Halcyon System 3 Chapter Twenty-Two

Almost every Knight in Knights of the Apocalypse Three uses a weapon. Swords, spears, axes, guns, bows, or more exotic stuff. Stuff I only see in really bad movies.

But a couple of them don’t even carry backup swords.

They’re pure casters.

And it’s not like they don’t wear armor. Bulwark is the most heavily armored Tank in the game. She can’t even move if she’s not casting her spells. But she’s also disgustingly strong as a mage—so much so that most groups trying the toughest, max-level stuff want a Bulwark over any other Tank. She can’t do any damage, but she barely needs healing, and she’s so massive she warps the battlefield around her.

I’ve always preferred the light sword Knights, though.

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Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown

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The Revolver isn’t the answer to this equation.

That much is obvious.

The first thing that pops into my head is Truthseeker. Jumping back and exploring the magma anomaly’s past, figuring out what it’s about, and banishing it.

But I have some really serious concerns about using Truthseeker on the magma elemental that’s eating the city. Only Alexander has been able to affect me inside the flashback—so far—but the risk of ending up in a place with two Qishi-Danger anomalies stacking their power against me is too much to gamble on. So that’s out—at least for now.

Analyze isn’t an option unless I want to grab James and pull him into this fight. Which I could do. It might even be the right option. But I don’t want to. Not yet.

Bullet Time, Slither, and Smoke Form won’t help me right now, either. The first won’t do enough damage, and the other two…they’re good for moving and running, but soon there won’t be anywhere in the city to run to.

Mindscape has a similar, but larger problem. I can’t hide there, because my physical body would still be in danger. And even if I could, I need Doctor Twitchy, too—and I can’t trust him in my Mindscape. Not at all.

So that leaves me with Mergewalk, Soundbreak, Determination, and Absolution.

That’s not enough possible answers.

The whole time I’ve been thinking, I’ve been falling slowly toward an ever-expanding sea of molten metal and asphalt. The tower Doctor Twitchy and I were in is nothing but ruins. He might be off the table as a variable, but until I confirm that, I can’t adjust the equation.

Possible lines to solve this, then:

One: I could try to adjust my Inquiries to enable an Absolution. That would almost certainly work, but I don’t know if I have time to resolve an Inquiry in the middle of a fight—especially one about the magma anomaly.

Two: I ignore the risk with Truthseeker and use it to set up the win. That’s the last resort—and maybe the ultimate goal, too.

Three: I could try to ignore the magma anomaly. I don’t need to beat it. Getting Doctor Twitchy out is the most important thing. But that’s going to be a lot less complex if the world’s not literally on fire.

And there’s a fourth option.

I could manually fight it. It’d be rough, but it might work.

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I Soundbreak.

Right at the base of a nearby skyscraper.

The implosion/explosion of noise rips through the weakened, melted beams, and the whole structure starts collapsing. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s heading straight for me, and while my wings are great for stopping me from falling to my death, they’re not exactly letting me fly.

So I don’t. I Slither and Smoke Form right at the tower.

[Stability 4/10]

The feeling of concrete and steel going through me is odd for a second, maybe two, and then I’m inside the falling building. Desks and ‘computers’ and all sorts of other crap tumbles around me as the building crumbles. I ignore it, even when it hits me. Instead, I’m trying to get to the far side. To the high side.

I Slither and Smoke Form again, this time through the far wall. The void wings unfurl again, and I fire another Soundbreak. This one hits the crumbling tower, and it crashes into the molten street in a rain of cement chunks the size of semi trucks. Dust fills the whole city. The sound is both massive and strangely muted.

[Stability 3/10]

Have I hurt the elemental? Almost certainly not. I’m not trying to hurt it, though. I’m just trying to slow it down—and get its attention, if it has attention to give me. If it’s not just a primal, apocalyptic force.

I Soundbreak a third time, this time right into the street.

Then the Revolver is back in my hand, and I’m switching to reality skippers.

I’m not trying to fight the anomaly. Not really. I just want it focused on something that’s not the city. And it works. For the first time, I feel its attention settle on me. A burning weight, like a thousand tons of molten steel. It reminds me of what it feels like to get a boss’s attention in Knights of the Apocalypse Three—at least, when you don’t want it.

Aggro.

But I do want it. And once it’s locked on me, I start running. Sort of.

This isn’t the desperate run to avoid the burning man, or fleeing from some other horrific monstrosity. It’s closer to baiting the Mindbenders away from Lambda-Four and Five. I want the magma anomaly’s attention. And I’ve got it. The heat builds up under me; asphalt and cooled stone and even steel remelt, and the hissing, burning stink of oil fills my nostrils.

But instead of panicking, I Slither. Then I Soundbreak again.

It’s not doing any damage. The anomaly doesn’t even notice. It just keeps pursuing, like the burning man on every steroid in the universe. I keep firing Soundbreaks. I use reality skippers. Anything I can do to keep myself off the ground, since there is no ground.

When I was a kid, before Mom died, Alice and I used to play ‘the floor is lava.’ It’s like that, but a million times worse, because the floor really is lava. It wants to kill me—I can feel it. But no, that’s a lie. As I carom off a skyscraper’s wall and my skin blisters from the heat, I realize that it doesn’t want to kill me. It doesn’t want anything except heat.

That’s worth an Inquiry. I ditch the thinling thing. Of all five, it’s the least important; I can resolve SHOCKS after I’m done saving all of reality, and I can do that after I get Doctor Twitchy and myself out of here.

          ►Inquiries (5/5)

                   ►What is the magma anomaly in Provisional Reality ARC?

In the time it takes me to fiddle with my System, I fall nearly a hundred feet and glide three blocks over. The next reality skipper gets me close to the top of one of the few undamaged skyscrapers near the city center. I crash through the glass window; it cuts at me, but I ignore it. I’m a lot tougher than I used to be, and I want my feet under me for this next part.

The entire world’s on fire. I’m about to figure out why.

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Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

Fire.

Burning.

And cold.

Freezing.

It’s strange, this world.

If I had to describe it, it’d be Hell. Not fantasy Hell—there’s a level of KotA 3 that’s fantasy Hell. This is real Hell. It’s a perfectly smooth plane of heat as far as I can see, and the only reason I’m not already burning is that I’m not here—not really.

I have no idea what happens in the real world when I use Truthseeker. I didn’t want to use it, but it offers an opportunity that I wouldn’t otherwise have, and I thought I was far enough away from Doctor Twitchy in case reality keeps moving and my victim/subject/target and I don’t.

Not important.

All that’s important is that there’s one magma anomaly on the ground, and a second one up above me, suspended a hundred yards or so in the air. Neither seems to notice me. The aggro’s gone. And neither is made of fire and lava, either. They remind me more of the Halcyon System’s wire-frame and energy point geometry, but two-dimensional.

As for the cold spots in Hell? They exist, and the anomaly on the ground seems to be waging a war against the cold. I flip my vision to heat for a moment—it’s harder without James, but not impossible to figure out—and everything flares white for an impossible, blinding moment. Then it calms into a boiling field of yellows and oranges, with a few dark red spots. Those dark red spots are cool. Or at least, they’re cool-er.

And those spots are under assault by the anomaly on the ground.

As I watch, it’s clear that the thing I thought was a magma elemental—that felt like the burning man—has only one real goal. It’s probably not even aware of that mission, but it still has it; it wants to make everything hot.

Honestly, it’s a noble goal. It’s simple, and it’s truthful. In its…mind? Programming? Reason to exist? Whatever. Things need to be the same, and they need to be hot.

So that’s the question of what the magma elementals are. But it’s not enough—not yet. I need to know how it ended up in Provisional Reality ARC. And even though I’ve got a guess, I need to confirm it. So I settle in and wait.

The anomaly above me does, too.

◄▼►

We wait a long time.

I’m bored by the end of it.

The magma anomalies aren’t. Their blazing yellow-white wire frames hardly move, except when the one on the ground snuffs out a cold spot. Then it flows into the area that was red and cooks it until it’s the same blazing near-white as everything else.

I stop using thermal vision after a couple of minutes. There’s no point.

This isn’t like following Li Mei, where there’s a clear something happening. It’s not like the spider, where it’s hunting and I’m following it. And it’s definitely not like Alexander. The anomalies here don’t have thoughts, or feelings, or goals. They don’t have any concept of time. They just make things hotter. That’s what they do.

So it’s almost impossible to notice when things change.

But not quite.

It’s a chill in the air. Well, chill is relative. But it feels like there’s an opening. One to another reality. And that’s when I remember the most important thing—something that if I’d remembered at the beginning, I could have used to beat the anomaly instantly.

Every time I’ve used Truthseeker, it’s been to figure out how an anomaly got to where it is, so I can put it back. That’s what I’ve been using it for. But I already know how the magma elemental got into Provisional Reality ARC.

I look toward the chill, and I see it. A thin place between this Hell of a reality and Provisional Reality ARC. An angel made of nothing—the Voiceless Singer. And, for a moment, I see me. Not me as I am not, but me as I was a few days ago, before the magma elemental destroyed Provisional Reality ARC.

Before I destroyed Provisional Reality ARC. Because I opened the merge that let it in. Maybe not on purpose. But it was me.

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Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown

- - - - -

The fight’s not a fight from there.

It’s an execution.

No, not an execution. There’s no guilt, no responsibility, only a mistake and a fluke—a roll of the dice. It wasn’t the magma elemental’s fault it got sucked through a merge and into a reality it wasn’t designed for, and who knows what that Stability-induced mistake did to its own reality the past few days.

It’s just me fixing a mistake.

The magma elemental’s got the same shining thinning at its core that Li Mei did, so I know exactly what to do. I Bullet Time, fire a massive blast toward the monster, and let time keep moving.

It’s big, so it takes a while. In fact, it takes so long that I start wondering if I’ve actually shot the right thing. The world around me keeps heating up, second after second, and the skyscraper I’m standing on twists and bends as its support beams melt away.

Then, suddenly, it’s cold.

That’s the only difference. The only way I know I’ve beaten the magma elemental.

No, not beaten. That’s not the truth of what happened here, and it’d be wrong to think it was. I’d just be lying to myself. The anomaly isn’t dead. I’m not convinced it can be killed. It’s just gone.

And the world is cold.

A skyscraper collapses. Then another. It takes me a second to figure out what’s happening, but as the sweat covering my skin starts to chill and my breath fogs my glasses, I piece together the new equation.

This world is dead. It was already on its way to death before my Stability crashed and the magma anomaly entered it, with just the Mindbenders and the unreality vines still alive. But the Stability-triggered merge and what came through was a death blow. The skyscrapers collapsing are falling apart because their melted and flash-cooled supports can’t hold their weight anymore, and it’s only going to get worse. As the world freezes over—and my math looks like it’s going to—every structure’s going to face the same fate eventually. Probably sooner rather than later.

[Truth Learned: Heat Death]

[Skill Learned: Truthseeker 2]

So, mission goals. Getting targeting information isn’t useful anymore. Or, more truthfully, it’s useful, but the main mission is getting Doctor Twitchy out if he’s still alive. Then it’s figuring out what options he and I have for targeting Merge Prime, with this reality lost.

I start heading back toward the skyscraper where I left Doctor Twitchy.

When I get there, I get my first good news in a while. The entire top half of the building is a twisted, smoking mess that covers two city blocks. It’s also not on top of the skyscraper anymore. Steam pours from it, mixing with the black smoke that’s covering half of the city as fires rage against the already-encroaching ice. It’s shocking how quickly this reality’s dying; if I had time, I’d investigate that, too.

But I don’t. So, instead, I dive into the skyscraper’s bottom half. It’s—somehow—intact. Mostly. Kind of. As intact as a building that’s split in two and both melted and flash-frozen can be, at least. I work my way through the collapsed main entrance, down too-small hallways choked with metal and smoke that burns my lungs, and through rooms whose glass is melted and shattered to let in the freezing cold wind. It takes forever. A good hour of searching—even with all my tricks, it’s hard to maneuver through everything.

But eventually, I find Doctor Twitchy. And, shockingly, he’s still alive.

He looks like hell. Broken arm, sliced-up leg, bruises that cover most of his exposed skin, and frostbite on the rest, but I can see him breathing. It’s faint. But it’s there.

I don’t waste any more time.

I grab him, and we Mergewalk.

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SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 21, 2043, 9:38 PM

- - - - -

I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to James.

It’s been way longer than I was expecting. The researchers—some of whom I recognize as being on the other side of the Plexiglas when I was being experimented on—don’t want to move him into the rest of SHOCKS Olympia. So, they’ve got him hooked up to the black sector’s JAMES Unit, and they’re trying to get it to show them what he’s learned, if anything.

That doesn’t leave me with much to do except for ponder the Revolver and think about James.

I’ve been using it to solve almost every problem I run into, and it’s a great Swiss Army Knife. It solves almost every one of them. Almost.

But at the end of the day, it’s a tool. Every single one of my powers is a tool, and when I default to shooting, I’m ignoring other ways to solve problems—and probably stopping myself from getting the Truth. The magma anomaly that—with my help—killed Provisional Reality ARC, for example. If I’d slowed down and realized that I had the right tool for the job, I could have dealt with it days ago, before I left the first time.

And that’s frustrating. Doctor Twitchy’s still not conscious, and the JAMES Unit can’t get anything from his augs. That’s the whole point of them being off here. If there hadn’t been a Qishi-Danger anomaly waiting for us in Provisional Reality ARC, or if I’d dealt with it before it cooked off the unreality roots and vines, this wouldn’t be an issue.

More importantly, I need to use all my tools if we’re going to save Reality Zero.

Not just my skills, but the people I know. I’m not sure how to fit them in yet, but there’s a way for Alice, and Mrs. Nazaire, and probably even Dad to be useful. I just need to figure out what they’re useful for.

I can’t start with any of them yet, though.

Because I need to start with Sidney. And with the JAMES Unit in the Black Sector.

The current James—the one outside the black sector—is ridiculously powerful. He’s basically the avatar of the Halcyon System, so he should be. But he can’t know what’s going on in here, and the JAMES Unit here is inadequate to do the job I need it to do. It doesn’t have…something. Processing power, maybe, or the connections to my skills? I can’t describe what it’s missing. It does all the things James did before he integrated with the System.

But I need more than that.

And I’m not sure how to get it. But it has something to do with Sidney.

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