Zane reached out to touch the Vendor of Souls card and winced as golden light shot out of it and wrapped him in its embrace. When he looked up the card was gone, and he was alone in the ruins of the convenience store with the glowing corpse of a dead monster blocking the entrance.
With the distraction of the card gone, fear started to crawl into his heart. Normally, the teenager manning the kiosk would be chatting up a storm the moment he entered the store, regardless of whether he wanted to talk or not.
Her name was Chay.
Where did Chay go?
With a strained push Zane raised himself off the floor, avoiding the remains of his lunch. He made his way to the front kiosk, and blanched when he saw the remains of a swivel chair. Its foamy cushion was being dissolved by a thick black liquid, and the wheels had been replaced by crystals of differing sizes, causing it to capsize.
The black fluid had covered the innards of the kiosk from top to bottom, ruining what was left of the building. There was enough liquid on the walls to fill a person.
He hoped it wasn’t Chay. She was too nice for a fate that cruel.
The rest of the store was just as damaged. Half of the back had been scooped out neatly and replaced by a wall of solid rock. The content of several cans oozed out where they had been split in half from the insertion, and the contents smelt rancid despite being fresh. All of the glass walls facing the street had been fractured and several were missing without any sign of their whereabouts. One wall was now a shimmering pile of liquid that looked like red jelly, its surface jiggling as the wind touched it.
It was madness. And yet none of it compared to what was waiting for him at the end of the store. The car-human monster’s corpse lay still against the entrance, a neon spike still imbedded in its head and a soft bronze glow billowing out of its limbs.
The glow was calling him.
Zane picked up a can of food that had fallen to the ground and threw it at the corpse. It hit the monster in the face and there was no response. He stepped forward, watching the creature carefully.
Inch by inch he made his way toward it, gaining confidence as he moved. As he drew near, he saw that parts of its mechanical body were covered in flesh, the material soft pink in color. Zane reached his hand out toward its side, avoiding the human segments.
When his fingertip tapped against it, the bronze glow coalesced and leapt into his hand.
There was a flash of bright light but this time he was expecting it. He kept his eyes glued onto his hand and watched as the light roiled and churned. In seconds it had transformed into a tangible card that fell into his palm.
The card was bronze with a blue glow. On its surface it had an artistic drawing of a short man with cropped brown hair. He was wearing a pocketed travel shirt with suspenders and carrying a backpack filled to the brim as he looked out of a glass window onto the streets of the city below.
Zane would recognize that person anywhere.
It was Tobie.
The Calm Wanderer (Rare): Born from a preparer of the highest order with a mind of equal measure. Tobias Fletcher vowed he would survive the apocalypse. He was wrong. ffect: Activating this card will bestow you with peace of mind and emotion. Activates for 15 minutes. Cooldown of 30 minutes.
The entirety of a human’s worth was summed up in a few lines on a card.
Zane bent over to hurl, but nothing came out.
Horror swept over him, then fear, then discussed, each of them alternating across his heart in a cycle. They paralyzed him more effectively than any restraint.
The moment was broken when the light in his hands grew bright. He looked down to see the card leaping across his palm towards his chest. Zane hurriedly raised his hand to stop it, but the card sank right through his skin and enveloped him.
I know how to use this. Zane thought.
The knowledge came to him instinctively. He imagined the card in his mind and in front of his eyes a transparent vision of The Calm Wanderer appeared. It wanted to be used, he could sense it. He activated it, and a wave of serenity washed over him. The fear and disgust were still there, but they were quickly growing thinner, and he knew that he could manage them now.
Zane’s body sagged as though a boulder had been lifted off of it. His thoughts flowed freely like a river, and he looked around the corpse with fresh eyes.
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With a mighty heave he pulled the neon spear out of Tobie’s head.
It was cracked, but still usable. Instead of blood there was a thin layer of oil covering its surface. He turned around and a minute later he had a cheap blanket in his hand. He threw it over his friend’s face. It wasn’t the burial Tobie needed, but his friend deserved that much.
What do I do now?
According to the effect of the card, The Calm Wanderer would only be effective for a few more minutes. However, the world had gone to crap, and he had no idea why. When the card wore off he’d be paralyzed again.
He needed answers.
“($!^ #*&^##)”
A clicking screech interrupted his thoughts, and he jumped back. He turned toward the source of the sound and froze as he spotted a figure standing outside.
It had walked to the door. And it wasn’t human.
Zane stepped back as a six-armed creature stepped into view. It was small, half the height of the entryway, and instead of skin where skin was supposed to be all he saw was black chitin. Four bulbous eyes gazed at him, each one pale with thin folds of skin peeling off of them, and two mandibles clicked at the end of the lipless maw as it stared at him.
Only the calming effect of The Calm Wanderer stopped him from letting out a scream.
The creature waved its claw in the air, and there was a shift in the pressure of his surroundings. A soft blue glow flowed from its digits and flew into its head. Once again it opened its chitinous maw.
“Soulsmith, radiant as the skies fell.”
Zane recoiled as the voice hit him. It came out sounding like English, but it was anything but human. It sounded like a bee had figured out how to flap its wings to form syllables.
However, the fact that the creature knew English wasn’t lost on him.
Could this thing be a person?
Considering what had happened to Tobie, he couldn’t rule out the possibility. But if the creature was a human, then it didn’t have any intention of telling him that it was.
“Power, cascading like waterfalls,” it chittered. “Dragging, in the core.”
“What the hell are you saying?” he asked, anger replacing his fear for a moment. He finally had a chance to talk to somebody, and they were speaking nonsense.
The creature stopped, staring at him with its four bulbous eyes. It tilted its head and scratched its chitin stomach with its claws. Then it let out a low hum from its maw. What came out was a surprisingly comprehensible sentence.
“Honored soulsmith, I offer celebrations on your settling into the heart of the wave so quickly. Do you claim this bounty?”
Soulsmith?
Confusion gave way to anger at the number of unknowns he was facing. His anxiety rose and his chest pounded. The effect of The Calm Wanderer was nearing its end, but he bottled his emotions and forced myself to focus on the situation at hand.
This thing wanted Tobie’s corpse.
But why?
Zane had a feeling he didn’t want to know. However, this thing looked like it had more answers than he did. He wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers.
“I can trade it to you, for some information,” he said.
“A lie?” it clicked its mandibles. “You will run with it when I have given this information.”
It stepped forward and Zane raised his neon spear warily. The creature’s upper arms each split apart into three segments, all razor-thin and extremely sharp.
“I guarantee as a…soulsmith that I’ll give it to you,” he said.
His words were a gamble, but the creature paused, clicking its mandibles together. He couldn’t read its expression, and he readied the neon spear, expecting a fight. Instead, the creature lowered its claws and nodded its head at him.
“Acceptable,” it said. “I will answer a question.”
“Three,” he shot back.
The creature paused. A single mandible clicked against its maw.
“Deal,” it said.
“What’s happening here?” The words shot out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Zane stared at the creature as it contemplated his question.
“The &*^%^ has descended,” The creature said.
It waited expectantly for him to respond, as though it had explained everything.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Zane said.
“You do not know?” Its eyes wavered. “Unfortunate, as the cosmos spins.”
Zane shook his head as he prepared to tell it off for speaking gibberish, but it raised a claw to stop him.
“Your world has been struck by the &*^%^ wave. That is the name that our people have given it. Some call it anarchy. Others call it divine. We do not speak its name, for that would bring order to chaos. And chaos does not want to be restrained." The creature paused, and then nodded its head as though privately agreeing with itself. “The wave brings change, rewards, and opportunity. It has crossed a thousand worlds, the essence of each assimilated into its being. By touching your world, it has graced you with a piece of every world it has ever encountered. Their histories. Their denizens. Their treasures. Each has been bestowed to you. All stricken worlds experience this change. It is inevitable.”
There was a calm detachment to its words that translated across species. It made Zane feel sick to his stomach.
He steeled his resolve and asked his second question.
“What are you? You’re clearly not human.”
“I am Gor Mar, where the wave strikes. First of my kind to set foot on your world. I am not a denizen of the assimilated realms if that is your worry. I am a Kapdel scout. I hope to become the first to explore the ruins the wave dropped into your world and reap their benefits.”
The first.
That meant that there would be more. He didn’t know what Kapdel was, but he knew that a scout always came before an army.
“‘Rewards and opportunities’. Are you saying you waited for us to fall, like a vulture?" Zane spat the words out, anger laced across each one.
"I do not know what a vulture is," Gor Mar clicked its mandibles. "But none can predict the chaos wave. They can only take advantage of its wake. The strongest will sense its arrival first. But it will be the closest that reap the most reward."
"You’re saying that you got lucky and happened to be in the area."
The Kapdel didn’t respond, but Zane had a feeling that he was right.
Still, he was glad that it hadn’t taken his comment as a query because there was still something he had to ask. he looked around at the shattered remnants of the city. What had once been a sprawling metropolis filled with millions was now a sprawling wasteland devoid of life.
There was only one question that could be asked in this situation.
“Can my planet be restored to the way it was before?” Zane asked.
“No. The world you knew is no more.”
Gor Mar tapped its claws against Tobie’s corpse, its maw widening into a vicious grin.
“Congratulations, and rejoice, for you stand in the heart of a new chaos world.”