behalf, and in the worst case not make matters any bleaker.
Feeling a collective pit open in our stomach, one of me watched in slow motion as she her attractive derriere disappeared into the stunned throng of her own kind and disappeared without even a perfunctory glance backward.
Huffing a me turned instead to face the Germanicaly shouty old alien and the thousands strong crowd of otherworldly supermodels unhealthily fixated upon us.
One of me attempted to mount an expert case of subterfuge mingled with a healthy dollop of misdirection in our defense as it offered.
“So I’m… u-uh… S-Sorry about the moon?”
A pin could have dropped and it would have been deafening, owing largely to the fact that none of them seemed to know how to respond.
Yet that response held for only a few seconds before their bearded leader decreed.
“DEATH TO THE BETRAYER!”
And with that one phrase of monumental character assassination, the once somewhat rational and reasonable pointy eared fuckers acted as one. Young and old alike taking to priming spells, arrows and steel toward a singular frenzied purpose of exterminating the only racial minority still present on their fungal infested world.
Me's.