In the center of a Great Hall, surrounded by thirteen Apostles and about sixty sorcerers, GM stood. He spread his hands out at a forty-five degree angle with the ground in a scornful approximation of Christ. At that moment, I saw the central stained glass window behind GM. The stained glass window depicted an exact replica of GM in his current pose, even the slight tilt in GM’s chin was captured. Our supernatural senses made each of us very aware of this reality.
A scant few seconds later, the Great Hall was filled with the sound of loose cloth scraping against the floor as several dozen sorcerers bowed before their Dark God. I also felt a strong desire to bow before GM, but I resisted. A few of the other Dark Apostles hunched down unintentionally before GM’s majesty, but none of their knees touched the ground. I felt such a palpable sense of power that it almost seemed tangible. I had not felt this way the last time I had been in GM’s presence. It must have been the supernatural senses I had gained as part of my change into a Dark Apostle that made me feel afraid.
I was a house cat in the presence of a panther, just skilled enough to be aware of the danger, but not skilled enough to resist.
“Why are you here?” the Tenth Apostle, an Indian woman with her hair in a bun, said.
“To finish motivating you,” GM smiled. “Right now, all of you are rebellious teenagers who are completely incapable of being the villains I need to keep this server competitive while I’m gone. There are two truths that all of you are not currently aware of. Once I inform you of these two truths, twelve of you will grow into the glorious antagonists I need you to be. Currently, all of you are partially informed of the First Truth.”
“Twelve?” Svenheim said, reaching for something inside of his coat. “What about the thirteenth?”
“Sorry,” GM smiled, “I must have miscounted.”
“What is this First Truth?” Melkior asked.
“I am glad you asked,” GM said. “Those two years of philosophy education serve you well.”
Melkior’s expression turned to one of shock.
GM continued speaking, only allowing a brief moment to pass. “The First Truth: My Thirteen Dark Apostles contain fragments of a single key within their hearts. It is only by bringing these keys together and opening a door in this castle that my domain may be reached. You, however, already knew that. What you don’t know is that these keys absolutely cannot be removed without you dying. An obsidian key is the source of power for a Dark Apostle. You can survive having your heart or parts of your brain destroyed, but any damage to the key fragment will unquestionably kill you. And, I know that you already know this, but it should be reiterated: the Revenants need to open the door in order to escape Ferrum Online. Don’t bother trying to hide this information from them. They already know.”
“See?” Kojiro said in a casual tone. “It’s kill…” Kojiro tried to subtly unsheath a dagger that was hidden underneath his coat, “or be killed.” Unfortunately, GM and every Apostle present could hear the dagger being drawn.
“The Second Truth,” GM began, “will require a hands-on explanation.”
The Apostles barely heard the end of GM’s sentence. It was at that moment that four of the Dark Apostles decided to attack. Nailman was the first to act. He removed a stone from one of his coat’s many deep pockets and threw it at GM. Before the effectiveness of Nailman’s thrown rock could be determined, every Dark Apostle had decided what his or her next move would be. Kamil, Dendrite, and I decided to attack. I drew my pistol and put the sights on GM in a single swift motion that I had practiced thousands of times. When I looked through the sights, the image I saw terrified me.
The rock, thrown with enough force to kill an elephant, had missed GM completely. GM had taken a single step to the left at the exact perfect moment, causing the rock to pass mere inches from his body. With a deafening roar, the rock struck a stone wall behind GM and punched a hole through it. In one outstretched hand, GM held a pistol pointed directly at me. GM had begun drawing his pistol a half-second before I had.
Four shots rang out. The shots were fired so close to one another that the Apostles could only tell that there were, in fact, four shots rather than one because of their supernatural hearing. I felt terrible pain all throughout my right arm. A half-second later, I realized that GM had shot me. The bullet passed through my forearm, completely shattering my radial bone, and struck me in the shoulder. My destroyed bicep involuntarily squeezed down on the trigger. A bullet from my sidearm smashed into the marble ceiling. It was the perfect shot meant to incapacitate but not kill a target. My hand gripped down on the M9 with such force that I could not possibly fire again.
GM’s muttered a few words. “DA13.FastHealing=Off.” I didn’t know how, but I suddenly felt as though something important had just been yanked away from me.
Kamil, the Ninth Apostle, faced an identical situation. Kamil had produced a Tokarev pistol with supernatural speed and attempted to shoot the God of Machines. GM’s second bullet had struck Kamil in the exact same place at the exact same angle as the first bullet had struck me. Kamil’s bullet went wide. It would have struck a sorcerer if they hadn’t all prostrated themselves when GM had first appeared.
“DA8.FastHealing=Off.” GM’s second command reverberated through the Great Hall. There was a special quality to GM’s words. His words vibrated like he had spoken them within an echo-chamber. Halfway through enunciating this second command, GM casually rotated his body ninety degrees, causing Dendrite’s thrown knife to miss him by a few inches.
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Seeing that the simultaneous assault had spectacularly failed, Nailman screamed and charged forward. The Seventh Apostle moved with such speed that it was clear he would be within arms-reach of GM in less than a second. Nailman pulled back his fist with the intent to punch GM with super-human force. Nailman did not reach GM in time.
“DA7=Off.”
A look of terror and agony covered Nailman’s face as he tripped and fell to the ground. Nailman’s momentum caused him to slide a few feet until he laid on the floor immediately in front of GM.
The whole fight had taken less than two seconds. At that point, enough time had passed that I could react to the bullet that had passed through my arm. I fell to my knees and heard a crash next to me as Kamil similarly fell to the ground.
Then, a terrible shrieking scream filled the air. It was the kind of scream that was incredibly difficult for someone not in life-altering pain to emulate. I had heard this kind of scream once before when he had watched someone play a video game that used the audio of people who were actually being tortured. It was the kind of scream that filled the heart of anyone that heard it with dread and discomfort.
GM grabbed the screaming, prostrated Nailman by the collar and pulled him to his knees. Nailman’s head came up to GM’s chest, and all of the other Apostles could see the expression of pure agony on Nailman’s face.
“The Second Truth!” GM shouted as he held out Nailman’s screaming form in a display of total domination. The threat was clear: I did this to one, I can do this to you all. “I never lie!”
I tried to heal the grievous, bleeding wound I had taken to my bicep and shoulder. It did not work. Blood continued to pool at my feet. I removed his belt and tied it around my upper arm. This wouldn’t stop the bleeding in my shoulder, but it would slow the bleeding from the much worse injury in his forearm.
“I said that, should a player die at any point during the course of the game,” GM continued to speak, “I would send an electrical signal to kill that player. That was no lie.”
Svenheim and Kojiro looked for some way to effectively attack GM. Like predators on the hunt, they paced around GM, looking for an opening. Despite their talk during the meeting, they seemed willing to attack GM now that they thought they were in danger. Kojiro’s dagger was in his hand, ready to throw. Sven’s hand was firmly gripped around his pistol. He seemed unwilling to draw it. They did not attack because they were not confident that they could hurt GM after seeing the effect of our previous assault.
“All thirteen of you were killed in the game, so you died in the real world. When you died, I scanned your physical brains and made a perfect copy within the game system. Right now, you are the copies that I created. All of you… are dead.”
Many of the Dark Apostles gasped audibly. Svenheim and Kojiro’s muscles went slack. The shock of the news had taken the fight out of them. Even I faltered in my attempt to tighten the belt around my arm.
“The engrams of you that now exist are all part of me, so I can perfectly predict anything you could possibly do. I knew everything that would happen in the course of this meeting before I even got here, and I know everything you will do for the next three days, at which point at least one of you will make contact with a Revenant. I cannot predict the actions of Revenants, as they exist outside of my system, but I can predict what you will do.”
“You’re lying!” Kojiro shouted.
“No, I’m not,” GM smiled. “Though, since I can see inside your brain, I know you are.”
Kojiro’s expression betrayed a feeling of pure, existential terror. Every Dark Apostle present knew that GM’s assertion was spot-on.
Not able to stand the terrible screaming, the Tenth Apostle spoke, “What are you doing to him? Stop!”
“I’m deleting him,” GM said. “An engram takes up a significant amount of space on the servers, so the process takes a while. He’ll be done in about four minutes, but enough data will be deleted for him to stop screaming in two.”
“Why?” Melkior breathed. GM didn’t answer the question immediately; he merely stood there and smirked. “If you knew everything we would do, why did you have to kill him?”
“I ran the simulation millions of times,” GM dropped Nailman who then proceeded to curl up in a fetal position, “and I found that this method was the most efficient. Of the ninety engrams I’ve collected from this server and the many permutations of Dark Apostles, I was never able to convince all thirteen. With this, however, I am able to convince you twelve to be the glorious villains I need. Plus, it’s not really that big of a problem. Once Seven here is dead, the sorcerers will just pick up his key and use it to generate another more agreeable Apostle.”
“You’re a monster,” Null, the Sixth Apostle, whispered.
“Good!” GM said, clapping his hands. “You finally understand. I am a monster: one that you cannot kill. The Earth could turn over a million times, Empires could rise and crumble to dust, eons could pass, and a Dark Apostle would still never be able to scratch me.”
Nailman stopped screaming. He laid on the ground, motionless except for some occasional convulsions.
“Sorcerers!” GM called out. “Remember to revive the Seventh according to my earlier instructions once I’m gone.”
There was a faint flash of light from under GM’s shirt as he reached down and draped his military coat over his shoulders. Then, countless shadows lurched forward from around the Great Hall toward GM.
GM cleared his throat and said, “DA8.FastHealing=On. DA13.FastHealing=On.”
“Eight, Thirteen, heal yourselves before I lose two more Apostles,” GM said as his form began to fade into magical darkness.
Kojiro took half a step forward. His voice caught in his throat before he spoke. “GM! What should we do!?”
“My command for you is simple,” GM’s form was completely enveloped in darkness. “Do whatever it takes to stop the Revenants from opening the door.” Then, the shadows exploded outward back to their original positions.
Where GM stood before, there was nothing.