Ashes to Ashes, Grist to Grist

by TheAmateur

A loosely-knit group of eight friends agree to play a reality-altering game, inadvertently bringing about the end of life on Earth. After being teleported into the world of the game, faced with extinction, the last living humans in existence struggle to keep each other alive in a dangerous and fantastical new world.

17. III Chapter 17: Into The West

Chapter Seventeen: Into The West

My neck muscles bulged as I went head to head with Glimmering Scales, matching the young red-scaled cobra's Vis as he attempted to shove me backwards.

This was another of our regular exercises—it's actually what we started out every day with. Glimmering Scales would take a stick and draw a good-sized circle in the dirt. We would then stand inside the circle, facing each other, and we would spar. This was unarmed combat, but not hand-to-hand combat—we fought using only our Vis, our telekinesis.

There were two catches for me. The first catch was the fact that I had to have my hands tied behind my back, after several incidents where I ended up punching Scales in the face. I've lived my entire life fighting my Sis with my hands, okay? Sue me… And the second catch was the absence of an actual start time. We would face each other, but there was no countdown from three, no buzzer or whistle. The exercise always started without any kind of warning.

So to succeed at mind-wrestling—that's what I called it because the consorts had no actual name for it—one would have to hone their reflexes and instincts to the point where they could anticipate their opponents' attacks. I was utterly hopeless in that regard, but I'd been doing some private practicing of my own to develop a little technique that would help me sense where Scales was going to attack, and today I was going to test it out. What I would do was…erm…

Okay, you know what? Fuck it. I'm not going to go into a lengthy explanation about how I planned on fighting Scales today. I'm just gonna go ahead and let my Vis do the talking.

We'd faced off for about a minute, just like normal, before I opened with a quick, sharp jab aimed towards the back of Scales's head. Yeah, that was another part of mind-wrestling that was hard to comprehend—your opponent could strike you from behind, above, or below even when he was still in front of you. There's no part of your body that is safe. It's mind-wrestling, after all.

Scales lunged forward, ducking his head down and avoiding my blow. As he thrust his head forward, I knew he wouldn't waste the opportunity to send a sharp push along with it, so I sidestepped his blow. However, I wasn't expecting the lightning-fast secondary strike that caught me behind the knees. I went down with a painful thud, but quickly rolled back up onto my feet.

Knocking an opponent down did not win the match—to win the match, you had to push your opponent outside the boundary of the circle. So even though I went down like the Berlin Wall, I was still in the fight. When I got back to my feet, Scales and I found ourselves facing each other down once more, each of us daring the other to make a move.

Time for my little idea.

After I stood back up, I quietly took a deep breath and formed a shell of air around my body. All I was really doing was making some of the air around my body hold in place, forming a shell of sorts around me. It was too thin to be seen by the naked eye or sensed by another's Vis, nor would it stand up to any form of attack. In fact, even a feather floating by on the breeze would be enough to break through the second skin of air that I'd drawn about myself. But that was exactly the point—whenever Scales would try and hit me, his attack would first have to travel through that shell of air, and I would know where Scales was going to hit me based on where I'd felt the rupture in the air shell.

I'm just trying to explain this in the simplest terms possible. The truth is that this is something I've been practicing at for days on end, now, and it's taken me an almost mind-numbing number of times to be able to hold the air shell together while still being able to focus on fighting off an opponent. It's fucking difficult, in case you were wondering. And even if you weren't, now you know.

Scales made the first move, this time. I felt it coming, felt the energy generated by his Vis disrupting my air shell, felt the ever so faint puff of air on the small of my back. I twisted out of the way; but even as I dodged, I held my hands out to the side and pulled them in the same direction that Scales's attack was heading in. This generated my own force behind Scales's, strengthening the original strike and sending it roaring into Scales's midsection.

The red-scaled consort went flying, landing with a noise that sounded like a cross between a hiss and an 'oof!'. He'd been blown clear out of the circle, nearly slamming into a nearby tree. He shook his head once and slithered back to his…uh…whatever you call the bottom of a snake's body. Fuck it, you know what I mean—he stood back up.

Scales's pupils had narrowed to slits. "How did you do that?" he asked me, almost accusingly. I knew that without using my little trick, I didn't stand much of a chance against Scales…and Scales knew that, too. "How did you know where I wass going to sstrike? You have never been able to anticipate like that, before."

I debated on whether or not I should tell Scales about my air shell, but ultimately I decided to spill the beans. I explained how I'd come up with my idea to use the 'air shell' to detect incoming attacks, and how I'd used that technique to fuck him up this last round.

"An interessting tactic," Glimmering Scales conceded. "However, if you intend to continue using it, you will have to make ssome changess. Your 'shell' will not hold in the wind, for example, unless you sstrengthen it. And sstrengthening it would defeat the purposse."

"That's why I make it more into a lattice when it's windy," I explained. When I saw that Scales plainly had no clue what a lattice was, I did my best to clarify. "Uh… It's basically similar to a cage, only with lots of small holes instead of spaces between bars. I guess it's almost like a very fine net. This keeps the structure of the shell intact, while allowing wind to pass through without blowing the shell away."

Glimmering Scales blinked. "And how are you able to change the sstructure of your shell?"

"Well… I can always feel all parts of the shell; that's how I know where you're trying to hit me," I reasoned. "All it really takes to change the shape is a little visualization. Imagining small holes in the shell and guiding the wind through. The Vis does the rest. Same thing for changing the shape."

Scales didn't even bother trying for another round of mind-wrestling; instead, he slithered over to our camp and retrieved my puzzle sphere, tossing it over to me. I tried to catch it one-handed and botched it, but I managed to snag it out of the air as it bounced down towards the ground. "Ssolve your puzzle," Scales commanded. "Ssolve it now."

"What, you mean-"

"Less talking, more ssolving."

"Fine…" I pulled out my length of string and took a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I made the front end of the string levitate, guiding it gently into the entrance hole of the puzzle ball. I'd done this so many times that I didn't need to actually see what I was doing, anymore. And once the string was inside the puzzle ball, having my eyes open was pretty pointless, anyway.

Just like every other time I've done this, I felt my Vis guide the string through the first short length of tunnel to the first junction, where the maze within the wooden sphere started proper. And, just like every other goddamn time I've done this, after navigating my way through the first few junctions, I ended up becoming hopelessly lost. I would try and backtrack, only to end up in a completely new junction, and the string gradually grew harder and harder to pull along behind my guiding Vis.

Finally, I had to give up, before the puzzle ball devoured the entire length of string. I opened my eyes and released my hold on the string, grabbing its back end and drawing it gently out of the wooden sphere. I'm not going to bother telling you all the myriad curses and plagues I was calling down on that fucking puzzle ball in my mind—I think you already get the idea.

Glimmering Scales watched me drop the puzzle ball and string back into my pocket, disappointment painfully evident in his facial expression. Yeah, I'd gotten a lot better at reading the emotions of giant cobras, lately.

"Sorry to disappoint," I grunted, pausing for a quick yawn and stretch before waiting for whatever Scales had in store for me next. "But let's be real, here; did you really expect anything different?"

"Actually, I did," Scales replied. "What you were doing with your air shell, the way you were going about countering my sstrikess… For once, you were on the right track. You were finally perceiving your Vis the way it iss ssuppossed to be perceived. Manipulation of energy, not matter. If only you applied that to your puzzle, you would have it ssolved in ssecondss. But I wass wrong. You have learned nothing."

Big words for a cobra.

We ended up eating a breakfast of nuts, berries, and some thin strips of meat that Scales fried on a flat stone by holding it in the air with his Vis and heating it with his own fire. I watched Scales fry up the LORAR equivalent of bacon with some measure of envy—while I'd been making significant progress with the ease of using my Aspect, I was still utterly incapable of conjuring my own fire. The only times I'd been able to do this was when I was in the middle of a fight; I'd never been able to do it consciously.

When I'd asked Scales about the link between fire and the Force Aspect, he just told me that I wouldn't understand the link until I solved the puzzle ball. No matter how many times, or how hard I tried to convince Scales to show me how to do the flamey thing, the young consort refused to budge.

Anyway.

Today was different from most other days.

Today, we were finally going to leave the Knightswood. We'd left the main village of Clan Nathair…uh…two weeks ago? Give or take a day or two, obviously. The only way I could measure time here was by remembering how many days had gone by, but the days had kind of started to blur together, lately. The point is, Scales and I had spent these past two weeks slowly making our way through the Knightswood while the young consort taught me the finer points of using the Force Aspect, but we were now about to leave the forest.

Finding and liberating the clans of the Desert Fires had always been our next overall objective, but it had never really been anything more than distant goal. Almost like how graduating High School seems like it's never going to happen, until one day you find yourself in the middle of your senior year, and graduation is staring you right in the face.

We broke camp and continued on our way through the woods. The trees gradually started to grow thinner and thinner, until about an hour later when I found myself standing at the top of a ridge, looking down over a beautiful golden savanna. Even though it was raining, the grass still looked like it was in bright sunlight. The otherwise flat, tree-dotted landscape was broken by rolling hills in the near distance. There were still a lot of trees covering the grasses, but the difference between a forest and savanna is that the trees are too small and sparsely spaced to create a canopy.

Giant trees dotted the savanna as well—not like the trees of the Knightswood, mind you; these trees were like those giant trees that you could find in some parts of Africa and Australia, or Madagascar. Nothing but grass, grass, grass, then suddenly BOOM! Massive fucking tree in the middle of nowhere. Baobab trees, I think they were called…thank Christ for Wikipedia, eh? Some of the trees I could see were obviously taller than a hundred feet—these trees were even larger than their earthbound counterparts.

"So, this is where the desert clans live?" I asked Scales. "Doesn't seem very…you know…desert-ey."

"The Desert Fires are a nomadic people, before they were ensslaved by Hyperion," Glimmering Scales explained to me. "They lived in campss, ssimilar to what you ssaw at the Forbidden River."

"Yes, yes, that's all very interesting, but… I mean, don't you kinda have to live in a desert if you're going to call yourselves the 'desert' people?"

"They are the desscendantss of the People of the Sands," Scales continued to fill some of those gaps in my knowledge of my consorts' civilization. "While they live in the Golden Grasses, instead of the they retain the name 'Desert' Fires in honor of their ancesstorss. They do not have villagess like my own people, or like the clanss of the Northern Fires—they have alwayss followed the Lifebeasst herdss, which iss why they are nomadic. Of coursse, my people rarely leave the Knightswood, these dayss, sso I honesstly do not know what to expect."

That got a frown from me. "So, uh… How long has it been since you've had contact with these plains guys?"

"Two centuriess."

I blinked, coming to a dead stop. "Two centuries?" I echoed. "You… You haven't heard from the Desert Fires in two hundred years? Are you kidding me? All we're going on here is a bunch of two-hundred-year-old rumors?"

"You never lived through Hyperion'ss conquesst," Scales hissed at me. "It took every lasst drop of my people'ss blood to keep the Denizen from burning down the Knightswood. Had we turned our attention to another people'ss home, we would have losst our own. The most recent taless brought to uss concerning the Desert Fires desscribed itss clanss as living in sslavery, forced to labor in the quarriess."

"And who told you guys that, if you never leave the forests?"

"Northernerss," Scales replied. "Unlike the clanss of the Desert Fires, whom we have not heard anything from, the clanss of the Northern Fires maintain regular communication with my people. They, too, ssuffer under the yoke of Hyperion'ss rule, but the Northernerss were better prepared for the conquesst than the nomadss of the Desert Fires. They are, by far, the largesst and mosst powerful of our three peopless. At leasst, they were, before Hyperion'ss arrival. They have their own resisstance movement, whom we ssupply with any aid we can."

All this shit was starting to make my brain ache slightly. I made a mental note to find out more about the clans of the Northern Fires later. Now, I figured we might as well get a move on through that savanna down below. The Golden Grasses, Scales had called it… Something else on this planet that actually wasn't named for me or the Old One! Maybe these cobras did have some creativity, after all.

Without any further delay, Scales and I began to make our way down the ridge.

---

I woke up with a bit of a start. For a moment, I thought I'd seen the brutish Dersite agent who'd very nearly succeeded at killing me, several days ago. But it was nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. I half expected the Phantom to show up, just then, and put me back on edge…but it did not.

I hadn't seen or heard the Phantom in quite some time, come to think of it. That was quite refreshing… I was beginning to wonder if I'd lost at least a small part of my sanity every time that shadowy figure popped up and started whispering to me. I shrugged, not really caring one way or another. I was my dream self, at the moment—it was pretty hard for me to dwell on thoughts as disturbing as those when I could be doing other things, like flying, or getting stoned. Or both at the same time.

But as I stepped toward one of my windows, my eye caught sight of my dream computer, and I remembered something from one of my more recent dreams, something the White Queen had recommended I do. She'd suggested I talk to the Witch of Light when I asked her questions about our session.

I couldn't contact anyone while I was awake, so… I guess I might as well get it done now, especially considering the fact that I'd probably forget in a few minutes if I decided to put it off. Yeah, that's another wonderful thing about being Dream Me—a slightly shitty memory. When you can jump from one thought to the next with the ease of Tarzan working his vines, you tend to easily forget things you'd previously-

Fuck, I'm doing it again.

Okay. Computer on, log into PalHassle… I scrolled down my list of friends until I found her, making another mental note to delete most of the other accounts in my friend list. Most of them would never be online again.

---

-anomalousThespian began hassling gamblingTheorist-

AT: gwen?
AT: you there?
GT: Yeah, I'm here
GT: When it says I'm online, I'm online
AT: hey, you never know when someone just forgets they're still online and leaves.
GT: You realize the only one of us who actually does that is you?
AT: not true, cruz does it more times than i can count.
GT: Cruz is the biggest stoner i know
GT: What's your excuse?
AT: …
AT: okay, i was told by the white queen that i should talk to you about some shit.
GT: Some shit?
GT: There are a lot of things that I would classify as 'shit'
GT: How about some specificity?
AT: well maybe if you'd shut your trap for once and waited, i'd tell you.
GT: Okay, whatever
AT: are these your hero of light powers?
AT: talking a lot and being grumpy?
GT: Bleh, sorry if I'm seeming a bit irate
GT: Shit on Derse is going downhill, fast
GT: It's just a little tiring, you know?
GT: Okay, what did you want
AT: tam and i went to prospit and visited the white queen, a few days ago
AT: i had some questions about…
AT: uh…
AT: when the dersite dudes tried to kill both my selves, one of them had this weird-ass black ring
GT: The Hegemonic Brute attempted to kill you while using an aspect ring?
GT: And you survived?
AT: wow, okay, is this shit just common knowledge, or something?
AT: everyone seems to know shit like this but me.
GT: Chill out, this is stuff I'm still trying to figure out
GT: I'm a Witch, not a Seer
GT: I'm much better at using and implementing the knowledge, less so at glimpsing it
GT: Glimpsing is hard
AT: almost like Tami?
AT: how she has trouble healing even though she's a hero of life?
GT: Tami's a Muse, which is one of the rarest of classes, and one of the most powerful
GT: I've seen it referred to as a creator class, but beyond that I can't be certain
GT: But yeah, she's not a healer
GT: Sylphs are the healers, and even then it depends on the Aspect they're channeling
AT: anyway
GT: Haha, sorry, I always go off on tangents like that
GT: Please continue
AT: so i asked the white queen about these rings
AT: and she just tells me some bullshit about how they're made from something unique only to this incipisphere
AT: and then she wouldn't elaborate and suggested i talk to you
GT: Okay, I'll be honest and tell you that this is shit I haven't talked about with anyone yet
GT: I've kind of been researching on my own for a while, now
GT: The aspect rings were given their name by the Prospitians
GT: Like the Queens' rings, they only truly work on carapacians
GT: They can render the wearer completely immune to an Aspect while in the presence of that Aspect's Hero
GT: In some cases, these rings can even allow their wearers to turn a Hero's Aspect-related attacks against them
AT: that would explain how the big fuck was able to Vader choke me…
AT: okay, gwen, you're actually giving me some straight answers, here.
AT: please, i beg of you, keep it up.
AT: can you explain to me why the white queen got all cagey when i asked her what these rings are made of?
GT: Yeah uh
GT: I'm still figuring that part out
GT: What I've found out so far is, like you said, that the aspect rings were made at least partially from a substance unique only to this game session
GT: Details of this substance are almost nonexistent
GT: I believe it was some kind of grist
GT: A kind of grist that does not naturally occur within a session
GT: Almost like an item in a game that you have to use cheats in order to obtain
AT: all grist comes from something, so what did this kind of grist come from?
GT: Uh, yeah, that falls under the 'still figuring it out' part
GT: There's something that I'm missing, something I can't find yet
GT: A link, between the substance that created the aspect rings, and something that happened in this incipisphere, ten thousand years ago
AT: ten thousand years?
GT: Yeah, a lot of the libraries I've found make references to some sort of Cataclysm that occurred ten thousand years ago
GT: There are no details, though
GT: My consorts are an easily frightened people, you understand—they're turtles, after all
GT: Smarter than most people I know, insanely intelligent…but still turtles
GT: They don't like things that scare them, makes them crawl back into their shells, you know?
GT: And whatever happened in the distant past of this incipisphere scared them so badly that they did not record any of the details of what the Cataclysm was
GT: Better to forget the horrors than preserve them in history, I guess their line of thinking was
GT: I'd tend to disagree… But then I wasn't here, ten thousand years ago
GT: I have no idea what would make a race of consorts whose first and foremost love is knowledge want to erase all knowledge of something
GT: Maybe your consorts might know a bit more?
AT: doubt it.
AT: i mean, i can ask…but i doubt it.
AT: my planet has no libraries.
AT: the written form of my consorts' language was lost during the denizen's conquest.
AT: all of their history, mythology, legends; everything is told and passed down orally through generations.
AT: your consorts may love knowledge, but mine love good storytelling.
GT: The two work best in tandem than on their own, I think
GT: Random question, while I still have you
GT: The eight of us are all figures of legend to our consorts, as I'm sure you know
GT: But have your consorts ever mentioned another significant figure of legend from your planet's distant past?
AT: uh…
AT: i mean, they have mentioned someone called the 'old one'
AT: and how this person was apparently the one who gave them their ability to use the force aspect, as well as their heightened intelligence
GT: The Old One, yes!
GT: My consorts also have a figure of legend from the distant past whom they refer to as the Old One
GT: The Old One raised them up from a race of simple-minded amphibians into a race of wildly intelligent philosophers
GT: The technology of my planet resembles the eighteenth century as a result
GT: I wouldn't be surprised, now, if the other six planets had these figures of the past, these 'Old Ones' as well
GT: This doesn't quite confirm my suspicions, but it's definitely another big piece of the puzzle
GT: It certainly explains why all our consorts are more sophisticated than they should be, if nothing else
AT: your suspicions?
GT: Guess how far in the past the Old Ones are from?
AT: …
AT: it's ten thousand years, isn't it.
GT: Ten thousand years
GT: Just in time for the Cataclysm
AT: so…what were your suspicions?
GT: Oh, come on, isn't it obvious?
GT: I don't think we're the first Heroes to live in this incipisphere

---

I woke with a start once again.

I was mildly disoriented—I'd just been woken up while in the middle of a dream. One moment I'd been in my room on Prospit, chatting with Gwen, and the next… And the next, I was being shaken back into the waking world by Scales, who was screaming at me to get up.

"We musst climb!" the red-scaled consort was shouting. "Get up, Knight, we are in danger here!"

I mumbled, still half asleep. I think whatever I said ended up coming out as, "Mmrhfm…fuckyou…"

That was when Scales drew his sword and used it to whap me on the ass, bringing me roaring back to reality, both figuratively and literally. I leaped off the ground, clenching my smarting butt-cheeks, calling just about every plague in the Old Testament down upon Scales, particularly the boils and sores. But before I could spout off too many obscenities, Scales's tail came whipping around, striking me across the face, shocking me into silence.

"You hear that?" Scales asked me, opting for a different, potentially more effective approach than screaming me out of my sleep.

I tried listening to whatever Scales wanted me to, but all I could hear was the rain and the thunder. Wait… I frowned, listening more closely to the thunder. It was a constant, dull roar that was getting louder and louder. I glanced back up at Scales. "That's not thunder, is it?"

"Not from the sskiess," the red-scaled consort shook his head, tasting the air with his tongue several times anxiously. Then he hit me with his tail again, on my back, but it was much more lightly this time. He just wanted to get me moving. Gesturing to the giant baobab tree, Scales began slithering up the trunk towards the lowest branch.

The lowest branch, unfortunately, happened to be fifty feet off the ground, and the tree trunk was completely smooth below it. I had no way to climb up. At least, not with my hands and feet.

I closed my eyes, taking several deep breaths, doing my best to ignore the thunder-like noise roaring towards us from the north. I could just barely make out a hazy shape in the distance, but the light given off by the violet rainclouds was not bright enough for me to get a good look at what it was, at what was causing the thunder.

Then I started to rise into the air.

Flying. It was a technique I'd been working at almost every day before going to bed, and it was fucking difficult. Ever since I'd used my Aspect to allow myself to float to the ground from the top of the Knight's Ladder, after my Trial, I'd been trying to replicate my feat with limited success. At first, I had barely been able to levitate an inch off the ground without getting a nosebleed and a headache. Even now, I could do little more than make myself drift up or down—it would be a long time before I was able to do a good Superman imitation.

Fortunately, though, all I really needed here was some simple levitation. Up, up, up into the lowest branch of the baobab tree—damn, that name never gets old, does it? I released the energy propelling me upward and sat down on the tree branch. The branch itself was probably as wide as three men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, which should give you an idea for how big the actual tree was.

Scales made it up to the branch about the same time as me. There were a couple of small, furry creatures that reminded me of lemurs sharing the branch with us, but they skittered off into the leaves when we joined them. I guess they weren't too fond of humans or giant snakes. No matter, there was plenty of room on this branch for the…however many of us there were.

After a minute of straining to see what was coming in from the north, the thunder finally arrived. Only it wasn't thunder at all, as I'd already deduced. It was a herd of hundreds, thousands of dark, shaggy, very familiar creatures—so many of them, they almost reminded me of a sea. As they thundered through the area, the sea of animals instinctively swerved around the giant baobab tree which had just become our new temporary home.

I watched dozens, hundreds of the beasts trample through the area where we'd been sleeping, just minutes ago. My stomach dropping ever so slightly at the sight, I could now see why Scales had been so desperate to get me up and moving. If we'd stayed down there, we would have been turned into two incredibly bloody, pancake-shaped messes.

I was looking at a buffalo herd, I realized. And not just like what you would see on vacation out West—small groups of bison biting off the hands of tourists, and such. No, I'm talking about actual buffalo herds…like, the kind of herds that existed on the Great Plains long ago, before the Europeans declared hunting season. It was a sight I'd always wanted to see.

I just wished it was daylight out so that I could actually…you know…see it.

Before long, the Skaian 'sunlight' was beginning to return, brightening the skies in the east. I watched the buffalo herd gradually thin out until there were only a few stragglers left, trotting into the dust clouds raised up by their brethren up towards the front of the herd.

"And that," Glimmering Scales took a moment to shake off a dead vine that had fallen across his midsection, "wass a Lifebeasst herd. Welcome to the Golden Grasses."