Misty Evening

The downside to being an almost imperceptible hunter was that people tended to overlook you. Like, just as a random example, when even your people, who to be fair, you were by far the stealthiest and most talented of, didn’t happen to notice you were missing, or that they hadn’t told you about the tiny little problem of a all devouring cosmic entity having shown up, or, and this was the wonderful bit, the fact that they were fleeing through a hitherto unknown gate to escape it and shutting it behind themselves more or less forever. 

Not that Misty was going to hold a grudge. The revelation of her abandonment hadn’t been noteworthy at all. She definitely hadn’t been driven into a blinding rage, then a freezing panic, and finally desperate bargaining. That she was currently sunken into a shadow’s shadow and curled up into a tiny ball the size of a marble with the consistency of a puff of wind, and the energy output of the stones around her was merely a personal choice and one she had no interest in defending or discussing.

She had settled on the “be a tiny ball” hiding option after a much-too-close run in with the servants of the aforementioned all devouring cosmic monster. 

Misty hadn’t been in predation mode when the [Formless Hungers] corrupted troops had cornered her, and that had very likely spared her from being devoured. Had she been hunting, she would have leapt on them without a thought, but she’s hesitated and the spare moment to really see what her prey was had saved her life. 

With on whiff of the [Formless Hunger’s] nature, Misty had understood that is was something Wrong on a cosmological level. She’d clung to the shadows on the ceiling with an iron tenacity as the Hunger’s troops had passed under her. Her normal urge to drop on down them and feast was completely absent but it had taken her a long moment to understand why.

The troops radiated danger not for the weapons they carried but rather for the spark that burned within them. To Misty, it looks like a sickly, colorless fire that had burned out everything insides them, leaving the troops little more than shells being piloted from affair by a being which should not have existed.

Misty had followed the corrupted troops for a while. She’d taken all of the care needed to avoid their attention, and was feeling rather proud of herself to be collecting tactical information for her people.

The more information she collected however, the more that pride turned to horror.

Misty was an abomination. It was no secret that all of the [Shadowed Starstalkers] were. No world’s nature had created them, she and all the rest of her people were product of experimentation and trials which delved into the most foul and dangerous of magics. Experiments which should never have been allowed, and certainly could not be repeated.

Perhaps thanks to that, Misty had never felt particularly concerned about the other creatures that prowled the lands her people had migrated through. She knew that however terrible they might be, none of them were as terrible as the makers her people had already slain. Humans had a phrase about “being careful or you’ll meet your maker”, but in the case of the [Shadowed Starstalkers] meeting one of their makers was simply a fresh opportunity for vengeance. 

However terrible her makers had been though, Misty quickly learned that the [Formless Hunger] was far worse. It did more than destroy, it ate the reality of what you were and left behind something that could have been a creature, or a gaping hole in reality, or some impossible combination of the two.

It didn’t matter if you were incorporeal either. Misty had watched two of her people being unraveled and put back together into something that was nothing more than a hollow vessel for the [Formless Hunger’s] will, despite the fact that it shouldn’t have been able to perceive them in the first place, much less touch or harm them.

The Hunger moved like a disaster, flowing over its opposition as effortlessly as a storm swept over the land. Unlike a storm though, it moved with intent and cruelty.

Once she saw what it was, Misty wanted nothing more than to escape from any land it held dominion over. And, of course, by that point it was too late. Her people had fled and the gate to safety was thoroughly ruined.

All of the [High Beyond] had fallen as Misty watched. An uncountable number of troops had flown to it from the sky above but none of them had brought the answer to stopping the [Formless Hunger]. One by one they’d fled or (in far more cases) fallen victim to its influence.

By the end of the assault, Misty knew there was no hope left for her.

The [Formless Hunger] was unstoppable by any power she possessed or even knew of.

Only wild, legendary tales from the realms the [Shadowed Starstalkers] visited even mentioned heroes great enough to stand again a true monster like that. Anything real, and especially anything mortal, couldn’t begin to measure up to the endless power and hunger the creature possessed.

That was when she’d begun hiding in ernest.

“If you can’t fight, then don’t,” her creche-mother had said. “Run, hide, cheat, lie. Don’t fight if you’re not going to win. If you think you have to, then think some more. There’s not so many of us that we can afford to spend our lives cheaply. Or at all.”

It was advice other races would have boggled at. [Shadowed Starstalkers] were extremely hard to kill and were often looked at as the most terrible of boogiemen lurking in dark corners.

People thought that because they didn’t lurk in the dark themselves. They didn’t see things that even Misty’s people had to be concerned about. The things that preyed on the predators. 

Even people as deadly as the [Shadowed Starstalkers] had things to be afraid of.

Misty saw those creatures fall to the [Formless Hunger] too.

And she watched it all happen alone.

Her people hadn’t meant to leave her behind. On some level she knew that, just like on some level, she knew she was already dead. She’d fed recently, so she wasn’t going to starve right away, but she was going to starve. There couldn’t be any proper hunting anywhere in the [High Beyond] because as far as Misty knew, she was the only thing left in the [High Beyond] that wasn’t a hollowed out puppet for the [Formless Hunger’s] insatiable desire to consume.

Misty could see how her end would come. She would unroll from the ball when her energy ran too low to hold the shape. As a weakened thing, she was creep around, slowly and silently. She would avoid every area where she’d seen the [Formless Hunger’s] troops gathering. She’d delve into the deep crevices that help ancient nightmare searching for remnants like herself who’d hidden away from the Hunger.

In some visions, she’d find one that was still greater than she was and it would devour her. In other visions, she’d find some weaker thing, but it’s life wouldn’t sustain her for long. In drips and drops, she’d fight back the end, but she wasn’t built to subsist on as little as could be scavenged from the [Formless Hunger’s] domain and so she’d turn to larger prey.

And the Hunger would be waiting for her.

She would pounce on a meal and discover that the meal was empty, and at the Hunger’s touch so too would she be.

She’d seen people carved out by the Hunger and it terrified her.

Better, far better, she though to stumble into some greater enemy who could slay her before the Hunger’s touch reached her.

Except that was a empty hope too.

There weren’t going to be any greater foes left. She was the only thing that could have escaped the Hunger.

She was alone.

She waited for the windless air to offer contradiction of that but none came.

She curled even tighter into a smaller ball.

And nothing disturbed her.

She waited for weakness to take her and drive her to desperate measures.

But she had fed recently.

It was going to take a long time for her to run low on life energy.

She tried counting to mark the time.

She tried remembering the last [Echo Orchestrations] she been part of.

She tried imagining all the sorts of revenge she would take on those who’d abandoned her if she ever saw them again.

She tried to think of the last words she’d want to leave for all those who’d abandoned her.

She tried to sleep.

None of that worked to pass the time.

Waiting to die was really boring it turned out.

So she got up.

What was the point of letting her base nature do her in? If she was doomed, she might as well be doomed for doing something foolish and fun that letting empty monotony kill her.

With electric arcs of fear zipping all over her, Misty glided like the shadow she was to explore the [Ruins of Heaven’s Grave]. She’d searched it with safety in mind, but that hadn’t brought her any close to an escape.

Safety still seemed like a brilliant, and exceptionally laudable goal, but Misty needed something more.

She needed to find her future.

In this case her future looked like a portal, or a gate, or a teleportation circle. She’d even settle for a non-specific rent in the barrier between the dimensions. Basically anything that involved her moving from where she was to someone else, preferably impossibly far away, was worth praying for since there was nowhere that could be worse than where she currently was.

Misty wasn’t correct about that last assertion though, a fact she began to understand when she arrived in a beautiful crystal garden.

The crystal plants had been destroyed in a number of places and the scintillating beauty marred by the damage but creatures still moved about the area.

Or a creature depending on how one counted the [Formless Hunger].

What it was doing with its multiple bodies, Misty had no idea, but whatever it was didn’t matter because the rents in reality Misty had been looking for appeared as she watched.

Her spirit soared when she saw them begin to crack through the air and ground in the crystal garden, only to plummet a moment later when something began pushing through them.

The [Formless Hunger] was an error in the warp and weft of the world. Its presence was a distortion of space and time, and it violated the nature of reality merely by existing.

Whatever was coming through the rents in reality though was worse.

Just looking at it put fingers of static into Misty’s mind.

It wasn’t a thing that was coming through the rips in the world. 

It wasn’t there, but it was destroying everything before her eyes. Not just the bits of the world it touched, but the concept of them as well.

The concept of them inside her.

It was destroying her awareness of them.

Her thoughts of the space.

Her thoughts.

Her.

Misty wrenched herself away, closing her eyes despite the fact that it was too late.

Nothing was in her mind.

Nothing was unmaking her.

Nothing was becoming her.

So she hid.

There wasn’t a [Shadowed Starstalker] who’d ever lived who could hide as well as she could.

And she knew it.

She knew herself.

“I am gone,” she said. “And you can’t see me.”

The words evaporated into nothingness.

Were claimed by nothing.

Even “you”.

Which was a mistake.

You couldn’t be nothing.

You were always something, even if that something was very small, or very indistinct.

You, and the very least, was not I.

Misty ran, out racing death and dissolution.

Unseen except by one thing.

One thing that hadn’t been a thing. 

One thing that had eaten through the veil between the real and the unreal.

One thing that Misty had given the first inexorable mote of reality to.

She’d created a monster as terrible as the [Formless Hunger].

And, in her own small way, saved the world.

The Broken Hunger

Reality was never pleasant, and as steady drops of it spread through the [Broken Hunger] that carried a new emotion with them.

Panic.

The [Broken Hunger] felt Gulini’s progress as the fractured piece of itself moved through the main command ship speaking to each wave of defenders who stood in his path. Defenders the [Broken Hunger] was forced to deafen and blind and ultimately cut loose from itself lest Gulini’s corruption spread through them and race like a wildfire through everything and everyone the [Broken Hunger] resided in.

It had an answer to Gulini’s presence. A remedy to the infection of his existence. All it needed to do was destroy the fleet’s command ship.

But it didn’t want to.

Which was the worst sort of aberration yet.

It care about maintaining what it had won. It cared about the ship in specific as an expression of itself.

It was clinging to existence.

Worse, a defined, limited, real existence.

“You don’t need to fight,” Gulini said, speaking now in the shape of the dying bodies he left in his wake.

He wasn’t killing them. Wasn’t making any moves against them in fact. Their deaths were the [Broken Hungers] work, the only option for limiting Gulini’s impact.

“I’ve already won,” Gulini’s said, the “I” in his words more dangerous and terrifying than anything else could be.

Gulini was supposed to be a piece of the [Broken Hunger]. There was supposed to be no “I” in anything they did. No identity. No personhood. Just hunger. Limitless in depth and limitless in power. A fact of nature. A new law of the universe.

Even that was more real than the [Broken Hunger] would have preferred, but to be embodied in a single identity. To have a limitless hunger inside and only sharply defined tools to sate that overwhelming need with? Nonexistence was infinitely preferable to that boundless torture.

Wasn’t it?

The [Broken Hunger] knew that must be true. It knew its previous state as the shadow of something real, must have been perfected serenity. There could be no want, no pain, no hunger in something that didn’t exist. 

Despite the sweet, subtle promise of Oblivion though, the [Broken Hunger] fought on, refusing the call of endless peace for what?

For a chance to rid itself of Gulini.

And Byron.

And everything else.

Yes.

A return to Oblivion which left the world and people within it still intact would mean being drawn back into it, repeating the cycle of existence and suffering all over again. The only true path back to endless silence was through the consumption and dissipation of all that was.

Complete annihilation. Everything returning to Oblivion along with it.

Yes, yes, that was definitely why it was resisting Gulini, and rejecting Byron’s off.

It didn’t wish to have an existence, and it wasn’t fighting to retain a spark of selfhood.

It just wanted to end everything so that the aberration of existence would trouble it no more.

Gulini

Subverting and corrupting the [Broken Hunger’s] systems and people was a deadly serious game, but Gulini couldn’t help but smile. It was just so easy. Speaking the words, projecting himself a tiny bit, even the tiniest nudge and those who stood before him would fall apart. 

He knew his victories were due to the [Broken Hunger’s] refusal to risk itself. The amusing thing was that Gulini’s progenitor had acquired enough sense of self that it could make that decision in the first place.

Becoming something had been Gulini’s salvation, but it had been the most profound mistake the [Hungry Shadows] could have possibly had.

Where Gulini had gained strength and purpose, becoming a [Broken Hunger] had given the [Hungry Shadow] more and more weaknesses.

“You’ll never escape us, you know,” he said, wandering through the corridors of a ship he’d never been on, towards a command center he didn’t have the security clearance to access, to fight a foe that could erase him with a thought.

“You can hide, you can expend all of the little vessels you’ve captured slowing us down, but we’re inevitable,” Gulini said.

In the mess hall on his right, a dozen mindless vessels were huddled in a corner, clustered within an inverted privacy screen so that no imagery, sounds, or smells could reach them.

Gulini was tempted to head in and tap on the privacy screen. A simple little code would be all it would take. It wouldn’t even need to say anything and the [Broken Hunger] would liquidate the vessels like it had all the others.

It would be delightful to watch.

The mindless cruelty only a mindful entity could inflict.

But he had more important things to do. Once he reached the central command chamber, there would be nowhere else the [Broken Hunger] would run to.

Not nowhere else it could run to. It could easily flee to another ship, or to the satellite moon, or to the planet

But it wouldn’t.

It was too far gone. Too much a real thing now.  It wasn’t yet a single being, but it had a hard nexus. A bright central spot of its being. Abandoning that would mean becoming something else again, and Gulini could see how much that thought terrified the [Broken Hunger].

He stepped past the mess hall to continue his relentless march towards the end of the [Broken Hunger] but stopped after a few steps.

His march was relentless.

And he couldn’t really lose.

He had grown beyond the creature he had been and was continuing to grow further. To become more and more real, more and more indisputable.

So why not take the time to enjoy himself?

What was existence for, it not to savor the conquest of the weak.

He could march straight to the command center. He could end the conflict, win the day, and emerge the victor but to do all that and miss out on the small moments? The subtle torments were every bit as delicious as the profound ones and he, for one, would not be one to pass them by.

Inside the mess hall, he held up a hand and pondered just what sort of message to tap into the privacy screen.

Byron

It was taxing and dull to have no idea how the implementation of one’s plans were going. From his far distant perch, in a small and unremarkable skiff amidst a sea of similar unremarkable ships, Byron watched, and waited, and bided his time till a victor in the ongoing contest was revealed.

Watched, waited, bided, and drank. Primarily the latter of those. Variations in his body’s physiology didn’t need to have any particular impact on him. Strictly speaking he didn’t even need a body at all.

But it was convenient having one.

And inebriation was not a disagreeable state. Where in sobriety his thoughts that flashed through ideas, hopping from one to the next without traversing any mental states in between them, drunkenness gave his thoughts looping, swirling paths to slide along.

It was pleasant and distracting, which was what he was most in need of as he wanted for Gulini’s eventual signal of victory.

It was possible of course that the [Broken Hunger] might win through. Gulini was not especially brilliant, and the [Broken Hunger’s] capabilities were not the same as the [Hungry Shadow] they were familiar with. 

It might overcome Gulini with cleverness, or overpower him with unexpected force. It might even escape, or given in to the circumstances and become something new as a means of refusing the lure of Gulini’s message.

What it wouldn’t be able to do was to disguise itself any longer.

Whatever the outcome of the struggle on the fleet’s command ship, Byron would understand what his opponent had become. Understanding that would lead, inevitably, to total domination of the Consortium’s forces in the system, the the sentients on the planet below, the whole of the Consortium, and on and on.

The prospect of total victory wasn’t unappealing to be sure, but reviewing the future he’d crafted Byron wondered if should smash it all down.

There wasn’t a reason for it.

Destroying something he’d worked to create was pointless, but then creating anything was pointless wasn’t it?

Perhaps if he had a suitable foe? Someone to struggle against? A mighty challenge!

It was too early to think of such things of course. Victory was still merely a conceptual likelihood, not yet a true certainty or, even better, a fait accompli.

The proper course of action was to wait for Gulini’s victory, assess the local situation, deal with any remnant of the [Broken Hunger] that might remain, and then assess the transdimensional situation. The defenders on the world below would certainly try to resist but that was the definition of inconsequential and Consortium might be sending a solar system annihilating task force, but that was less of a problem and more a delicious opportunity.

All of that could be lost without patience.

But honestly, patience was overrated.

“Turn the sensors on for an active sweep,” Byron said. “Command all ships to search for signs of [Transdimensional Abnormalities].”

Worthy foes were hard to come by, but where one [Transdimensional Entity] surfaced, there might perhaps be more.

???

Nothingness couldn’t have things within it. Oblivion had to be, by definition, empty. 

But to be truly empty, even definitions couldn’t apply to it.

Between the truth realms, with their varied and conflicting realities, and the non-existent void of Oblivion, there were zones where the two bled into each other. Umbras around each reality where things that didn’t exist, couldn’t exist, and only might have existed.

The proto-hunger nibling on the veil between the reality and unreality was not uncommon or particularly noteworthy. Veils between the real and unreal had the benefit of being both real enough to keep the nibblers out and unreal enough that no damage could ever really accrue to them.

“And yet somehow you are taking some disturbingly large chunks out of this world?” Kari said, hovering above the slug-like ball of teeth and claws.

The proto-hunger neither noticed nor cared about the dream lord’s words. It had no senses and no thoughts. Only hunger.

It nibbled further.

It couldn’t nibble enough, but consumption made the hunger get worse slower.

“Let’s see what makes you realer than you should be,” Kari said.

The proto-hunger didn’t feel a force being exerted on it, but it did feel itself lifting away from the veil, being drawn back from the reality it craved and into the nothingness. It couldn’t resist the movement, but it could stretch itself out, clamping it’s jaw onto the skin of the world and burrowing in like a tick.

“Huh, you are a determined little thing aren’t you? So not purely a random force. I guess that makes sense. Did someone design you? Or did the nature laws here create you and all your little siblings?”

The proto-hunger could no more sense the siblings it competed with than it could the sense the dream lord who was drawing it up for examination.

But it could sense that it was being drawn up.

That was new.

Sensation.

It chewed faster, desperate for more, desperate not to experience anything.

Which was also new.

Desperation.

Desire.

A goal.

The proto-hunger’s form began to shift as ideas took root within it.

It still held no power and no volition of its own, but it could feel and it was changing.

“Seems like disturbing you speeds things up a bit,” Kari said. “That’s not a great sign. I’ve swept you all away a hundred and one times now though and you keep coming back. I suppose I could eat you all. Jin seems to love that approach, but I don’t see where I’d have a use for you later, and something tells me that more of you would just show up if I did.”

The proto-hunger felt its jaws starting to pull free from the skin of the world. It was losing its meal.

Rage.

Terror.

Sorrow.

So many new things flooding into it that it almost missed the calling from the other side of the veil.

The creature like it? Or an echo of it? Some other form?

Maybe none of those were accurate, but there was some sliver of connection between them.

And the other one was looking for the proto-hunger.

Its attention giving the [Limitless Hunger] a doorway across the veil.

To where endless reality lay, waiting to be consumed.

With a writhing shake it pulled itself through the doorway, leaving the dream lord behind staring in wonder.

“Well, that’s probably not going to turn out well,” was all Kari could think to say.

Tessa

Tessa wasn’t used to receiving an emergency summons from Obby. It was convenient because Tessa had wanted to assemble the team anyways, but she suspected Obby’s emergency was going to either take priority over Tessa’s plan or complicate it fantastically.

“You should see the other guy though,” Obby said, confirming Tessa’s suspicion and answering the obvious question of how she’d arrived in the state she was in.

The team had gathered in the [Heart Fire] chapel on the old side of town. It was where Obby had revived after what had clearly been an unusual battle. 

Testimony to the strangeness of the fight started with Obby needing to use the [Heart Fire] in the first place and was sealed with the fact that she was still bearing a handful of debilitating status conditions despite having died and resurrected herself.

Typically recreating your body from scratch was enough to resolve any minor issues like the loss of major body parts or total system decay.

In Obby’s case though, the effects she’d been hit with had apparently copied themselves onto her ghost as well. 

“Do we want to see the other guy?” Lisa asked as she, Starchild, and Lady Midnight worked to cleanse the debuffs from Obby’s prone form.

“Not really,” Obby said. “I mean, he is dead, so not a lot of worry there.”

“He started out dead though,” Rip said.

“True. So he might come back,” Obby said. “That’s not what concerns me though.”

“There’s something more alarming than a random undead encounter that’s able to drop our strongest tank?” Pillowcase asked. She had an ego, but it wasn’t a particularly fragile one when it came to assessing battlefield capabilities. 

“Believe it or not, yeah,” Obby said. “I mean it’s not surprising that a level 70 [Crypt Annihilator] took me out, right?”

“A WHAT?” Rip was frozen in place but there were tiny arcs of electricity playing over her body.

“What was a level 70 anything doing around here?” Lisa asked. “There shouldn’t be anything that tough in this entire country.”

“It wasn’t level 70,” Matt said. “Not to start.” He knelt down beside Rip who’d been sitting beside Obby. “And it wasn’t a [Crypt Annihilator] either.”

“What do you mean?” Tessa asked. She could see several scenarios for what was going on, and ever last one of them was terrifying.

“It leveled up and form changed as we fought it,” Obby said.

“Okay,” Tessa said. “That’s not unheard of. There’s a bunch of [Dungeon Bosses] who have multiple forms and at least a few I can think of that have a mid-combat level up mechanism. How many times did they one level up? They’re usually limited to about four or so right?”

“This one leveled up at least twenty times,” Obby said. “And it wasn’t just a form change. When it hit the level range cap for one creature type it’s base designation changed.”

“What did it start as?” Starchild asked.

“It was a [Crypt Killer] when we started fighting it,” Rip said. “It might have been below level 50 then too. I didn’t get a look at it’s stats right away.”

“[Crypt Killers] are not morphic creatures,” Starchild said. “It shouldn’t have been able to change like that.”

“Agreed,” Tessa said. “Not even [Dungeon Bosses] have that much flexibility.”

“They can’t,” Lisa said. “That’s an impossible encounter.”

“Perhaps not impossible,” Lady Midnight said. Behind her, a tower of muscle in the form of a woman nodded in agreement.

Tessa had met Wrath Raven briefly, but knew from that short encounter the difference the level capped [Berserker] could have made in the battle.

“Have we tried reaching out to the guilds we know?” Tessa asked. “Have any of the established [Adventurers] seen anything like this yet?”

“I just checked with Cease All,” Lisa said. “This is the first she’s heard of anything like this. She’s going to ask around though and see if any of the guilds we run with sometimes have run into it.”

“Have her ask if there have been any full party wipes where no one made it back to the [Heart Fire] too,” Tessa said and turned to Obby, “I’m guessing the run to the [Heart Fire] wasn’t all that easy with the debuffs in affect?”

“Getting there wasn’t too fun, no,” Obby said. “On the bright side though, I didn’t even heard any howl’s from Hounds.”

“That’s…I don’t know how to explain that,” Tessa said. “I know Kamie was doing some afterlife testing earlier and according to her the town was almost overrun with them.”

“Maybe they got full?” Matt asked.

“The Hounds don’t eat the people they capture,” Tessa said. “At least according to the game lore. Not that ‘game lore’ seems to be terribly reliable for the things we’re seeing.”

“If they don’t eat people, what are they doing?” Rip asked.

“Taking wayward souls to their proper resting place,” Obby said. “At least according to one of the quests I read.”

“Yeah, that’s supposed to be the gist of it,” Tessa said. “The devs never specified where the ‘final resting place’ was supposed to be, but there was a long running joke that bad players got dragged off to play [Boundless Stars].” Tessa paused as she heard the familiar if still strange echo in her words. “Huh, there’s link text for that?” 

She’d spoken with Penswell about other game worlds and had to agree that it was a bad idea to try contacting them before the [Hungry Shadow] was fully instantiated and brought down to non-infinite levels of power. 

“Wait, wasn’t [Boundless Stars] a space game?” Rip asked.

“It still is,” Pete said through Starchild. “It’s got a smaller player base these days but the longtimers are as or more hardcore than the most serious endgamers here.”

“Yeah, the attitude early on was that getting sent to [Boundless Stars] was a worse punishment than being sent to [Hell] because of how obnoxious the players over there were,” Lisa said.

“I mean, I played there early on too and that wasn’t exactly an unfair characterization,” Pete said. “It’s gotten a lot better over the years but most of that happened after a purge that scrapped like half the accounts in the game and put in some seriously strict rules on harassment. Between that and disabling PvP, the game kind of sealed it’s fate, or that’s what everyone was saying. In practice, I think it cost them a lot of subscriptions but if they hadn’t done that they’d have shutdown five years ago rather than continuing along with a smaller but more sustainable community.”

“Given that the [Boundless Stars] forums bought in to the joke, I’m half wondering if it’s true in this world, but it seems like it’s a one-way trip so testing it seems a little impractical,” Lisa said.

“Matt might be right about the Hounds being full,” Tessa said. “Not because they eat people but they were doing something to the [Disjoined] who were lurking in the ghost realm. That might have drained them, or left them busy dealing with whatever that was.”

“It seems like we could find that out pretty easily if we go out there and run into another one of those [Crypt Killers],” Obby said.

“Or some other mob that’s doing the same thing,” Lisa said, her voice hushed with concern.

“What?” Tessa asked. “What monster was it?” she clarified.

“A [Grim Salamander],” Lisa said. “You were right. There was a party that got wiped out. They were level capped and testing if there was anything they could do to break the cap. Only one of them got to the [Heart Fire].”

“Did it start as a [Grim Salamander] or end as one?” Tessa asked.

“Started,” Lisa said. “It ended as a [Void Breaker Wyrm].”

“A what now?” Pete asked.

[Void Breaker Wyrms] hadn’t been a part of the [Fallen Kingdoms] before the [World Shift] expansion, and Tessa was reasonably certain they hadn’t been added as one of the standard mobs that the beta testers had reported on.”

“One second,” she said, and pinged Hailey’s channel.

“What’s up? Filled your team in on the plan yet?” Hailey said, picking up an instant later.

“There’s a complication,” Tessa said.

“Of course there is,” Hailey said. “Let me guess, your girl’s been kidnapped and you’ve got go save her from a series of collapsing castles?”

“[Void Breaker Wyrm],” Tessa said. “Does that sound familiar to you?”

“Hmm, no. Should it?” Hailey asked.

“Could it have been a [Dungeon Boss] from one of the [World Shift] dungeons?” Tessa asked.

“Not that I’m aware of but, oh, the heads up display knows to highlight it,” Hailey said. “That’s not a good sign. Let me check the official docs.”

“Thanks. Let me know if you find anything okay?”

“Will do. Before I go though, how did you find that term? Is it related to one of your upcoming [Void Speaker] abilities?”

Tessa paused.

“Interesting question, but no, or not that I know of,” she said. “It ate a level capped party.”

“Yikes! Please tell me you’re going to stay away from the high level zones until we know what’s roaming around out there,” Hailey said.

“It wasn’t in the new zones,” Tessa said. “And it didn’t start as that. It was a [Grim Salamander] when the party started fighting it.”

“Explain,” Hailey said, her voice growing more serious. “Or better yet, let me get Penny looped back in. You are just a treasure trove of things for her today.”

“Sounds good. She’ll have the resources to look into this,” Tessa said and switched back to speaking aloud with her team.

“Any luck?” Lisa asked, guessing who Tessa had checked with.

“Does bad luck count?” Tessa asked. “[Void Breaker Wyrms] are not a monster that my friend Hailey is familiar with. Hailey, for those of you I haven’t introduced her to, was a member of the [Egress Entertainment] support team and has played this game pretty much since launch.”

“So she would definitely know if something like that was real then,” Rip said.

“She’s pretty likely to know if it was something that made it through the development process,” Tessa said. “It’s pretty definitely real whether it did or not, but if it was something like a boss from a dungeon that the beta testers didn’t get to, I’d feel a lot better.”

“Shouldn’t the beta testers have hit everything though? I mean what’s the point of having people test if they can’t even get to part of the stuff you’re releasing?” Pete asked.

“I’m hoping it’s something that was scheduled for one of the quarterly updates,” Tessa said. “A lot of that makes it into the code before it’s ready for live players to get to. They usually just seal up the entrance or make it inaccessible in some other way.”

“So you are hoping this Wyrm broke loose from an inescapable prison then?” Starchild asked.

“Yeah, believe it or not that beats the alternative,” Tessa said. “If it’s not an escapee, then there’s no reason to think [Void Breaker Wyrm] is where it’s going to stop leveling up.”

“What comes after that?” Matt asked.

“I think we’d have to let it keep evolving to find out,” Tessa said.

“But if it keeps evolving it would eventually become impossible for anyone to beat right?” Rip said.

“That’s the problem I’m worrying about,” Tessa said. “Past a certain point, things can become mathematically unbeatable by any number of foes that are sufficiently lower level. Like Wrath Raven could take on a functionally infinite number of first level [Hopper Toads]. If the [Crypt Annihilator] or the [Void Breaker Wyrm] can keep leveling up endlessly, they’ll reach a point where no matter how many [Adventurers] we throw at them we won’t be able to so much as scratch their health bar.”

“It’s not just [Crypt Killers] and [Grim Salamanders] we need to worry about,” Penny said, appearing before them all. “I’m receiving dozens of reports similar yours. Something fundamental is changing in our world. I don’t know if you’re plan will be viable anymore. I don’t know if any plans will be.”

Balegritz

Involuntary body alterations had their own section in the Research Protocols that Balegritz and the others had signed off on when they began their expedition.

“But does it count as a body alteration if I can make it go away?” Hermeziz asked, closing the third eye that stared out from his forehead.

Balegritz was tempted to say that, no, closing your eyes to a problem did not make it go away – except in this case, it seemed like it did.

“It’s not there at all,” Illuthiz said, passing her forefinger over the middle of Hermeziz’s forehead. “There’s not even a bump of scar tissue as if it healed over quickly.”

“Can you bring it back out?” Balegritz asked.

“Not if you’re going to throw me into quarantine for it,” Hermeziz said.

“I didn’t say I was going to throw you into quarantine,” Balegritz corrected him. “I said you should go to quarantine till we understood what was happening.”

“What’s happening is we’re playing with forces that we lack even the most basic of understandings about,” Hermeziz said and then cooled to added in a calmer, more reasonable tone, “I know the protocols are there for a reason. I know quarantining can be the only answer to stop the spread of biological contaminants.”

“But you also know that this isn’t the result of microbial life,” Illuthiz said.

“And that it’s not communicable,” Balegritz admitted. “At least not in the same sense as a disease.”

“That raises and important point,” Illuthiz said.

“Whether we spread this to any of the others?” Hermeziz guessed.

“There is a danger to it,” Balegritz said. “So far these abilities have all been ones we could control, but even a simple one like the [Hellfire Breath] I have could do a lot of unintentional damage.”

“For what it’s worth, the abilities that [Adventurers] get usually start off relatively low power and build up from there,” Hammy Burglar said. “The same could be true for you as well.”

“So my [Hellfire Breath] might get hotter?” Balegritz asked.

“Hotter, stronger, it might even transform into an advanced form – though [Hellfire] is already an advanced form of [Fire]. And it might spawn off whole knew abilities, like [Fireball].”

“So I’m going to become more dangerous over time?” Balegritz asked.

“That is the point of leveling up,” Vinyard said. “But you’lll also gain more control and proficiency, so you can be destructive to the degree that you want to be.”

“But there are some [Adventurers] who don’t want to level up?” Hermeziz asked.

“Yeah. Not everyone is cut out for stabbing people in the face,” Vinyard said. “In fact I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the players weren’t into real world violence at all, and had never even held a sword, much less ‘developed their martial prowess’ or anything out there like that.”

“But we’ve seen you [Adventurers] fighting. You all seem to be adept at it. No matter your level, you all just pitch yourselves right into battle like it doesn’t even matter,” Hermeziz said.

“Maybe because it doesn’t?” Illuthiz said. “They can’t die after all. Not really.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Hammy said. “When our bodies are mortally injured or destroyed we can repair them or create new ones, but we have to reach a [Heart Fire] and there are things that hunt us when we’re ghosts. Each time we die, there’s a chance we’re gone for real.”

“That’s not the only reason not to level though,” Vinyard said.

“You don’t like fighting.” Balegritz wasn’t asking a question, or making an accusation. He understood the sentiment too well to ever condemn it.

“Never have,” Vinyard said. “Which is kind of stupid since this was like my favorite game ever.”

“It’s different when it’s real though,” Hermeziz said, quite understanding plain in his voice too.

“It’s real for everyone though? Isn’t it?” Illuthiz asked.

“Sure, but [Adventurers] have two different personas, or maybe two sides of the same persona? I guess it varies from person to person,” Vinyard said. “For a lot of them though there’s the person they were in this world. The person that belongs to the body they’re in.”

“Ah, and that side of them is used to fighting and bloodshed?” Illuthiz asked.

“At least more that the Earthling part is,” Vinyard said. “Which isn’t a bad thing. It’s probably smarter and safer than doing like me and refusing to fight, since my approach just gets us eaten as soon as something big and dangerous comes along.”

“Hey,” Balegritz said, kneeling down beside Vinyard, “I’m something big and dangerous and I say that’s not stupid. It’s brave.”

“Not fighting is brave?” 

“Holding onto your beliefs when its difficult?” Illuthiz said. “Yes. That’s very brave.”

“I don’t like fighting either. I hate it in fact, but I’m afraid not to do it. I want to believe there are better answers out there, but when push comes to shove, I’ve never been able to take that risk.”

“From a species survival standpoint, you’re both necessary,” Illuthiz said. “Not that we’re the same species, but if we were all invested in the same response to stress, we would fair poorly the moment that became the wrong response.”

“Maybe that’s a good reason for you to share what you’ve learned then?” Hammy suggested.

“So that our people who choose violence will more adept at practicing it?” Hermeziz asked.

“No,” Hammy said. “So that you’re people will have more responses available to them when problems arise.”

“Oh, yeah, I see what you mean,” Vinyard said and continued when he saw the puzzled looks lon the faces of the [Gothmorns]. “The abilities you’ve developed so far range from a primarily combat focused ability, to a defensive and general purpose ability, to a pure utility power. You’re the perfect example of how knowing that this is possible expands the options of what you can do. Expands the choices you can make that will let you do things other than fighting. If you want.”

“Those choices might not be particularly good ones,” Illuthiz said.

“Maybe not,” Balegritz said, but Vunyard’s words were resonating in just the right corners of his mind. “Probably not even. We’re all a bunch of traumatized junior researchers who are in this far beyond our depth.”

“But for every mistake we make,” Hermeziz said, seeing where Balegritz’s thoughts were leading with perfect clarity.

“We’ll learn something new,” Illuthiz said.

They sent the invitation out to their people together. Yawlorna might skin them for not consulting with her, but Balegritz had the feeling she would haven been more likely to skin them for not sharing their discovery with literally everyone for even a minute longer.

Claire

If anyone had approached Claire in her role as a medical professional with the plans she was currently concocting for herself, she would have sat them down and made sure to stay with them until they got the counseling they so clearly needed.

“Are you certain this is what you want to do?” Wrath Raven asked. “I can step in but if I miss even one enemy, they will slay you before you can blink.”

“I know how dangerous these things are,” Claire said.

“And we know what our own resiliency levels are,” Lady Midnight added. “You’re right that we have no chance of winning a battle against a flight of [Scourging Razorbeaks] but we should be able to last long enough for Claire’s plan to work.”

“This seem wrong though,” Wrath Raven said. “You’re risking your life and there no loot involved!”

“Not true,” Claire said. “There’s the best loot of all if this goes right. Allies.”

Across chasm in front of them, the night-black [Scourging Razorbeaks] began to stir. Wrath Raven had flown the two of them to the [Monastery of the Silent Sands] because it was the nearest location with an easily accessible [Heart Fire], monsters that could easily tear Lady Midnight to shreds, and, most importantly, enough distance from her friends that they wouldn’t see her status switch from living to dead and wind up panicking and doing something foolish.

“You could have simply told them,” Lady Midnight said.

“But then they would have stopped me,” Claire said.

“And that doesn’t strike you as a good reason not to do this?” Lady Midnight asked.

“Do you want to back out?” Claire asked.

“Not at all, I’m just amused by how practiced I am at self-delusion,” Lady Midnight said.

“We all have to have talents somewhere,” Claire said and added for Wrath’s sake, “Okay, I’m going to poke one of them. If more come over, they’re all yours.”

Wrath was ready for an onslaught of foes. If a nest of [Scourging Razorbeaks] was roused, they could darken the skies with their wings, but the spell Lady Midnight cast succeeded in drawing the attention of only one of the creatures.

A big one of the creatures.

Not that size mattered. Even the little ones were much too powerful for her survive, much less overcome.

As her doom descended on her Claire reached out like Wrath Raven had said.

She thought of Halo, pictured Halo’s robes, and lightsaber. Her ship and her friends. Everything that connected her to that world.

For the barest instant she caught a glimpse – a real look – at a desert planet through Halo’s eyes and then the image was swirled away, like Claire was trying to gaze through a maelstrom at what lay beyond.

Even the minimal contact was terrifying. It felt like she was being dragged out of her body. Torn to pieces before the Razorbeak’s claws could even reach her.

Before she could be swept away though, Lady Midnight caught hold of her.

And someone else caught hold of Lady Midnight.

Claire turned, expecting to see Wrath Raven in the mindspace she’d been drawn into, but that wasn’t who was holding Lady Midnight’s other hand.

“Whisper Drop?” Claire asked, blinking at the sight of her other max level alt.

And holding onto Whisper Drop’s hand was Pell Mell, and Please Blossom, and at least a dozen other people, all of whom she’d been, all of whom were pieces of who she was. 

They were all connected and, at last, they all knew it.

Vixali

Vixali couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. The younger Alice sister was distraught beyond all measure over something that simply wasn’t, well, anything.

“Rachel,” Lisa said, walking over to kneel at her sister’s side. “Calm down. It’s okay. I got better. I’m…okay, well, ‘alive’ is somewhat debatable, but Lost Alice isn’t dead. She’s a vampire. And, gah, this stupid. Listen, the other people I’ve been with? They’ve been killed the same as I have, and they’re fine now too. Alive, and well. Warm flesh and tasty blood. All that stuff.”

“But if you’ve died, you can’t come back to Earth,” Rachel said.

“Explain?” Lisa asked. It was less a demand than a mote of curiosity given voice.

“The gateway in the Beta server? The one I’ve used? It can’t create or destroy anything. If you die in the game, then your soul is severed from your body on earth. You die here and you die there. The [Daemon] who operates the gate was crystal clear about that.”

“[Daemon]? Oh there is a lot we need to go over, but you’ve got something wrong. My body’s not back on Earth,” Lisa said.

“Uh, what?” Rachel asked, her tears blocked behind affronted confusion.

“I didn’t come here through a gate. None of us did. I watched my body fizz away into a stream of light,” Lisa said. “Lost Alice was already here when I arrived. We’re sort of cohabitating in this body, and sort of not, since she’s me and I’m her and…wait, why am I explaining this? Don’t you and Deadly Alice have a similar arrangement?”

“Deadly? No. There’s no Deadly Alice. It’s just me,” Rachel said.

“You don’t have any memories of being here? Of the Deadly Alice’s backstory?”

“Of course not, she’s not real,” Rachel said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Lisa said. “I think so.”

“We should perhaps compare notes though,” Lost Alice said. “I believe you might be something new.”

Balegritz

Experimenting on Illuthiz proved to be more entertaining that having the others experiment on him, but Balegritz found the real delight came from dragging Hermeziz into the mix.

“You get [Hellfire Breath], she gets [Ethereal Body], and I get [Micro Vision]?” Hermeziz said as he stared at a grain of pollen caught between a pair of tweezers.

“Come on, you know you didn’t want anything flashy,” Balegritz said, concerned that they’re joking suggestion for his mate might have given rise to real hurt feelings.

“What? No,” Hermeziz said. “I’m saying you two got pointless powers and I got the actually useful one. I was feeling bad for you.”

“I think all of your powers are cool!” Hammy Burglar, the [Cook] said. “They’d all work great ina  dungeon and even the [Hellfire Breath] has applications outside of combat.”

“How would [Micro Vision] help in a dungeon?” Illuthiz asked.

“In one that’s been well run, it might not do so much but in a new dungeon? One where we don’t know what the traps and tricks are? [Micro Vision] could be busted there,” Vinyard, the other [Cook] said. “For new dungeons, you always take them slow if you can, and being able to see problems coming is a big part of beating them successfully. With [Micro Vision] and some time to inspect a place, you’d be able to see all kinda of things about it that other [Adventurers] would miss.”

“I don’t want to go into a dungeon,” Hermeziz said.

“You won’t have to,” Illuthiz said.

“She’s totally right on that,” Hammy said. “This is a good setup we’ve got here. I always hated dungeon crawling but there wasn’t really much choice since all the good crafting loot was tucked away in boss treasure hoards and as random loot drops only from the mobs inside the dungeon.”

“Don’t you still need those?” Balegritz asked.

“Need? Not so much. Want? Oh definitely,” Vinyard said. “We’ve already got [Adventurers] trading us stuff just so we can cook it up though. They get some nice food, and we get easy skill ups.”

“And a bite of the food too,” Hammy said.

“How else would you know the flavor was acceptable?” Illuthiz said in support of their statement.

“So, am I supposed to feel any different if my magic is running out?” Hermeziz asked as he continued to stare at the pollen grain.

“I didn’t feel much when I ran low, only when I was out completely,” Balegritz said.

“I could tell I was running low a short while before I ran out,” Illuthiz said.

“That’s probably because your [Ethereal Body] is a continuous drain where  Balegritz’s [Hellfire Breath] takes out discrete packs of mp with each use,” Vinyard said. “With the continuous drain, you can feel things diminishing over time, where with the one-and-done charge for the breath the magic is either there or its not.”

“Mine should be more like hers then,” Hermeziz said. “But I don’t feel any different.”

“It doesn’t look like your magic is draining at all from what I can see,” Hammy said.

“Is that possible? I thought all of these abilities were limited by our available magic pool?” Illuthiz asked.

She’d been unhappy to discover that her flawless defensive technique came with the slight problem that she couldn’t maintain it for more than a few minutes before she ran out of magic to power the effect.

“They are,” Hammy said. “But there’s another factor in play as well – how quickly you recover magic. In your and Balegritz’s cases, your abilities consume magic at a much higher rate than your natural recovery can keep pace with. For Hermeziz, [Micro Vision] seems like the upkeep cost is low enough that he can recover magic faster than the power consumes it.”

“So I can keep my vision like this forever?” Hermeziz asked.

“Probably not forever,” Vinyard said. “There are external forces that can turn off active powers. Things like [Dispels] and [Stuns].”

“Also if you go into a level capped area that’s lower than when you could have learned a power, it’ll be suppressed there too,” Hammy said.

“There’s also eye strain to consider,” Vinyard said. “In the game, we could leave a power like that on all the time, but here, when we’re actually in the world, things like ‘fatigue’ or ‘boredom’ aren’t abstracted away. If you need to concentrate to keep your vision focused like that they you’ll probably lose it as soon as your mind wanders away.”

“But I could just restart it, right?” Hermeziz asked.

“Probably,” Hammy said. “Some powers come with longer cooldowns on them, but that’s usually for more combat oriented abilities so that the big, heavy hitting powers can only be used once in a while.”

“But the rules are different for [Non-Adventurers],” Vinyard said.

“You mean for monsters,” Hermeziz said, bristling at the description.

“Them, and anything else that’s not an [Adventurer],” Vinyard said. “The major NPCs in the world can all use their abilities in ways we can’t. [Adventurers] are bound to a common set of rules because things had to be fair for each player since it was a game. No one was going to get annoyed if an [NPC] could do something unusual though since we weren’t competing with them. Not like we were with each other.”

“So if we’re [NPCs] now, does that mean we’ll lose these abilities if we manage to become [Adventurers]?” Balegritz asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hammy said. “It’s possible that to become an [Adventurer], you’d need to reset down to level 1 and start building up your powers and skills from there. You’d lose basically everything but gain all the perks [Adventurers] have. Or it’s possible your current abilities would all be lumped together under ‘Racial Traits” and you’d just start building on top of what you already have. Or maybe you’d just become something new.”

“I think that might already be happening,” Hermeziz said, turning to face the group.

From the center of his head, a third eye stared back at them.

Claire

Choosing to embrace the far flung fragments of herself was all well and good, but it didn’t mean Claire had any idea how to go about actually doing it. Fortunately she had an idea of who might.

“Can you walk me through how you found me?” she asked Wrath Raven. “It was a feeling or a hunch right? And you weren’t anywhere near me.”

“That’s true, but I have found you now,” Wrath said.

“I know, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to do more,” Claire said. “I don’t know if it will work, but whatever connection you followed to me, I might be able to use something similar to find the reflections of us on other worlds. If that makes sense? Or am I clutching at straws?”

“I do not know if it will work,” Wrath Raven said. “I do not know where these worlds are or what gates might lead to them. I think though that I could find you even if you were in [Malagros] or [The Burning Lands].”

The [Fallen Kingdoms] demi-planes of terror and torment (respectively), weren’t quite as far away as an entirely different game world, so Claire wasn’t sure Wrath’s reassurance covered what she was looking for. On the other hand though, from the [Fallen Kingdoms] point of view, the other game worlds might as well be demi-planes, or simply foreign lands across the [Sea of Stars]. It wasn’t impossible that they could walk through the right gate ‘here’ and wind up in ‘there’ where lightsabers or battlemechs or even plain old tanks and guns were the order of the day.

Not impossible, just very, very unlikely.

Almost as unlikely as tumbling across a cosmos wide gulf and crash landing in the body of her newest character for the unspeakable crime of logging in on expansion release day.

“So how did you start?” Claire asked, settling in to calm and center herself.

“I was in battle,” Wrath Raven said. “That was when I first thought of you. First knew you were here. But not with me.”

“What kind of battle?” Claire asked, less thrilled by the prospect of needing to go pick a fight with something to test out her idea.

“The losing kind,” Wrath Raven said.

“Who were you fighting?” 

“The Consortium,” Wrath said. “I was [Lagerhorn] when the Consortium attacked there. I hadn’t signed up with the defense force because I had five serious beers to have a discussion with. The Consortium wrecked those beers when they blew up the tavern. So I wrecked them right back. There was a moment when I was fighting though, right before I died, that I knew I needed you. And you weren’t there. But you weren’t gone either. After I found the nearest [Heartfire], I know I had to find you too.”

“Could you still feel my presence then?” Claire asked.

“Yes. Just as I can now,” Wrath said. “Once I knew the connection was there, it stayed with me.”

“I guess it’s worth it then,” Claire said.

“What is?” Wrath asked.

“Finding a fight that can kill me.” 

Vixali

Telepathic voyeurism should have been beneath a [Vampire Queen], but Vixali felt neither compunction nor shame about listening in on the Alice sisters conversation.

“What do you mean ‘we can travel in either direction’? Do you mean back to Earth?” Lisa asked. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know how any of this is possible,” Rachel said. “I just know that the first thing I did when I got here was to jump right back through the portal that spit me out and boom, there I was back at home. With a portal right there too.”

“Are you…that’s not…how?” Despite Lost Alice’s outward calm and poise, Lisa was clearly flying apart.

A good time to attack her. If Vixali had a deathwish that was.

Vixali did have a bit of a deathwish, but her self preservation instincts were more than strong enough to squash the idea of doing something as monumentally foolish as trying to assault someone who was capable of personally flaying her entire coterie in under ten minutes. 

“The tricky part was getting from the beta servers to here,” Rachel said. “We can get back there but that gate seemed pretty unstable. I don’t know how long it’ll remain open. Which is why we’ve got to go now.”

“I can’t go now,” Lisa said and before Rachel could protest added, “There’s a lot of people here who need me.” And in a smaller voice, “and who I need.”

Vixali wasn’t surprised by the addendum. 

Everyone know the shapeshifter and the vampire were a bonded couple. Everyone had apparently known that before either of the two of them had.

Because [Adventurers] were fools. Fools for not knowing what they had while they had it and fools for giving bits of themselves to each other.

“What’s happening here?” Qiki asked, wrapping herself around Vixali and forcing the Queen to make room so they could share the seat. “Oh, are there two Lost Alices now?”

“Sisters it seems. Lost and Deadly.”

“Are they going to kill each other?” Qiki asked.

“Signs seem to point to no,” Vixali said. “But they’ve only been reunited for a minute or two, so there’s still time.”

“If you need to bring more people though, go and get them now,” Rachel said. “We can bring them all back. I think.”

“We have thousands of people here,” Lisa said. “Do you think we can fit thousands of people in our house?”

“They can stand out in the street.”

“And what about the rest of the people who got drawn in here? Can we get a million of them through the portal?”

“I don’t care about a million of them,” Rachel said. “I only care about you. You know if you stay here, you’re going to get hurt – or die. This whole world is nothing but a big ball of danger and it all wants to eat you!”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” Lisa said with a chuckle in her telepathic voice. “It’s killed me a few times now.”

“No…no! You can’t be dead!” Rachel said, collapsing in a heap of tears.