Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

SARAH AVERY VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5

SKYLAND

Deep beneath the virtual landscape of the Tutorial Realm, in a small rainbow-colored room, Kimi-Lim was working on constructing a complex rune matrix while Sunspot slept peacefully on the floor. Sarah was trying to wrap her head around the so-called plan that Kimi-Lim had just laid out for her.

“Kimi-Lim, I don’t mean to sound rude, but I’m gonna level with you. Your plan is hot garbage. You want to collapse reality and then ‘ride my Quest exit on out of here’? Come on. Let’s get out of here and actually plan this out.” She started looking for a door.

Kimi-Lim didn’t move from their spot but continued working on the runes. “It’s all we have time for, unfortunately.” They pulled the midnight blue sphere from a fold in their golden robes and tossed it to Sarah.

Sarah caught it, recognizing it from when Kimi-Lim had talked right after fighting the manticore. When she’d seen it the first time, it had been glowing softly. Now she couldn’t see any light glittering from within it at all. Maybe that little glint came from inside it? It could’ve been a reflection.

“My tensa battery is almost dead. We’ve got maybe… five or six hours before it fails and the spells that hide me from the System fail. Then I’ll be the one popped out of here by the System—through a meat grinder—and you’ll disintegrate into the chaos of Dimension X.”

Sarah cleared her throat, her voice tight with tension as she said, “I’m sorry, did you just say disintegrate? Why didn’t you mention this before we got into the elevator?!” Then something else occurred to her, “And seriously, ‘Dimension X’?”

“It’s just what we call whatever place tensa comes from. Nobody knows where it comes from, so ‘Dimension X’. And yeah, you’ll be blasted into your component parts before you even realize what’s going on once I’ve been removed. These inter-reality places aren’t designed for…well, for anyone. But we don’t have any more choices—remember how I said we’re out of time?” The strain was entering the elf’s voice, but Kimi-Lim kept working on their light runes, meticulously drawing the diagrams out with their Silverstaff.

“I hadn’t forgotten, it’s just…shitty!” She was trying to keep the anger down when she realized that there was no good reason to keep the anger down. This really was shitty. “Now if this plan doesn’t work out, we’ll both be killed!”

“It’s always been high-stakes for me, Sarah.” Kimi-Lim finished the rune and started on the next one. “My home is gone, my family and friends turned into ghouls and zombies and worse. I’ve sunk everything I have into this mission, Sarah. This empty tensa battery and the spells it powered, the intelligence on how to enter this Tutorial Realm…it’s all I have. If I don’t come out of this mission with what I needed, I’ll be dead anyway.”

“Well, that’s great for you, you asshole!” Sarah yelled. “I hadn’t planned on dying! I’m trying to live!”

“This isn’t suicide!” Kimi-Lim shouted back, still working on their runes. “It’s not! And I wouldn’t have dragged you into my death if it was.”

“It’s called ‘informed consent’!” She felt like her cheeks were on fire. “You say, ‘Sarah, would you like to participate in a plan that will be risky as fuck and likely end in our deaths?’ to which I say, ‘Sure thing, Kimi-Lim, that sounds swell!’ Do you see how that works?!”

Kimi-Lim sighed but didn’t pause with their diagram-drawing, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. But we’re here now and it’s happening now.”

The anger kept building, just like it always did. She couldn’t stop now. “No, I don’t think so,” she said acidly, “We had a thing, I thought. I thought we were friends, but friends don’t do this kind of heinous bullshit!” She brought up her Quest menu. She tried to bring up her Quest menu. Nothing happened.

“No teleportation magic will work here,” Kimi-Lim said calmly, “which is what your System Quest will try to do once you accept its offer to leave. Don’t you think I’d have teleported here if I could have? And as for your ‘informed consent’… I thought you knew what you were getting into. What have we done so far that hasn’t involved significant risk to life and limb?” They pointed with their free hand at Sarah’s cybernetic arm. “When we met, you were running away from forest giants! When we went searching for your new gear, you weren’t moaning when the slimes attacked, and we were in just as much danger there.”

The anger had the reins now, and she felt it start to turn into that pure rage that always felt so good when it happened and so terrible afterward. But then something curious happened. A message flashed up in her vision:

>Conditions for Oni-Blooded graft reached! Activating Oni-Blooded.

>Oni-Blooded graft activation failed. Artificial Rage convergence does not allow for unwilling activation of Oni-Blooded. Rage has been shunted into Power Arm computer systems.

All the anger that had been building up inside just stopped. The heat was gone, she didn’t feel that terrible momentum that made her say the absolute worst things. She closed her mouth again and took a deep breath.

“I’m scared,” she realized. “And I’m lashing out at you because you’re here and you’re not me. Fuck. You’re right. I’m sorry.” She leaned against a wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. “I hate my temper. But I have to admit…I really love this convergence thing.”

Kimi-Lim raised a skeptical eyebrow, their staff almost pausing in its tracing of light diagrams before continuing. “I don’t think I’d ever expected to hear that phrase from a human. Ever. Still, I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to talk to me like that. It bodes well for our friendship!”

Sarah opened her eyes and watched as Kimi-Lim kept drawing diagrams. Ten runes glowed brightly along the length of the Silverstaff, and they were still steadily working. “How much longer is this going to take?” She asked.

“It’s hard to be very precise…less than five or six hours! Probably less than an hour.”

“You do you.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. “Let me know when I need to… um, distract Gammon.”

I’ll either be dead or out of here in the next few hours, Sarah thought. That idea made her throat want to close up. It felt like her heart was beating hard in her chest while something fluttered in her belly. But it’s not my actual heart anymore, is it? Just like it’s not my actual arm anymore, she thought. She tapped her cybernetic fingers on the floor, hearing the metallic tack with each tap. When I see Griffin again, how much of me will be left?

The thought didn’t do much to temper the fear, but it did call up Griffin’s face. He's such a goofball. She saw his crazy, static-shock hair in her mind and felt herself smile. She remembered his hands in hers; she loved his hands. If I’ve been chopped up and put back together with magic duct tape, what about Griffin? How much of him will I recognize when I find him? The thoughts tumbled through her mind, worrying at her and eating away at her peace.

Finally, Kimi-Lim said, “It’s time. The bridge has been constructed. Now I need to open the way to it.”

Sarah opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Kimi-Lim looked wrung out. The elf was sitting next to her, sweat dripping down their face and dark, almost black circles under their golden eyes, their Silverstaff lying next to them still glowed with the runes they’d stored in it. Kimi-Lim’s beautiful golden and ivory robes were dark with sweat patches.

“You look like shit,” Sarah said.

“I feel like shit,” Kimi-Lim said. “I’ll be ready in a minute. How about you?”

“I’m fine.” Sarah stood up and cracked her neck. She flexed her natural arm and her new cybernetic arm. There was nothing she could do except live. She checked her tensa pool and configured her anima to the Ten Star Vortex. Her skin tingled as tensa began swirling around her, invisible but tangible. “Ready when you are.”

Kimi-Lim looked over at Sunspot, who hadn’t moved from his nap during the entire confrontation, “Hey Sunspot! Come here, lazybones. I need a little more light.” The dog got up, stretching front and back before he trotted over to Kimi-Lim and sat down.

As he got closer, he got brighter and brighter until he was shining as brightly as the sun at noon. The entire room was bathed in blindingly bright light for several seconds until, a moment later, Sunspot dimmed back to his usual soft orange-gold glow. Kimi-Lim’s entire demeanor had changed.

Sunspot’s blast of sunlight had completely reinvigorated the elf. They got up gracefully, standing in one smooth motion and there was no longer any evidence of their previous exhaustion. Even their robes looked like they’d been through the celestial dry-cleaners.

Kimi-Lim picked up their Silverstaff, double-checking each of the runes. There were more than a hundred, shrunk down and lining the staff in neat rows. The runes glowed now with a color-shifting light that was not unlike the walls in the small room they were in. Kimi-Lim grasped their Silverstaff in both hands, planting its base on the floor.

They looked up at Sara and said, “I’m going to open the way to the bridge now. As soon as it opens, Entresis will know we’re here. The only hope we have is to keep it in its avatar form which means that you’ll need to distract Gammon however you can for as long as you can. Once I yank the brain, this place won’t be far behind.”

“And that’s when I’ll be able to use the Quest to get us out of here?”

“That is my hope, yes,” Kimi-Lim said. “Alright, I’m opening the bridge now. Sunspot, stay with me; I’ll need you in between worlds. Sarah, if I don’t see you again after this… thank you. Truly. And I’m sorry.”

Sarah didn’t say anything, but just walked over to the slight elf and embraced them. After a startled moment, Kimi-Lim returned the hug. They stood there for a long few minutes, each giving strength to one another, feeling their separate heartbeats until they beat in tandem. They eventually broke the hug and separated.

Sarah got into a ready crouch, her anima whirling around in the Ten Star Vortex. She extended her bow by pressing the little button on the side of the compacted Vindaari School InfiniBow. The black metal telescoped smoothly out until it was full-sized; with a surge of tensa, she activated its red laser bowstring and it flicked on with a low hum.

Kimi-Lim drew a door shape on the color-shifting wall with their Silverstaff. The shape was traced in bright rainbow fire as each of the runes drained themselves into the bridge. As they finished the last centimeter of the shape, the last rune drained into it and the entire shape filled in with bright, swirling rainbow light.

For a moment, the light looked like a screen, flat and psychedelic but in a mundane movie-special-effects kind of way. Then, the flat swirling light changed dimensions like a Magic Eye poster where a sailboat suddenly coalesces out of random chaos after you’ve strained your eyes trying to see it. The doorway resolved into a long, narrow tunnel made of rainbow light. Kimi-Lim didn’t wait, they darted into the tunnel as soon as it formed with Sunspot hot on their heels.

Sarah waited, her heart pounding in her chest. She still wondered what the hell was beating in there; it still felt like her heart. Then, the room changed and suddenly she was no longer in the small multicolored room with the rainbow tunnel extending into the ether. She was in a very familiar yard in front of the ramshackle forest greenhouse that she’d lived in for the past eight years. She heard the sizzle of meat on the grill from the back yard and she grimaced, the smell of grilled eel once again bringing up painful memories. This was not going the way she thought it was going to go.

Cautiously, she walked around the house to the backyard, materializing an arrow with her Vindaari School Bowman’s Brace and setting it to the red laser string. The arrow that materialized wasn’t like the weaponforms she made with her Never Unarmed racial ability: she felt a brief tingle in her fingertips, then a ruby-red arrow seemingly made of gemstone appeared in her hand. She hoped it would be enough. She walked carefully to the backyard, not lowering her guard, even when she saw Gammon standing with his back to her, concentrating on flipping the skewers on the grill.

“I’m glad to see that you’ve learned a little caution,” Gammon said as he worked. “I’ve observed your progress with great interest.”

Sarah paused. She considered shooting Gammon with the ruby arrow now, but the very thought made her shudder. Monsters were one thing, but this was Gammon. Even though she knew he was an AI…thing, she couldn’t just kill him. She sighed and dismissed the arrow then pressed the button on the bow and it collapsed back down into its pack of playing cards form. She walked over to his side, smacking him on the back of his head. It was easy to forget that he was shorter than she was because he loomed so large in her recent memories.

“That’s pretty creepy, do you know that?” Sarah took a tasp from the cooler on the little plastic patio table Gammon had propped next to the grill. The green bottle was cold and wet, and the drink’s crisp sweetness was particularly noticeable to Sarah because she was aware that none of this was real.

“Thank you for not shooting me with your fancy new bow and arrow.” He took one of the skewers off the grill and put it on a waiting plate.

“I’m not sure what the point is, to be honest. Nothing here makes a whole lot of sense to me, but I do know this: I’m not just going to shoot you in the back. Whatever you are.” Sarah took the eel skewer and bit into it, blowing on the hot meat even as she chewed it, enjoying that delicious interplay between the char on the outside and the soft yet firm texture of the tenji eel; it was always best right off the grill.

Gammon pulled another couple of skewers off the heat and took a sip from his bottle, still watching the meat on the grill, not looking at Sarah. “So what’s your plan, Sarah?”

“I thought you said you’d been watching us,” Sarah said.

“Humor me.”

“I’m distracting you while Kimi-Lim yanks your brain out. Zing, zang, zoom.” She took another long drink of tasp. “Seems to be working out pretty well so far.”

“Is it?”

Sarah frowned. How long have I been here? How long did it take to sneak around to the back of the house? And the conversation she’d had with Gammon hadn’t exactly been going on for long, but certainly, it was long enough for Kimi-Lim to ‘yank’ a ‘brain’. Isn’t it?

Sarah sighed, “There’s always something, isn’t there?”