A sudden burst of restless energy propelled Char out of the chair to pace back and forth before the hovering galaxy. “I can’t even begin to figure out how to oppose a force that I know nothing about. All of this,” she waved an arm around the room, at the floating image, and at the alien watching her, “is so far out of my experience, I might as well be an ant trying to learn quantum physics.”

  Zell’s fin-crest bobbed as he nodded his head in understanding, then it dropped back to lie flat on his skull. He tapped his fingers together as he spoke. “Yes, what is unknown can seem insurmountable, but that is easily remedied. It only requires knowledge.”

  Char flung her arms wide. “Okay, lay some knowledge on me, then.”

  “The Dominion is ruled by Golvarus Aldever’un. He has five sons and two daughters. Golvarus stays on the front lines of the war, along with his three eldest sons. Two of his sons and one of his daughters oversee the expansion front, subjugating new worlds. I do not know about the last daughter; she is seldom mentioned. The son overseeing this sector of the expansion is Lord Delar Aldevari. He is my…” Zell’s words hitched, and his voice tightened on his next word, “Owner.”

  He looked down, then up at the impossible view of planets clustered close together, “They use different terms, of course, but it amounts to the same thing.” He waved a hand at the planets beyond the arches, “Those worlds out there, they’re my shame. My world was subjugated just as yours has been. I was an adolescent, too young to awaken and fight, and was sent to a creche to be educated. I burned for revenge for my parents, my siblings, my world, but my people were never warriors. We were scholars and artists, scientists and crafters. Now, they use us as administrators and archivists. I’ve had to swallow my pride and pretend to be broken and servile for three centuries; doing their bidding, helping to take world after world…” His hand came down on the arm of the chair, and his body was tense with the barely restrained anger that leaked out in his words.

  He shook his head and stood from his seat, stalking away to the other side of the room. Char gave him space as he stared out at the orbiting planets. She could see the tremor in his shoulders as he fought to control himself, and, in this odd space where their dreams were connected, she could feel the emotions that mirrored her own roiling within him, and threatening to pull her own rage from its cage.

  His chest rose and fell with several deep breaths, and he closed his eyes. He turned back to her, composed again, but visibly drained. Char recognized the look; she’d worn it herself enough times after shoving her own anger back into its box. “I apologize. I have not been able to speak openly of this for many years. It builds until it must burst loose. Saying it aloud…”

  “Hey, I get it. If we had time, I’d let you vent, but you were the one who said time was limited here.” Char kept her voice even. Zell was an alien, born on another world, obviously evolved from an aquatic species, and yet his pain mirrored hers. For beings who were so incredibly different, they had a great deal in common. There were no words that could lessen her rage; only action would keep it at bay, so she gave him a task to focus on. It was the best she could do for him, for now.

  Zell nodded. “Yes. Of course.” He walked back over to his chair but didn’t sit, standing with one hand on the seat-back, instead. “Lord Delar will be the first Aldevari you will face. He is not the weakest of them, but he is not the strongest by far. He has only just broken through into what the system has labeled Rank B. They have other names for the rankings, but when we designed the system, we used terminology from your games and popular culture, and they will do for simplicity.” He waved away the digression. “You will need to reach Rank B to be able to face him, and to do that, you will need to break the shackles that the system has placed on you.”

  “Shackles? What do you mean?” Char stalked closer to Zell. The word shackles made her want to reach inward, to search for chains on her Core, but she forced herself to stay focused on him. She’d only just discovered magic, and the thought of being constrained made her gut fill with ice.

  “The system is insidious. It limits you by doing for you what would normally take years to learn to do for yourself. Then, when it hits the limiters that have been built into it, it is too late for you to learn to push your growth beyond it.” He rolled his hand in the air, searching for a metaphor, then continued, “Imagine pushing a small ball of snow up a hill. When it’s small, it’s easy to push, but as it rolls, it picks up mass. As it grows, you gain strength, so even though it gets heavier and more difficult to move, you can keep it going. However, if someone else pushes it, then you try to take over when the ball is larger than you are, you might hold it in place, but you would not be able to move it. Do you see?”

  Char nodded. “It undercuts us. We never learn the fundamentals, just get them handed to us, so we become dependent.”

  “Just so.” Zell inclined his head to her.

  “How? How does it work, what does it do for us?”

  “The Aldevari use small magi-tech machines called Athernites. They are like the theoretical nanites that occur in your fiction, only they are a blend of magic and technology. They seed worlds with them years before the shockwave arrives. There’s just enough ambient mana to let them replicate and saturate the living things of a world. In sapient creatures, such as yourself, they saturate up to a point and stop, forming a small processor and waiting for input, ready to capture atheris and distribute it for you according to that input. In animals, they saturate the bodies more fully, to the point of replacing a large amount of the creature’s mass. That is what allowed the animals of your world to mutate and change so quickly. When the mana wave arrives, they awaken and connect to the system.” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s complex, and it would take more time than we have to explain it all.”

  “Okay. I want to know more, but just hit the highlights for now.” She rubbed her temple, trying to keep up. “Like, what’s atheris?”

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  “Ah, the fundamentals. Mana, when compressed to a certain point, becomes atheris. When that atheris is integrated into a living being, it strengthens and improves that being to a state closer to perfection. It is atheris that increases your stats when you level up. Without the system, you would need to learn how to direct the atheris on your own, but the Aethernites do this for you. They also handle atheris compression, which is what the percentage bonuses are that you’ve received from some of your titles. The more densely compressed the atheris is, the more benefit you get from it.”

  Char shuddered at the thought of tiny machines roaming around inside her. She knew it was psychosomatic, but her skin felt like it was crawling with little bugs. She tried to ignore it and focus. She’d been so proud of her progress. Now she knew she’d been playing with training wheels.

  Zell caught her eye to drive home his next point, “This is something you must learn to do for yourself. The Aldevari hold their secrets close, but I have been able to pick up some of them over the years. To pass from Rank C to Rank B, you must compress your atheris beyond a certain point, and the system will stop compressing it for you before you reach that point. The Aldevari don’t want their slaves strong enough to challenge them.”

  “Okay, so how do I compress the atheris?” Char leaned forward, ready to soak up every detail.

  “I don’t know.” He held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Char sighed in frustration. She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Okay, no, that’s fair, you did say they kept their secrets. Any clues? Even a tiny tidbit to point me in the right direction?”

  Zell shook his head, sorrow in his eyes. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I knew. I haven’t even been able to try for myself. The Aldevari keep creatures called Mindseekers to watch over high-level servants. Any hint that I was trying to empower myself in such a way would lead to my death. This is why I’m contacting you, and the other forerunners of your world. You have far more freedom to grow and act than I.”

  She had more questions, but the walls started to shimmer and blur. Her eyes darted around, and she asked, “What’s that? What’s happening?”

  “The Dreamstones are running out of mana. Listen, I have more you must know. The stones have a long cooldown; I won’t be able to contact you again for several weeks. The Aldevari are experimenting with ways to make stronger, more compliant soldiers.” The room began to break apart like drifting fog; the planets floating beyond the arches blurred and faded. Zell spoke faster. “They are planning to release parasitic worms over your world. The Nytherion worms are evil things. They burrow in and connect to your Core, feeding on your life force and mana. At first, they’ll seem a boon, increasing the host’s power, but insanity and death always follow.” Zell’s last words were a frantic shout as his form started to dissipate. “There is a dungeon in the jungle below the Sanctuary. Find it.”

  Before he could say more, the room with its cosmic view broke apart, and Char found herself waking on the cold floor of the old train station, Lulu snoring softly by her side. It was still dark outside, and rain pattered on the roof. She lay there in the dark, trying to wrap her mind around the truckload of information that had just been dumped on her.

  Aethernites, Nytherion worms, atheris compression, the Varthii’ak Empire; there were a lot of strange names and concepts, and she replayed the conversation over and over to imprint the alien names. Her higher intelligence stat helped. Before the improvements to her mind, she would never have been able to recall the details so clearly. She was still worried that she was going to miss something important from the avalanche of new information.

  Quietly, she rose from her spot on the floor and made her way between the bedrolls and sleeping forms of the refugees. There was a tiny gift shop at one end of the train station turned museum, and she found a novelty ink pen and a blank journal on the shelves. At first, she only picked up one of each, but after a moment’s pause, she pulled the rest of them into her inventory. Writing paper might be useful.

  Slipping silently out the door, she nodded to the woman on watch and took a seat on a bench on the old platform. There wasn’t much light, but she found that pulling a little Rune mana into her channels made it easier to write even when she couldn’t see the page very well. It made her thoughts sharper and helped her find the words to record what she’d learned.

  She was still writing when the overcast sky started to lighten and people began to wake and mill around. Lulu padded out to her and rested her chin on Char’s leg, staring at her with large brown eyes full of concern. Char finished the thought she’d been writing and put the pen and journal away. She looked up to see a foggy, damp day. The mist had taken on an ethereal glow from the diffuse light of early morning. It gave the impression that the old train station was floating alone in a sea of fog.

  She stroked Lulu’s ears. “I’m okay, girl, just have a lot on my mind. Let’s get some breakfast, huh? It’s going to be a long day.”

  Writing everything down proved to have been a good idea as more people woke up, and the demands of a large group of tired, confused, and scared people took her mind away from Zell’s message. The logistics of getting everyone fed and figuring out how to move through the foggy, monster-infested woods without losing anyone took her full attention.

  Declan, Anais, and Mira helped get everyone organized. They resorted to the buddy system and got everyone assigned to groups of four to keep track of one another. Declan took Lulu and the little band of scouts he’d put together and ranged ahead, clearing out any monsters in their path.

  The fog grew thicker as they walked, and the rain came and went. Char discovered that she could tell when it was about to start raining. The part of her that wanted to soar through the storm was attuned to the weather. She could feel it when the clouds reached their saturation point and the droplets were about to fall. It was enough warning to pull up her poncho hood and warn those around her.

  Those warnings didn’t help with the distance she felt growing between her and the people she was leading. They treated her like she was somehow a person apart from them, like a celebrity or some other unreachable figure. Someone to be pointed to and whispered about, but not approached. It made her feel lonely, even in the middle of the crowd.

  It shouldn't have bothered her. She didn’t like crowds and was uncomfortable with people she didn’t know, but it did bother her. There was a difference between occasionally seeking solitude because she was an introvert and feeling isolated because others saw her as different. The look of hero worship in some of their eyes made her especially uncomfortable.

  She drifted toward the rear of the group. Watching them walk ahead of her, she couldn’t help but turn her thoughts to the future and how they would survive in this new world. They would need to brush off old skills that had faded away in the modern, electronic world. They would need farmers, blacksmiths, and tanners. Hell, they’d eventually need cobblers and chandlers and cartwrights, unless they found magical substitutes.

  They’d need warriors, too. She couldn’t protect them all on her own. Some of them would need to learn to fight, and some of them would die. All she could do was her best, though. The weight of responsibility would crush her if she weren’t careful to balance it.

  Her mind whirling with worries and possibilities, with jungle dungeons and parasitic worms, with exploration and defending their new city, she guarded the rear of the group from lurking monsters as they made their way to their new home.

  Now she has super-powered killers chasing her, a Brownie living in her purse, past lives catching up to her, and this stupid video game interface popping up all the time.

  She wanted a challenge.

  She got the challenge of several lifetimes.