Chapter Fifty-Two: Through the Seven Gates

Gino Caiazzo grinned as his modified brass knuckles connected with the imp's face, testing them out for the first time. The result was always much bloodier than what he expected—the imp's entire face was caved in, sending blood and bone fragments flying everywhere. Then the underling's body dissolved into grist.

The brass knuckles weren't exactly true brass knuckles, any longer, either. Gino's Dad had given him little fragments of a strange kind of bluish-white crystal that seemed to glow faintly with its own light. Apparently, the shards had been a gift given to him by the CEO of Skaianet after he'd worked under her for a full year.

Then, after Gino had gone through his first gate, explored some of his planet, and used a return node to get back to his house, his Dad had shown him how to use the alchemiter to combine different objects together. Gino had decided to combine his knuckledusters with those shards of mystery-crystal, under the advice of his Dad, and the result had been a very strange one… He hadn't punched that imp all that hard, but one would think he'd smashed its face in with a sledgehammer by looking at its corpse.

"Damn…" Gino raised a hand to inspect one of the knuckledusters more closely. "What did you call that crystal shit, again?"

"The carapacians call it 'omnicrystal'," Mr. Caiazzo replied. He'd been leaning against the wall, watching his son try out his new toy. "They call it that because it can power just about anything on its own, provided you can find a way to harness its energy. Now it's powerin' your fuckin' fist bling."

"The cara-what-now?" Gino frowned, half of his Dad's words flying right over his head.

"You'll find out for yourself soon enough," Gino's Dad assured his son. He then nodded over to the stairs leading up to the new roof of the house—Tami, acting as Gino's server player, had been using the world-altering tools of the server application to continue building Gino's house up past the first gate until the roof now rested just shy of the second gate. Gino knew he was going to have to pass through the second gate, but he was putting it off for as long as he could. "You ready?"

Gino looked over at the stairs hesitantly, not wanting to go but knowing that he had no choice. If he ever wanted this game to end, he'd have to keep moving forward. Gino took in a deep breath, giving a single nod. "Yeah… Yeah, I think I'm good."

When Gino started to head for the stairs, Mr. Caiazzo stopped leaning on the wall and straightened up, stepping towards his son. "Hold up a sec, Troublemaker…" Gino's Dad pulled his son into a tight bear hug. He knew time was short, and his son could use some parting words. "God knows you've given me some gray fuckin' hairs with all the shit you've pulled… But I couldn't've asked for a better fuckin' son. Just keep wearin' protection, you hear? Don't get any fuckin' STDs; that shit'll turn your dick into a petri dish."

"Uh… Thanks, Dad." Gino extricated himself from the hug, clearing his throat uncomfortably. He wasn't used to his Dad being all touchy-feely. "Love you, too."

Mr. Caiazzo watched his son begin climbing the last flight of stairs up to the roof. This was it. "Gino, look," he spoke one last time, surprising his son by using his actual name, which was something he rarely did. "I just… I just want you to know that no matter what happens…we'll see each other again."

"Jesus, you want me to go through the fuckin' second gate or not?" Gino laughed in spite of himself, climbing out onto the room. "Save all the emotions for the after-party!" And with that, there was a bright flash of yellow light, and Mr. Caiazzo could no longer hear his son moving around. Gino was gone.

Gino's Dad couldn't help the sadness he felt. He'd known this was coming for a long time—he'd always known that he could not accompany his son through the seven gates…but it had always been an event far off on the horizon, a long-distant goal. Now that his son was finally gone…

"Need a fuckin' beer…" Mr. Caiazzo muttered to himself. He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eyes as he turned towards the stairs that led back downstairs.

It was the last thing he ever saw. Surprise was the last thing that fired off through Mr. Caiazzo's neurons as a knife blade suddenly buried itself in his skull. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Tami Abramov took another bite from her Nature Valley granola bar as she wandered deeper into the desert. Her house had materialized at the top of what had to be one of the only mountains that existed in this godforsaken wasteland of a planet, in the middle of a vast forest of dead trees. The Land of Souls and Silence. That was the name of this planet, told to Tami by Amadeus—her very recently-deceased pet mouse, rendered capable of speech by being prototyped with her kernelsprite.

Of 'silence', there was plenty. After going through her first gate, Tami found herself in the middle of a desert. White sand stretching off in all directions as far as the eye could see…wide, rolling dunes… The only things that broke the monotony were the giant, tree-like formations of crystal that sprouted from the top of every single sand dune. It was nighttime on this part of LOSAS, so the crystal formations glowed with a powerful bluish-white light.

The desert looked as if it were awash in moonlight.

There was plenty of Silence. As for Souls… Tami had been trekking through the windless white desert for over a day, now, and she hadn't seen a single living creature yet. But she had a feeling that was going to change soon, judging by the rumbling noises she could hear in the distance. Amadeus the Mouse had told her that the consorts of the Land of Souls and Silence were salamanders with a very deep connection to the Life Aspect.

Finding any kind of life here was so far proving to be a challenge. Perhaps the salamanders were the ones causing the rumbling noises.

Music had been the primary drive in Tami's life for as long as she could remember. Like painters who needed to get the ideas swirling around in their heads out onto canvas, Tami channeled her creativity into music. If she wasn't strumming out a new tune on her ukulele, or on a violin, or keyboard, or some other instrument, she felt like her head would explode.

The silence of this planet was suffocating to her. And so, Tami pulled her ukulele from her back and started to quietly play an improvised melody that sounded vaguely Russian. Strangely enough, when Tami started to play, the music almost seemed to elicit a response from the environment. She felt the soft sigh of a breeze against her face, displacing the very top layer of sand. And though she could never be sure, she could swear that she heard faint whispers on the wind.

When Tami walked past the crystal trees, they began to glow even brighter, their light pulsing in rhythm with whatever Tami was playing on her ukulele. Almost as if they were listening to her. Tami's music did not seem to have any other effect on the crystal trees, but still. She still thought it was pretty damn cool.

Her good mood in reaction to the crystal trees' response to her music would not last forever, unfortunately. She continued to head in the direction of the rumbling noises, eventually slinging her ukulele across her back once more, in favor of retrieving her composite bow from her strife specibus. She didn't know if there would be any danger, but it always paid to be sure.

Tami missed her brother. He'd vanished not long after Tami had successfully arrived in the Land of Souls and Silence, and she hadn't seen him since. She'd been largely independent all her life, but still…she was in a strange new place, and she felt uncomfortably exposed without the presence of her older brother.

Tami was humming to herself as she climbed up yet another dune towards one of the larger crystal trees she'd seen so far, only to come to a dead stop at the very top. Her eyes widened, and her breath trailed away as she looked down at what had happened to the land beyond. There was a giant scar that disrupted the quiet tranquility of the pale, crystal-studded desert—a massive sprawl of barren rock that had been laid open by mining equipment, exposing the planet's insides to the elements. The pit was almost breathtakingly enormous—too large for Tami to see the other side.

In the distance, a large, town-like settlement had been erected within the massive pit, and Tami could see dark, humanoid figures going about their business within. There were several roadways that had been built, leading out from the central town towards smaller settlements that were located much closer to the edges of the mined areas. These were little more than temporary collections of wooden shacks and semi-permanent structures.

They were clearly mining camps. Each camp had been built close to one or two artificially-made tunnels that ran deep into the earth, and Tami could see minecarts filled with glowing white crystal being ferried out of the tunnels back to the camps. The people working the mines were humanoid in appearance, though they had hard black exoskeletons instead of skin. Tami was reminded of the Dersites—those alien people Theo had described to her over PalHassle. Maybe that was what these guys were…

The crystals being hauled out of the mines were the same kind of crystal that the luminescent trees were made of. Tami wondered if the crystal trees were merely the very tip of the iceberg—how far underground did their 'roots' go? Pretty far, by the looks of those mines…

For some reason, though Tami knew nothing about the miners—or anything that was going on, rather—seeing the Dersites carting off more and more of those crystals really started to grate on her. This was her world, after all… Hers, and her consorts. And those miners down there sure as hell weren't sentient salamanders. What right did they have to tear up her world and steal its treasures?

She kind of felt like she'd just walked in on someone trying to rob her house. That had actually happened once, years ago, when she was little. Fortunately for the burglar, her older brother got to him before she could. Not so fortunate for these Derse guys—they'd have to deal with Tami directly.

Tami's mouth set into a hard line as she started to make her way down towards the nearest mining camp, her gaze never straying from the Dersite town in the distance. It was time to get some answers.

And then probably kick out a few burglars.

Jack Noir's mouth twitched once as he watched the adult human male fall. It was probably the closest he would ever come to actually smiling.

And he felt he'd earned it, too—that knife throw had been flawlessly executed. He'd moved silently, keeping to the shadows. Then, once the adult human was alone, he'd taken a deep breath and held it, feeling the balance of his knife before throwing it. The knife had struck the adult human right in the forehead; his face still wore an expression of mild surprise as his corpse crumpled to the floor.

Jack emerged from the shadows and walked over to his latest kill. He bent down and gripped his knife, yanking it out of the dead adult human's skull. Most people might have felt nauseated by the sickening squelch that came from the knife being suddenly withdrawn from the adult human's brain, but Jack personally found the sound to be amusing.

His mouth twitched again, this time as a result of laughter instead of a simple smile.

Jack wiped his knife clean on the adult human's clothes. He then looked straight up at the ceiling, twirling the knife through and around his fingers. He felt a slight twinge of irritation at having arrived at the Land of Thought and Steam just minutes too late to take care of the Prince here and now.

That irritation quickly and easily gave way to anticipation, however. Let it never be said that Jack Noir did not enjoy a good hunt. The Dersite Archagent continued to play around with his knife as he climbed up the final flight of stairs, emerging out onto the roof of the Prince's towering domicile. He paused for a moment to take in the view.

The Prince's house had materialized on top of a lone mountain made of some sort of sandstone-like rock. Stretching into the distance in all directions were open grasslands and wide, gently rolling hills covered with tall grass that seemed to change color whenever it was disturbed by a breeze. At the top of every hill were geysers that spouted off once every couple hours or so; and when they weren't erupting, the geysers simply let off steam that curled up into the air, adding to the thin layer of mist that hung low in the sky.

Just because Jack spent most of his time working as the most feared man in the entire Dersite Kingdom didn't mean he couldn't appreciate a good view when he saw one. Still, though…as good as this view was, he personally preferred that of the Land of Shores and Prisms—the Witch's planet. On that world, there was a breathtaking view no matter where you looked. Perhaps, when he finished off the Prince, Jack would be able to convince the Queen to send him to LOSAP next.

Hanging in midair about five feet above the rooftop was a glowing, pulsating, constantly-shifting pattern of lines yellow light. Jack had passed by an identical object several floors ago, about a hundred feet lower in the air than this one. The Prince's house, in its upward expansion, had been built around it. That object had been the Prince's first gate, which would make this one…

"Second gate…" Jack murmured to himself. There was no mistaking it; the Prince had gone through this gate. And where the Prince went, Jack had to follow. He took another deep breath and slipped his knife into its sheath, baring his pointed teeth in a grimace as he jumped up into the gate. The gate gave off a pulse of blindingly bright yellow light as the Archagent entered.

When the light vanished, Jack was gone.

Unbeknownst to Jack, there was one person left in the Prince's house that he had not come across, though 'person' was an incredibly liberal term when applied towards this particular individual. This individual had heard the commotion from downstairs, floating its way up the various flights of stairs to investigate.

It entered the uppermost room, just before the rooftop, and stopped short. It would have blinked rapidly in surprise if it had eyes. Instead, many of its 'pepperoni slices' slipped off its 'face', dissolving into yellow light before they hit the floor. It took in the sight of Mr. Caiazzo's corpse, the ever-widening puddle of blood that was pooling out from under the dead man's head.

"Oh, fuck me…" Pizzasprite muttered under its breath. As it looked away, it regenerated the sprite-matter pepperoni slices that had fallen off. It glanced over at the stairs, up towards the ceiling, then back at Mr. Caiazzo's corpse. "This ain't good…"

Jack Noir clutched his stomach as he emerged into a bare room. These gates were different from transportalizer pads, and something about using them really disagreed with Noir's stomach. The walls of this room were a different color from the rooms he'd just left behind—light gray and blue wallpaper, as well as dark brown carpeting. No furniture, however, or anything else that would normally fill a room in a house like this. Jack headed over to the nearest window and peered outside.

He was in another Hero's house, that much was obvious. But which one… The house was resting at the top of a tall, rocky hill. It was dark outside, but gradually brightening—it was morning on this part of the planet. Skaia was rising in the east. The house, as well as the hill it was on, was located in the middle of a vast forest of dead, gnarly trees.

Not all of the trees were dead, however. Though it was dark outside, the world was kept in a constant state of dim illumination by trees that were made of a luminescent crystal. Jack instantly recognized those glowing trees of bluish-white crystal—they were merely the tips of the massive veins of omnicrystal that stretched deep into the earth.

Jack was now in the Land of Souls and Silence. This was the Muse's world. Noir considered this as he started to climb up the stairs to the next floor, making his way to the roof of the Muse's house.

Muse of Life… She was a Prospitian Hero. Normally, that would have been a slight complication. However, as fate would have it, Prospit was not exactly inaccessible at the moment. Jack pulled out his walkie-talkie. It was powered by refined omnicrystal, so it was capable of transmitting great distances. The distance between the Land of Souls and Silence and the Golden Moon of Prospit, for example.

Jack set the radio to the appropriate channel and spoke into it. "Brute, you hearin' me? It's Noir. Pick up."

There were a few brief moments of silence before the walkie-talkie issued a squawk of static, which quickly resolved into the low, nasally tones of the Hegemonic Brute. "Yeah, boss. I'm listenin'."

"What're you doing right now?"

"Scopin' out the Knight's dream tower with the Droll, boss, like you said-" the high-ranking Dersite Agent started to respond, but he was swiftly cut off by his superior.

"Yeah, forget that for now. Have the Droll keep an eye on the Knight's dream self," Jack Noir ordered, pausing briefly to clear his throat. "I may have an opportunity to off the Life bitch sometime in the next few days; I want you to go to the Muse's dream tower. Once her waking self is a cold cut, I'll signal you to finish the job."

The Hegemonic Brute had the good sense not to argue or question the wisdom of changing plans so abruptly. Jack was never one much for long-term planning, preferring instead to fly by the seat of his pants and improvise his plans as new developments occurred. After all, what did having two Agents ready to off the Knight matter when the Knight wasn't yet a viable target? Better to deal with the Muse now, when the opportunity presented itself, and then worry about the Knight later on.

Jack steeled himself for more nausea as he entered the Muse's third gate, which her house had just barely been built up to. The gates here were made of emerald green light, and the blinding flash of radiance when Jack entered the gate was an identical color.

Noir emerged through the third gate into a windless desert of white sand. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing—the desert almost seemed to swallow sound. Even his footsteps sounded quieter than normal. Scattered all throughout the landscape of giant, almost ridge-like sand dunes were the glowing bluish-white crystal trees. It was nighttime in the desert, so the light of the trees was even more pronounced.

Leading off into the distance were two trails of footprints; one much newer than the other. The Muse, and then the Prince…

No doubt about it, Jack was heading in the right direction. He tapped an irregular rhythm on his knife handle as he started to walk forward, following the footprints that would lead him to his next victims.

Gino had been walking for a long time, and he was starting to get really tired.

He wasn't sure exactly how long it had been since he'd traveled through his third gate and wound up in the middle of this white desert full of sand dunes and trippy crystal trees. It had been nighttime when Gino arrived in the windless desert, but Skaia had slowly risen in the east, bathing the desert in daylight. Fortunately, the temperature climbed into the seventies and then held constant—a normal desert like this should have been unbearably hot, but this place remained at a comfortable warmth.

Gino supposed that was a bit of a silver lining. Yeah, it kinda sucked that he was stuck walking through what seemed to be a never-ending desert on some strange planet in another dimension…but at least he wasn't sweating his balls off while doing it.

Gino arched an eyebrow at that last thought. I think I'm in danger of becoming a fuckin' optimist, he chuckled to himself in his head. When he thought about it, though, Gino figured that it sort of made sense for him to start thinking like an optimist, right now. It wasn't the fact that he was getting really tired and thirsty, not the fact that he had no idea how big this desert was, no idea how far ahead Tami was, or how much further he still had to go… All those did factor into the equation, certainly, but it was what awaited him at the end that made Gino uneasy.

Not for the first time, Gino mused at the terrible luck of having Tami Abramov as his server player. It had been awkward enough to have to call her when she dropped in the Sburb entry machines—and even then, that had barely been a conversation. Tami had told him what was what, dropped the machines on the roof of his house, built a ladder for him to easily access the roof, and promptly hung up.

Now, though… Gino knew that he had to progress through the seven gates to win the game, according to Pizzasprite—though it had been a challenge to extract the useful and helpful bits of information from the prototyped pizza's loud, angry, profanity-ridden rants…Gino had managed to understand the idea of the seven gates. He'd just gone through the third gate, which transported him somewhere into the Land of whatever the fuck Tami's planet was called. Land of Sand, Sand, and More Fuckin' Sand?

Next, he'd have to pass through the fourth gate, which would presumably transport him to the next planet. But to do that, he had to find his way back to Tami's house, like how he'd had to return to his own home after traveling through his first gate and exploring the Land of Thought and Steam. And that was all well and good, save for the fact that Gino had no idea where he was supposed to go. Tami was the only one here who could probably help him get back on track.

And, with that thought, Gino went back to cursing his bad luck. Tami was the last person he wanted to deal with, here. He'd rather deal with Adam than Tami, and anyone who knew what had happened with Adam's disastrous failure of a relationship with Anna Carrero would then understand the significance of Gino's preference—Adam loathed Gino as much as Tami, and Gino knew it.

The difference between being hated by Adam and being hated by Tami was a simple one. Adam, the most stubborn person Gino knew, would never forgive or forget. Tami, on the other hand, would neither forgive nor forget…and then she'd probably beat the shit out of you for good measure. It had happened before—Gino recalled an occasion last year when some girl, who was notorious for starting rumors about other people, had started spreading rumors about Tami being a closeted lesbian…only to recant her statements after Tami had opted for revenge, attempting to open one of the cafeteria windows with the girl's face. The teachers all knew of the injured girl's penchant for spreading hurtful rumors, however, and Tami ended up getting slapped with only three days of in-school suspension.

Thankfully, after dumping Tami and ending their short-lived relationship during their freshman year of high school, Gino had not suffered a similar fate. Sometimes, though, he wished Tami would just punch him, or kick him in the balls, or something like that…then he wouldn't constantly be tiptoeing on eggshells around her, wondering if she was still waiting to strike.

As Gino trudged onwards through the white sand dunes, staring at the crystal trees he walked past, he became aware of something very curious that had started to fill the air—sound. One of the weird things about the windless desert was the total lack of sound; no fauna, no wind…nothing. But now Gino could hear sounds in the near distance that were clearly mechanical in nature.

After another solid hour or so of walking, listening to the noises grow louder and louder, Gino finally reached their source. Dersite mining equipment had dug down through a vast portion of the desert, exposing the bedrock underneath. In the middle of this dozens of miles-large region of dug-up land was a sizable collection of wooden buildings, resembling a town. Closer to the edges of the mining region were smaller camps, where the miners would take the ore after extracting it from the tunnels and shafts that extended far underground.

It wasn't any kind of ore that the Dersites were digging up, however…when Gino watched the carts leave the tunnels and enter the mining camps, he saw that they were packed full of the same kind of crystal that those glowing trees were made out of. It was omnicrystal, he realized, recognizing the mined crystals as being the same as those fragments that his Dad had given him. That made sense, then… It was not hard to see why one would mine for omnicrystal, considering its energy properties.

Gino did not waste any time taking in the sordid view of the mined region of the desert. It was a blight on the surface of this planet, not worth looking at any longer than one had to. Gino set off at a steady jog, heading towards the distant town that was no doubt populated by the miners.

He'd heard stories of the Dersites from a couple of his friends—Cass and Theo, namely. Stories of humanoid guys with hard black carapaces in place of normal skin, and white eyes. They reminded Gino of chess pieces. Living, talking, sentient chess pieces. He had not heard very much about them, so his knowledge of Dersites was rather limited. Pizzasprite, his main source of information for all things Sburb-related, had likewise been unhelpful. Even so, he wasn't quite sure if he trusted them. There was something about them that made him uneasy.

And so, Gino made sure he didn't come near any of the smaller mining camps as he made his way towards the town. His approach to the town went without a hitch—no one had spotted him. From what Gino could glean, the planet—or, at the very least, this desert—was uninhabited, which would explain why the Dersites in the town had no kind of perimeter watch, or anything. What was there to watch for in a desert where nothing lived?

Luckily for Gino, his timing turned out to be impeccable, as had his mistrust of the Dersite miners. When he arrived in the town, he moved quietly, keeping to the shadows and alleys between buildings. He could see miners relaxing on a few front steps in front of what appeared to be their homes, others reclined behind open windows. There were a few Dersites going about their daily business on the gravel paths that stood as a substitute for roads, as well.

All in all, the town did not seem to be very populated. Most of those who lived there were probably working in the mines, at the moment. But there were still enough miners remaining in the town to force Gino to keep extremely alert. Several times, he nearly ran into Dersites who were also traveling through the back alleys for whatever reason—he'd always had to sprint off down the nearest space between buildings to avoid detection. Once, he even had to take cover underneath what seemed to be some sort of garbage dump.

Wrinkling his nose at the stench that now clung to his shirt, Gino pressed on. He realized how impeccable his timing had been when he crept through one last, particularly long alleyway, situated behind a large building that seemed to function as a sort of dining hall.

When Gino reached the end of the alley, he saw that it emerged into the central square of the town—it wasn't really a square, per se; merely an open area in the center of town that all the innermost buildings had been erected around, forming a square. In the middle of the square was a simple stone pedestal, and set within the pedestal was a tall metal pole. Flying at the top of that pole was a purple flag—emblazoned upon it was a solid black pentagon. There were four thick lines that protruded from the pentagon's top two edges—two per edge.

Gino wasn't quite sure what this signified. He didn't exactly give it too much thought, either, because he was too busy watching as Tami was dragged by two burly, broad-shouldered Dersites out of an important-looking building that was adorned with purple and black banners. She was barely conscious, and there was blood flowing from a wound in her side.

She'd been shot.

Gino retrieved his powered knuckledusters from his strife specibus, slipping them over his fingers. "This'll probably end badly…" he murmured to himself, getting ready to strike.