Greg was dead. This had to be hell.
A couple of high-pitched chimes went off, and a voice filled his mind.
Volatility levels surpassing 25 percent. Decrease volatility at your earliest convenience.
It sounded like Autumn if she’d taken a job as whoever did the flight announcements at the airport rather than a chef.
He grumbled. The ground under him was cold, wet, and rough. They must have thrown him out of the bar. He’d obviously been hallucinating. The warning sounded again in his mind, and he slowly pushed himself up onto his knees and opened his eyes.
This…was not the street in front of Jinty McGinty’s.
It was dark. Not normal dark either. Like someone mugged the concept of light from his mind and left him in the cosmic dumpster. That was except for some bars in the bottom left of his periphery, and two translucent blue boxes that were blinking right in front of his face. He reached out to swipe at them, but his hands only found empty air.
“What the fuck..?” he whispered. Just floating boxes that moved with him when he looked around? Definitely normal. Totally fine.
SACRIFICED: DIVINE SUMMONING DETECTED
SACRIFICED: DEMONIC SUMMONING DETECTED
ERROR: DUAL SUMMON PROTOCOL NOT FOUND
INITIALIZING BACKUP SYSTEMS…
SOUL LINK ERROR-17638v.00001
Sacrificed? Greg’s stomach turned as he sat back on his heels, slightly surprised by the feel of his bare ass touching the back of his feet. He quickly felt his chest and nether regions, cursing silently. Somebody stole his fucking clothes!
He stood up, swiping at the strange screens with his hands again. He had no idea what was going on, but he just wanted these out of his face so he could see. The moment he thought it, the windows closed, leaving him in darkness except the glowing bars in the corner of his vision. One of them blinked yellow.
“I must have had a stroke.” Greg tried to rationalize. “I had a stroke and I’m in some hospital bed somewhere. This is all just a weird coma dream.”
He took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. A sickly sweet smell filled his sinuses, tears filling his eyes. He recognized it, but he couldn’t place where. He had a mini flashlight on his keys, but his keys were in his pants, and who the fuck knows where those were.
Volatility levels surpassing 25 percent. Decrease volatility at your earliest convenience.
“Yes, I heard you, airport lady. I don’t know what the fuck that means.” Greg snapped, only for another translucent blue box to pop up in his face.
Volatility:
Volatility measures how much magic has built up in your blood. As a Gifted blessed by the gods and devils, your magic is constantly fighting itself. If that pressure is not released you become a beacon to monsters and supernatural forces. Also, after hitting certain thresholds, physical and psychological side effects have been reported.
Volatility will increase naturally at a rate of 1 per hour while not at rest.
Sample sizes for side effects are small, but have included hallucinations, heart attack, stroke, violent diarrhea, and death.
“I’m sorry, beacon for what now?”
He stared at the text. Beacon for supernatural forces. Of. Fucking. Course. The worst day of his life was just going to continue getting worse forever. This was just his life now.
“Excellent,” he muttered. “Love that for me.”
Greg thought about the window disappearing and it closed, much to his chagrin. This was all a dream, anyway. Might as well go with it. He searched his periphery and thought about the bars in the corner. The bars grew enough that he could clearly see them without struggling. Each of them had an indicator to the left. A tiny halo at zero of one hundred, a pair of horns at zero of one hundred, then the V that blinked yellow at twenty-six of one hundred.
“Okay,” Greg said, feeling incredibly small in the oppressive darkness. He was talking to himself, or a hallucination, or whatever the fuck was putting words in his eyeballs. “I need light. Can you…” He cleared his throat. “Can the magic hallucination boxes help with that?”
The user interface, in fact, could help with that. A screen emerged from the opposite corner of the bars, which shrunk back down. It looked like a tabletop RPG’s character sheet, but instead of some fanciful fantasy name scrawled at the top in his chicken scratch, it just read Greg Norwood—Level 0.
There were other sections that piqued his interest, namely the fact that his stats seemed wildly low, but the UI had indicated its idea with a flashing box around the inventory section. The single line item in his inventory read Adventurer’s Kit. To this point, just thinking about this nonsense had worked, so he thought about opening the adventurer’s kit.
Starting Equipment Received!
1 iron sword
1 wooden shield
1 leather cuirass
1 torch
10 feet of braided rope
1 journal
1 candy bar
[Fragment Surge—Error]…[Persona Suppressed]
“Persona suppressed?” Greg squinted into the darkness. Excellent. His magical user interface didn’t even work properly. How he accessed it was beyond him. Surely just thinking about the torch wouldn’t make it…
Something wood fell from the sky, cracked him in the skull, and clattered to the ground.
“Fuck!” His hand covered his head, and he stumbled back. “Alright, not to self: Magic inventory, not a joke. Will drop shit right on your head. Great system.”
Water dripped from the ceiling onto his bare back as his hand fumbled across the slick stone. It must have hit something because it hadn’t gone far. His fingers finally grasped something cloth, but upon further inspection it was not the oiled tip of the torch.
Something else was here, and it felt unsettlingly like clothing.
Goosepimples covered his body as he quickly pushed his hands along the stone ground until he grabbed the wooden handle of the torch and backed away quickly from where he’d felt the clothing…only to back into another set.
“Oh, fuck me…. Come on… how do I light this fucking thing? Please. Please, just light…” To which his character sheet popped up again, this time another section blinking.
Abilities
Flame Strike
Level 1: 0 of 100
Enhance a melee attack with demonic fire. Any physical damage dealt will be matched with equal fire damage.
Increase Demonic Resonance by 2
Increase Volatility by 2
Decrease Divine Resonance by 2
Radiant Strike
Level 1: 0 of 100
Enhance a melee attack with divine light. Any physical damage dealt will be matched with equal radiant damage.
Increase Divine Resonance by 2
Increase Volatility by 2
Decrease Demonic Resonance by 2
“Okay…flame strike. Hold on, demon resonance?”
No, he didn’t have time. He need to light this torch so he could see what was going on behind him. Was he supposed to hit it? Physical damage dealt. Greg shook his head and slammed the head of the torch on the ground, praying for it to light.
Flames crawled up his fingers. Greg let out a very manly shriek—deep, commanding, and absolutely not ridiculously high-pitched at all. A sound James certainly would not have made fun of him for.
But James wasn’t here. No one was.
No time. Light the torch, Greg. Fire coming off his fingertips? Totally normal. Why? Doesn’t matter, figure it out later.
He slammed the head of the torch down again, this time moving his hand up to light it as soon as the flames popped out of his fingertips.
Firelight lit the low ceiling tunnel he inhabited.
A dozen bodies littered the floor at his feet. What he’d assumed to be water coating the stone was blood. Beneath the corpses and the blood, the only other distinguishable thing in the firelight was the remnants of a chalk circle with connected lines crossing in the center. Just like what he’d seen in Jinty McGinty’s bathroom.
This was fine. He’d gone through premed. A few dead bodies weren’t going to make him lose his stomach. Greg closed his eyes as the airport announcer sounded in his head again.
NEW QUEST!
Figure out how the cultists died.
0 of 1
Reward:
subterranean chamber key
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Greg opened his eyes and examined the pop-up window the voice had just read out before thinking it away. “Not today, Airport Autumn.”
He rushed away from the circle, spotting a dull green light in the distance. An Exit. Had to be an exit. Picking up the pace, he ignored the pain in his bare feet as he sprinted. He stumbled to a stop, a manic grin coming to his face at the open archway the light was marking. A single small room with a ladder in the center. A ladder that would certainly take him to the surface.
Climbing with one hand wasn’t ideal, but he’d rather light his balls on fire than drop the torch. One rung at a time. All the way to the top. He grabbed the handle and pulled.
Nothing.
He let out a tiny, high-pitched whine, and yanked it the opposite direction.
Stuck.
“No no no no no.” He shook his head, free hand searching the hatch for anything to help him open it. Anything to… He froze. A keyhole. The reward from the quest. Subterranean chamber key. “Fucking seriously?”
Greg smacked his forehead against the cool steel bar of the ladder a few times before climbing back down and reluctantly returning the way he’d come. Just go dig through a pile of bodies like he’s Sherlock fucking Holmes? He slowed as he got closer, examining the circle again and then looking to the scattered bodies.
This was not fine.
Nothing about being naked in the dark surrounded by corpses was fine, but what choice did he have? Sit here and wait to die?
Resigned, he stepped to the body he’d already felt the robes of and slowly flipped it onto its back. The hood fell back and firelight lit up a feline face, causing Greg to jump back, free hand covering his hammering heart. Totally fine. Totally normal. Cat people. Absolutely something you see in Los Angeles sewers.
He took a couple of steadying breaths, trying his best to ease his heart rate down to normal levels before kneeling down and examining the body. Insects had laid eggs in the corners of the eyes, mouth, and nose. Judging by the smell and rigidity of the body, he’d guess this particular cat person had been dead about a day. He pressed a hand gently on the midsection. There was slight pressure, but no significant bloating, so a day made sense.
Twenty-four hours.
He thought about his volatility bar again. The indicator rose, showing he was now at twenty-six of one hundred. The tooltip had said he’d gain volatility at a rate of one per hour. He’d been unconscious, in the dark, surrounded by corpses…for a full day.
Greg shuddered as he placed the torch on the ground and worked the robe up so he could examine the body. If there wasn’t an obvious wound, he had his doubts he’d be able to figure out how they died. Hopefully, there was a human one and he could properly diagnose.
Greg’s stomach lurched, and he immediately let go of the robes as they passed over the torso. His empty stomach struggled to empty its contents, acidic bile rising into his mouth as he rested on his hands and knees, heaving.
A fist-sized hole had been punched into the chest of the feline humanoid. Maggots squirmed along the rotting flesh. After he recovered, Greg lifted the torch to find exactly what he’d expected. If there was a heart there before, it wasn’t anymore.
He took a few minutes to confirm that was the cause of death on all twelve of the cultists, finding a few more surprises along the way. The initial feline had been thin and lithe with the head of a house cat. Another of the twelve cultists was much larger. If he had to guess over seven feet tall and from what he could tell, solid muscle. This one, however, had the mane and facial features of a lion.
“This is all totally fine.” He whispered to the corpses. “We’re all having a great time. Definitely not losing my mind.”
He just needed to remember this was all a dream. He was in a coma on a hospital bed. None of this was real. He flipped another cultist onto their back, this one was human shaped, but his skin was made of segmented rock, like that fucking superhero. Another with the face and tail of a lizard. All of them with empty holes in their chest cavities.
QUEST COMPLETE
Figure out how the cultists died
1 of 1
Reward:
Subterranean chamber key
Greg stepped back this time. The key fell from above his head, and he caught it. He contemplated stealing a robe from one of the dead cultists, but ultimately decided nudity was better than being covered in bugs and death. He made off at a rather brisk walking pace away from the circle.
Hurrying back toward the light, and ultimately what he hoped to be freedom from this nightmare, he dropped the torch at the bottom of the ladder and climbed up.
“Come on…” he muttered as he slipped the key into the keyhole and twisted. The old lock made a horrible cracking sound, making Greg think he’d busted the key off inside. He jerked frantically at the little handle and pushed. The hatch creaked open.
He came out the small door to find himself in what looked suspiciously like an enormous overflow ditch. A twenty foot deep concrete recess in the ground with impossibly steep sides. Above him, a forty-foot long bridge led from one side to the other.
He closed and locked the hatch door behind him like the little tumblers would keep the nightmare at bay. Greg pressed his back to the concrete wall and slid down. He just needed a second to rest. Just to catch his breath. He shoved his shaking hands into his armpits, hoping the action would trick his brain into thinking it was from the cold.
A heavy cloud of fog hung in the sky, obstructing the tops of buildings that rose on either side of the ditch. Multicolored lights reflected off the cloud’s surface, giving it almost a rainbow like quality. As he was examining it, a woman called out to him. He’d almost ignored it, thinking it was Airport Autumn again, but the accent struck him as strange. He jerked his head to the side to see a young woman jumping up to sit on the railing that protected passersby from falling in.
“Rough night, Gifted?”
