Chapter 2: Up a Creek, No Paddle (1/2)
Niyl was a world of mighty continents and vast seas, not unlike earth. One of those was Param, a large circular mass linked to its only neighbor by an isthmus no broader than a city. A fertile land, it also boasted the dubious honor of being the location for the greatest magical catastrophe ever recorded. The Western part of Param still bore in its flesh the stigma of this awesome event.
Seen from up high, the scar looked like a spot of necrotic tissue on an otherwise healthy body. A closer look would reveal a massive valley surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountainous ranges, with the exception of a tiny gap in the south. The area was darkest at its core, though shrubbery and enduring plants gave it a greenish tint the farther one went from the epicenter. There, the Old Empire had made its seat of power, from which it had terrified the world. There, its elites had reached summits of magical ability the world had never seen, and there, they weaved their own doom. The legacy of their might could now only be found in private collections and in the languages of kings. The Old Empire had died an ignominious death at the apex of its power.
Now, only the mindless undead treaded its sandy corpse.
A cautionary tale.
Only one expedition successfully explored the old capital of Harrak where the fateful experiment had taken place, and they reported a cursed city, its empty street still dominated by the vertiginous form of the Imperial Ziggurat. A mighty cadaver, gutted by a cataclysmic explosion, as imposing as the remains of an ancient drake.
In the throne room of the emperor, a figure stirred. It shivered in pain. Arms and legs locked in a dead grip that left its muscle straining, until two green eyes opened.
The figure let out an ear-shattering scream of pure agony. The woman scratched her naked form with enough strength to draw blood in a vain effort to push back the aftershock of the terrible experience she had suffered. It was but a memory, a remnant of an ordeal she no longer possessed the means to understand, and yet just that little was enough to make her want to kill herself. The atrocious suffering could not be explained with the words she knew. Hell, she was not even sure it was her nerves flaring up. It felt more intimate than that, a deep malaise, as if her body did not quite fit. No matter what ‘it’ was that had caused her current condition, ‘it’ had been abominable.
She stayed there for a good thirty seconds, gulping air as if it were free.
Eventually, her nociceptors must have saturated or something, because enough neurons fired to make her realize her predicament.
“Fuck!”
She stood up in a rush, pain pushed to the back of her mind by her current condition. She was absolutely butt-naked. It was cold as hell, and she already had goosebumps.
And there was a draft where there should be none.
“FUCK!”
She checked her forearms. Not one dark hair. She passed a hand on the glistening surface of her skull.
“FUUUUUUCK!”
Her hand trailed down to the smooth surface where her eyebrows used to be.
“What the hell?”
She quickly checked herself. No visible wounds. No sign of external trauma, though she was shaking from the cold and her fingertips were showing signs of cyanosis. They were already blue.
Only then did she check her surroundings.
“Aaaaaah what the…”
She was inside of a room as big as a hangar with walls of massive stones covered in the tattered remains of pennants and tapestries, their colors long faded. Debris littered the ground, seemingly made out of ossified wood and cracked bones. Human bones. A massive throne occupied the far wall with the ceiling collapsed behind it. A boulder the size of a bus had crashed through the ground to her left in some distant past. It now let in frigid air and a morose winter light.
On the throne sat a crowned skeleton with its ghastly skull resting on a bony hand.
And by its side were six mummified bodies clad in black, still holding the rusty hilts of broken weapons.
Either the skeletons were pygmees, or the dead king was fuckhuge.
The woman pinched herself, because what else could she do?
It hurt.
Also, she was freezing her tits off.
Alright, alright, think. Her name was Vivane Saint-Lys. Twenty-four. Corporal and medic. Stationed inside of Mopti airport with the rest of her platoon to protect it from Jihadists.
This was not Mopti. Way too fucking cold.
The thought that she may have been captured and sent here was immediately dismissed. They had sentries, she would have been awake. No, she was clearly somewhere… Well…
She felt wind behind her. A massive opening in the wall let her see a sooty sky, the kind of nasty stuff they showed in dystopian movies.
She walked out into a frigid gale and her eyes widened in surprise.
She stood near the top of a pyramid of impossible size. The massive obsidian steps that started before her shrunk in the distance until they were humorously tiny. The pairs of statues lining it were the size of four men, but near the bottom they looked as small as toys. There were other entrances, many of them obstructed or collapsed and it was not difficult to see why.
In front of her, a city extended for kilometers upon kilometers with the exacting precision that only rigorous urban planning could achieve. There were estates and temples and churches and squares, all darkened and dead, all devoid of movement. A desert of basaltic sand extended beyond to mountains far, far into the distance. Pieces of rubble the size of apartment buildings dotted the land as if a titan had been playing weight throw. It only took a moment for her to realize that the origin of said rubble was not before her.
She turned around.
Where the top of the pyramid used to be, there was now a massive hole surrounded by the molten, ragged edges of vitrified stone. The size of the crater was not normal. It was not what she could associate with heavy ordinance, no. It was something she would have associated with asteroid craters, or the impact of a tactical nuclear warhead.
It had come from the inside.
It gave her vertigo.
She shivered violently and ran back into the relative shelter of the room, back hunched and arms held tightly. She recognized the telling signs of hypothermia.
“Right. I need to — GYAAAA”
She ducked back when white glyphs appeared in the air before her. The prompt retreat had been of no use: the floating symbols had simply followed her gaze. The only thing that calmed her down was the strange sensation that she understood their meaning, even if she knew it was impossible. They said ‘please wait’.
And then, the glyphs faded, only to be replaced by roman characters.
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE. ADAPTING USER INTERFACE]
“Err.”
This did not look good.
[ADAPTATION COMPLETE. PLEASE STAND BY…]
The font had changed to something vaguely futuristic. It was just weird.
Then a window appeared, still in the same font and with a transparent background of light blue. At least it was not in Comic fucking Sans.
Welcome to Nyil, Outlander. You have been transported to a new world!
Every sapient of this realm benefits from magic under the guidance of the god Nous, via the interface now granted to you.
Magic.
Magic magic magic. Really? That was… incredible? If it were true, of course, but magic? Despite her dire circumstances, a teeny-tiny part of her quivered with excitement.
Magic!
Like the stories she had read when she was young, before reality had become too heavy and she had grown too jaded.
Also, transported? That was decent news. Her first hypothesis was that she had been smeared by a mortar shell and her brain had been frozen by her rich family, before being plugged into some bullshit augmented reality thingie in the year 2326.
Transportation to another world was way better.
Viv realized that incoherence was one of the symptoms of hypothermia and started to jump from one leg to another like a drunk goose.
To help you on your journey, you have received the blessing of Maradoc, god of travels and mysteries. Additional features will unlock as your body adjusts to magic.
You have been granted the following benefits:
Good luck out there!
Her digestive… what the fuck?
Wait, hold on, that was not important.
Another world! Magic! She was still not over it.
But that world was not hers, and the squad depended on her.
“But why? Can’t you send me back?” she asked the air, feeling very silly.
“Hello? Anyone? Interface? Marasomething, wait, Maradoc? Nous? Oh great and magnificent gods Maradoc and Nous, I pray to thee. Answer mine… Ow!”
She reeled as the deep unease she had felt before came back with a vengeance.
“Right. Sorry if I offended.”
System update! Your physical condition has been assessed.
Current status:
“Ooookay?”
Soul trauma did not look good at all. It was probably due to having one’s soul tossed into a parallel universe or something. Maybe she had been smeared by a shell after all, tiny bits of Viviane sent up in the air. Maybe Mouq had seen her large intestine. That would be weird.
System update! Your magical condition has been assessed.
Current status:
Mana distribution:
Current attunement: 0.14%
Yeah yeah whatever, this meant nothing to her. Unless she could pop fireballs out of her ass, this was of limited use. Alright. Whatever. First things first.
Viv pushed back her fears and her questions as her training took over. It had taken her a long time but, to be fair, those were unusual circumstances.
Right. So.
Shelter, water, food. In that order.
The collapsed place she was in was shit, but the town below looked more promising. The only problem was that it would take hours to get down to find something and… she did not have hours.
Viv eyed the guards around the dead king.
They were still wearing some sort of black jumpsuit, the only thing still intact in this place. Even the colossal mummy’s crown was all cracked and dull.
Hmm.
Problem was that this was a magic world and her limited experience of fantasy literature and Minecraft told her that disturbing them would be a Bad idea, capital B.
On the other hand, if they woke up and pulped her at least she would be warm before she died.
“Right. Right… Steady now.”
She approached the group in a light step, then screamed like a sissy when another window popped up.
“Fuck!”
Interface update! Your stats have been assessed. Adjustments will occur.
Physical
Mental
Power
8
Focus
19
Finesse
16
Acuity
19
Endurance
15
Willpower
19
“Shhh! Ah, it’s all in my head…” she remembered.
She returned her attention to the still unmoving forms down the hall. Any time now, they were going to start moving and bash her head in with her own femur.
She moved forward, teeth chattering. Her eyes were fixed on the shapes with laser focus. If they started to reassemble, she would run in and grab one by the back then run like hell. The bodies were dessicated, so probably not too heavy.
Focus +1
You have reached a milestone! You have gained the inspect skill.
“How convenient,” Viv muttered to herself.
Alright then inspect that dead thing over there.
[Dead person]
“Woooow,” the woman said, stumbling a bit. The skill activation had been… weird. And strangely painful. But not the soul-shattering painful of before, more like using a cramped muscle she did not know she had. Her chest, brain, and, she guessed, optic nerves had heated up a bit.
The imparted knowledge had appeared in her brain as if she had heard it and memorized before. It was peculiar.
Also, fucking useless.
“I can see that, you twat.”
But nay, hold on, she was being too hasty. If this thing was correct, then she was safe! It had not said ‘Fucking Skeletor of short-tempered Fuckery, currently finishing his light nap.’ It had said “dead person”.
And this one wearing the black onesie?
[Dead person]
Those dead were dead! Hurray!
Viv abandoned any attempt at stealth after checking all six guards and rushed to the first one she saw, then to another since candidate number one had been a hulking bodybuilder. She found one her size and turned the body around.
“Sorry friend, I need it more than you do.”
There were no zippers but there was a sort of pressure button on the shoulder that opened the suit to the waist. She remarked in passing that the body was perfectly conserved as she methodically took it out. The ancient Egyptians could not have done better. It was a stark contrast to the other bones at her back. As to why they had endured and the others had not, she had no idea.
She slid into the jump suit and closed it around her. It was smooth to the touch and very soft inside. She ignored the little voice in her head that told her that her crotch was currently where a pair of dead bollocks had been mashed for possibly years, and that if there was one way to catch fantasy ebola, that was it.
Viv stood up and started to shiver more violently as the heat got trapped between her skin and the blessed weird fabric.