The methodical, piercing strike of the smith’s hammer rippled out from the centre of the empty void like a pebble thrown into the centre of a lifeless pond.
It was the heartbeat of creation – of invention and imagination – and Rain found herself instinctively drawn to it as her curiosity bested her caution.
She didn’t know how she found herself in this void. The last thing that she remembered was Gorath’s claws tearing through her leg and being hurled away before she fell into darkness.
She looked down at her mangled leg. Her flesh had been stripped to the bone, as if it had been flayed, yet she felt no pain in the void. Vaguely, her mind turned to the battle – and to Calista, Rain, and Xavier – but the thought felt distant.
As if it had happened long ago, and it no longer mattered.
The only thing she could feel was the stroke of the smith’s hammer - creation embodied.
The void had no solid surface beneath her feet, so she reached out towards the sound with her mind and felt her body propel forward. Soaring through the void, Rain lost all perception of time, as if she floated in a dream.
She couldn’t say whether she traveled for a minute or a millennium. They were, perhaps, the same thing in the void. But she had arrived where she needed to be nonetheless.
The man with the hammer crouched over his anvil as his precision hammer strokes fell. He was eight-feet-tall, his hairy arms a mass of perfectly toned muscles achieved over eons. His beard, carefully tied with three straps of worn leather, fell to his chest and swung back and forth with each swing, as if it were the pendulum of a clock.
Rain floated towards the anvil and gazed at the object the bearded man – the god – crafted. It was a small grey cube, perfectly smooth on the outside but impossibly complex within.
His hammer fell once more, and Rain could sense each blow created something beautiful inside the cube. A range of mountains. A vast ocean. A raging river. A wolf. A shadowy dragon.
“Ah, you’ve arrived,” the god said, staring down at the inquisitive woman who floated beside his anvil. “I was wondering which of you it would be. Don’t be shy. Go ahead, you can touch it.”
Rain reached out and stroked her fingers across the top of the grey cube. She could feel an entire world contained within. A prison. A test. A future.
“Do you know what that is, Ms. Desjarlais?” asked the god curiously.
“The God Contest,” Rain replied without hesitation. She had seen it in its earliest form – empty of all the intimate details that the god had created within – in Oracle’s memory on the beach. Yet it was not only through that memory that she knew it. It had a pulse – an energy – that mimicked that of the strange world she had come from. She would know this wonderous creation anywhere.
“And do you know who I am?”
“Hephaestus,” Rain answered, again without hesitation. Her eyes never left the cube.
“Impressive,” Hephaestus said, inquisitively. “A few who find their way to the void do recognize the cube, though only one other in my time knew the name of its smith.”
“You are not its only smith,” Rain said, reflexively, her palms clasped together in a silent request.
“No, I am not,” Hephaestus answered truthfully. He grasped the cube between two fingers and placed it gently in Rain’s waiting palms. “There were three smiths that crafted the essence of the thirteenth God Contest. I am but one – He who built the world.”
The cube was impossibly light and infinitely fragile, yet Rain could feel the heavy weight of responsibility press down upon her, as if the fate of existence itself now rested in her hands. Rain found herself cradling the object as if she were holding an egg and the life inside were a hair away from being extinguished.
“Oracle – my dearest Oracle – She who built the heart – created its AI Director. And Cizen – my oldest friend – who he who gave the thirteenth its deepest secrets.”
Hephaestus sighed regretfully.
“We had so little time, you see. We worked apart – isolated from one another – out of fear that our actions would become known to our High Lord. The thirteenth was the unsanctioned God Contest – experimental to its very core. An experiment that crossed the line into blasphemy. Yet what were we to do? At the end, madness spread amongst the gods like wildfire, and even the Nexus itself was infected. There was no other way.”
Rain gingerly placed the cube back on the anvil and felt relieved as its mental weight lifted from her shoulders.
“Why am I here?” Rain asked simply. “I know Gorath hurt me. Badly. But I don’t feel dead. So there must be another reason I am standing here next to you.”
Hephaestus smiled at Rain’s calm, curious analysis.
“You are not dead. Your friends survived the Arena of Protection, and you now rest at your Castle of Glass. You shall awaken soon, which is why I summoned you here.”
Hephaestus slung his hammer across his back and placed the cube inside the pocket of his apron. “Come, have a drink we me, Rain Desjarlais. I have a proposal I wish you to hear.”
Rain floated beside the smithing god as they walked away from the anvil. Around them, the void slowly filled in with detail, piece by piece, until they stood within a facsimile of Rain On My Parade, its few tables as empty of customers as they had been in the real world.
“Perhaps a nice cup of Dark Introspection?” suggested the god as he lowered himself into one of her rickety folding chairs. The chair’s legs strained under the weight of the god and his hammer, but miraculously held.
“Yes, sir. Coming right up,” Rain said in her customer service voice. She darted behind her counter and grabbed the tin filled with her signature tea that she and Milly had named on the night they first met. “Sugar or honey?”
“Black is fine,” Hephaestus chuckled. The god looked more out of place here than he had been in the middle of an empty void.
A second or an eternity later, Rain placed the two cups of Dark Introspection on the table and sat in the chair across from the god. Hephaestus picked up the teacup between two meaty fingers and took an experimental sip.
“Ah, I see. It is a wonderful concoction. You have a wonderful mind, Ms. Desjarlais.”
“It’s just Rain, if you like. And I’ve always liked creating things. It’s why I was so drawn to the coffee and tea business, and why I wanted to open my own place. There are an infinite combination of ingredients that I can experiment with, and while most will be no good, a few, like Dark Introspection, have the potential to become something extraordinary.”
“Invention is the art of many failures paving the road to success,” Hephaestus mused. “Though it’s equally possible that such a road leads you to the edge of a cliff.”
“Like the God Contest,” Rain surmised. “It hasn’t been successful with humans.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Hephaestus admitted. “And I fear I shall not live long enough to know if this final attempt leads to success or hurls us all off the cliff.”
Rain gazed at the god and saw tears in the corner of his eyes. He wiped them away with his hairy hand before they fell.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I held it off as long as I could…,” Hephaestus said, staring out the window at the beautiful ocean he had designed. “The madness. I watched it take so many of my fellow gods, and for a while, I thought my isolation – my obsession – with designing the thirteenth would keep me safe so that I might see it through to the end. It did not.”
Hephaestus held out his arm, and Rain could see tendrils of black liquid crawling under his skin, like worms burrowing through the soil.
“We had just finished the base skeleton of the thirteenth. The plot of the game, if you will, and the base world where it would play out,” Hephaestus continued. “Cizen and I were celebrating in my workshop when exhaustion finally caught up to me and I collapsed. When I awoke, the madness had infected me.”
“How… how much more did you have left to design?” Rain asked as she traced her finger along the tendrils in Hephaestus’ arm.
“Too much. Far too much,” Hephaestus admitted. “Cizen did what he could to slow down the madness, but all his attempts served only to accelerate its spread. I had mere months, which in god-time, might as well be the blink of an eye. This, Rain, brings us to why I have brought you here.”
Hephaestus flicked his wrist, and a screen appeared before him.
Specialty Class: Hephaestus’ Protégé
“I was an artist who had sketched the outline of his masterpiece, only to pass before my vision could be finished. It was to be left to Oracle’s untested AI Director to fill in the blanks. But, despite Oracle’s efforts, I did not believe that an artificial being could handle such a vast responsibility. It would be but a child, asked to finish the work of a master.”
The tendrils of madness spread up Hephaestus’ arm and into his neck. His neck muscles bulged in protest, but the madness continued unimpeded.
“I knew if humans were to stand a chance in the thirteenth, there would need to player for whom the incomplete contest would be a source of strength, rather than a detriment. A player that could see the blank canvas for what it was – limitless potential. A player filled with creativity, with a mind for invention and experimentation.”
Hephaestus chuckled.
“You might say I took a lesson from my darling wife. She knew we could not finish the thirteenth, so she birthed the AI Director to empower the thirteenth to complete itself. I, on the other hand, choose to empower a player. I spent my final month of sanity creating the Hephaestus’ Protégé class, in the hope that a player would prove worthy of it.”
“That’s… very clever,” Rain praised, genuinely impressed. She willed the player screen to expand so she could read the full description of the class.
Specialty Class: Hephaestus’ Protégé
The Hephaestus’ Protégé specialty class grants the following to the player:
The World Smith’s Blank Canvas: Hephaestus’ Protégé is the beneficiary of Hephaestus’ incomplete work. Normally, a player’s crafting skill is restricted by in-game rules regarding quality, quantity, and type of enhancements allowed to be imbued on items and equipment. These rules do not apply to Hephaestus’ Protégé. Further, unlike other players, Hephaestus’ Protégé gains the ability to modify and enhance existing items and equipment.
The Master of Invention: At the core of Hephaestus’ Protégé is a heart of imagination. Possessing the spirit of an artist, scientist, and entrepreneur, the player gains an instinctive ability for design and manipulation of the world around here. She gains access to Hephaestus’ Hidden Invention talent web. She immediately gains two invention talent points and gains an invention talent point every two levels, in addition to the standard talent point progression.
Driver of Evolution: Hephaestus’ Protégé is a tireless driver of innovation, drawing from her very essence to fuel the creativity that evolves the world. She immediately increases her agility and magic attributes by twenty.
Only the Original: Hephaestus’ Protégé has dedicated her life to the pursuit of the new and feels weighed down by the status quo. Each reproduction by the Protégé of an already invented item is 50% less effective than the one before it. This does not apply to alchemy involving common potions and remedies.
The Innocuous Flaw: Hephaestus’ Protégé is allergic to shellfish. It won’t kill her – just make her really itchy. That’s all.
“I had to design the class within the game’s parameters, you understand. Three benefits, two detriments. Violating those rules would have put the entire thirteenth in jeopardy,” Hephaestus explained apologetically. “Though… I might have bent the rule on that last detriment, just a little bit.”
“I don’t like shellfish anyways,” Rain said, her mind already teaming with creative experiments she wanted to try. “It’s perfect. It’s like it was made for me.”
“This specialty class can be powerful, Rain, especially after you get access to its sub-class and subsequent enhancements. This is but the tip of the iceberg. But don’t overestimate it either,” warned Hephaestus. “It’s not a fast-track to success. You’re not going to be able to, say, make a leather vest that transforms you into a half-shark, half-goat creature that shoots fire from its eyes on day one. You need the right materials, and the materials for particularly powerful creations will be very hard to acquire. But when you do get them… well, let’s just say you’ll have fun. The class, if you accept it, will complement your pendant and mage alchemist specialty talent as well, taking both to new heights.”
“A half-shark, half-goat isn’t normally allowed?” asked Rain.
“There was a… well, let’s call it a disagreement, between Naigamesha and Poseidon during the sixty-seventh contest. The result was a restriction on mixing animals from different terrains. Your fellow players can’t create such an item, but, with this class, you could.”
“My tea brewing…” Rain asked as she sipped her Dark Introspection. “Does ‘Only the Original’ apply to something like that?”
“Apparently the AI Director considers that to be a form of alchemy, so your tea won’t get progressively worse the more you brew it,” Hephaestus laughed. “You can make standard alchemy creations, such as healing potions, without a degradation in quality, though there are some particularly unique potions where it would apply.”
Rain breathed a sigh of relief. She was about to accept the specialty class, when another thought crossed her mind. The madness had stretched from Hephaestus’ neck to beneath his eyes.
“You’re not the real Hephaestus, are you? Lugh Samildànach, in the Arena of Choice, was only a manifestation. You’re a duplicate imbedded in the contest, built from his memories.”
“Yes. Hephaestus installed me in the contest – in this hidden void – just as the madness reached his mind. I was his last addition to the thirteenth.”
“What happened to you… to him… after that?”
“If all went according to plan, I left a letter for my wife in my workshop, and I threw myself into the heart of the Nexus. I returned by essence back into creation, before the madness took it instead,” Hephaestus replied matter-of-factly.
“You… you killed yourself?” Rain asked, dismayed.
“It was better than the alternative,” replied Hephaestus. “The madness robs you of all your senses and devolves you to your base instincts. Everything that make you who you are dissolves into a cloud of violence and debauchery. In the haze of the disease, you wither away, bit-by-bit, until nothing remains but a mindless shell. At the end, even that shell decays away. You are lost, forever. At least with my way, I am in control of my fate at the end. My essence will rejoin the cycle of life, and, if I am lucky, be integrated into a future species the Nexus creates. Should the Nexus survive.”
“How… how many of the gods are left?” Rain asked softly, afraid to know the answer.
“I don’t know,” said Hephaestus, as he reached into his pocket and placed the cube on the table. “As a memory, I don’t know how much time has passed between my death and the launch of the thirteenth. It could have been a day or a hundred years. There were thousands of gods, but I fear, in my darkest thoughts, there may be but a handful who remain, and those few may be too far gone to madness to bear witness to your struggles. You are a mouse abandoned in a maze, Rain Desjarlais. The man who placed you there is dead on the floor of his lab.”
Rain fell silent, and a steady rain began to pitter-patter against the window.
“I’ll accept your class, Hephaestus,” Rain finally said, and the old god nodded his approval. “I hope I can do it justice.”
“Ms. Desjarlais, I have no doubt that you will. Thank you… for everything… may you bring salvation to your people. And a glimmer of hope to mine…”
Rain blinked, and suddenly she was alone in Rain On My Parade, the god’s empty teacup and the cube the only evidence he had been there.
“Good-bye, Hephaestus,” whispered Rain. “We’ll win the thirteenth. I promise.”
Rain Desjarlais
Level: 22
Specialty: Brewing, Experimentation
Class: Hephaestus’ Protégé
Sub-class: None
Strength:
Base: 21
Enhanced: 21
Agility:
Base: 34
Enhanced: 40 (+6 from Dagger of Lugh Samildànach)
Toughness:
Base: 15
Enhanced: 24 (+6 from Dagger of Lugh Samildànach, +3 from Rain’s Tailcoat)
Magic:
Base: 34
Enhanced: 42 (+8 from Luna’s Pendant of Imagination)
Talents:
Alchemy - Alchemy (advanced),
Combat - Dagger Specialist (advanced)
Elemental Magic - Fire Magic (beginner), Metal Magic (advanced)
Invention – Wanderer’s Bounty (beginner)
Unique Talent: The Mage Alchemist of Lugh Samildànach
Class Talents: The World Smith’s Blank Canvas, The Master of Invention, Driver of Evolution, The Innocuous Flaw, Only the Original
Sub-Class Talents: None
Equipment Benefits:
Creativity of Hephaestus (Luna’s Pendant of Imagination)