72

The Observer

Atop the first plateau in the Penumbra, Devon slammed his shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge. “What the hell’s wrong with this thing?” he shouted. “Why won’t it open?”

The door was two towering monoliths like the ones in World 3, but they were bound together and engraved with the Mark of Yindra. Devon had spent several minutes trying to open it before resorting to attacking it, but it was pointless. The First Gate couldn’t be damaged. It, like the gates beyond it, would only open under certain conditions in the future.

It wouldn’t be long, now. We simply had to wait for the arrivals.

“Come on, Ossy,” Devon said, pleading with me. “What did I do wrong? I kicked his ass just like you planned. He hit Nemesis status. I tricked him into thinking I was Raven. Am I missing anything? I’m sure I did everything you asked for. So why isn’t it working?”

He rolled up his right sleeve, revealing the muscular green skin of his Vessel—something he called an orc. But beyond that, the Mark upon his arm remained unresponsive to the Gate’s presence.

He checked his inventory for the Locator item again, the one he’d won in combat, but it wasn’t there. He’d lost track of it upon entering the Penumbra. It didn’t matter. The item was beyond use at this point. It had fulfilled its purpose for him—a purpose that behaved similarly to my own: the negation of branching probabilities, collapsing universes into a singular instance. The Locator would indeed present the path to Yindra, but it only did so by creating a safe passage through the Penumbra itself to this location: the First Gate.

“Ossy,” Devon said, whining like a petulant, overgrown child, “can’t you do anything? I need this, Ossy. You have no idea how much Yindra could help me right now.”

“The time isn’t right,” I said. “Yindra is very concerned about the timing of things. If everything isn’t aligned perfectly, there’s no proceeding.”

That was a lie, of course.

It was I who needed the proper timing of events to play out. Yindra couldn’t care less about when it happened. All she knew was that it eventually would work, given enough time, enough attempts, enough Vessels. Her plans were inevitable. Inescapable, like the space beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

But that didn’t mean fate couldn’t be adjusted along the way. The right angle of approach, a certain spin on things, would make all the difference.

“So, what,” Devon said, “I’m just supposed to wait here?”

After almost half a year of accompanying him, I was just about fed up with Devon’s sense of entitlement. Just because Yindra chose an off-worlder to fulfill her wishes didn’t mean that power and fortune would come to that person, but Devon was exactly the type of off-worlder who believed it. Self-absorbed. Narcissistic.

I had spent more time watching other off-worlders if only to distance myself from him. It wasn’t like his Vessel was pleasant to look at all day. And when he found that I had nothing more to offer him than advice, he rarely consulted me anyway.

I suppose it was a blessing that Yindra had selected me as his guide. It had given me plenty of time to watch the off-worlders who interested me most. When you can see everything, it’s a simple matter of redirecting your attention through the paths of fate.

For the majority of the time since Rian had entered his consciousness into his Vessel, I’d chosen to watch him instead, reading his thoughts, observing his actions, and chronicling his progress to eventually report to the others in case he failed to fulfill Yindra’s wish, even if he was lucky number four. For the next iteration. For the next attempt.

After all, that was my one task. To collect information. To observe. And to collapse the many possibilities of fate into a singular instance. Yindra had decreed that affecting the fates of these two off-worlders wasn’t allowed—that was until they entered this World.

The Penumbra. A narrow pocket in which the rules of the realm became more tenuous. Where the oversight of the GMs was all but gone, and even the System would willfully bend itself to what would soon transpire.

The plan had almost reached fruition. It was a relief, in a way. Before long, I could finally take my sight off my target.

Soon, this seemingly eternal stalemate between myself and Yindra would end.

But, perhaps more excitingly in its proximity, a reunion was in order. The dual nature of myself presented a strange mixture of feelings, as esoteric as the dualistic particle-wave nature of everything itself.

A friend would be coming to visit soon, and along with him…

I gripped the chain of my pocket watch—the eye through which I observed this self, this instance—just a bit tighter.

“You’d better find where I left it, Corvis,” I whispered to myself. “Don’t come all this way for nothing.”

“You say something?” Devon said.

“Just a prayer for luck.” I let a smile slip through, feeling rather comforted by the blindfold I wore, knowing that Devon couldn’t read my eyes and see the spite they held. “You might be needing it soon.”

***

Halfway up the stairs, Rian finally caught a glimpse of what looked like the plateau’s surface in one of the mirror shards. He used Fast Travel and landed in front of a giant, towering pair of black doors with the Mark of Yindra upon them.

And in front of those doors was Ogrot. Devon.

But there was someone else here, too. A woman that Rian had never seen before.

“We can all see and hear each other?” Corvis said. “Good.” Rian hadn’t even noticed, but Corvis had warped along with him.

“Hey, punk,” Devon said. “Took you long enough.”

Rian stared at the figure hovering by Devon’s side. “What’s going on? Why do you have a…”

Rian looked her up and down. She was the same species as Corvis and Yindra with their distinctive four horns. Even her clothes resembled Yindra’s, loose and flowing but crimson instead of black and violet. If it weren’t for the blindfold across her eyes and her lighter-colored hair, Rian would’ve suspected that it was her: Yindra in disguise.

It was all starting to fit together. There were four total players with the Mark. Rian hadn’t considered that they would all have Loyalist companions as well.

Which meant Devon had the Mark, too.

Was this what everything had led to—Devon, stringing him along to come here?

“You had a Loyalist companion,” Rian said, “this whole time?”

Devon crossed his arms, glanced away. “I’m not sure I’d call her a companion. Useless bystander, more like. But yeah. I’ve got the Mark and everything.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

Devon shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I still barely know what the hell’s going on.”

“If you’re looking for the supposed mastermind behind everything, it’s not him,” the blindfolded Loyalist said, smiling. “It’s me.”

She hovered up to Rian. She was considerably taller than Corvis, which only made her equal in height to Rian.

“I am Ossyra,” she said. “The Observer. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rian.”

They shook hands. Her grip was light but firm. Something about it told Rian that she could crush him if she wished to.

She turned to Devon, then to Rian again. Despite the blindfold she wore, Rian could tell she was looking directly at him. “Now that you’re both here,” she said, “we shall begin.”

“Are you finally gonna spill what’s going on?” Devon said. “Is this some kind of sanctioned fight? Are the Loyalists betting on the outcome, or what?”

“Oh, you’ll find this quite amusing, trust me,” Ossyra said. “The Mark of Yindra’s purpose is to grant you entry beyond the First Gate before us, where the long-awaited fight between you two will proceed. You were always fated to duel each other at some point. But as it turns out, that already happened between Cobalt and your alt, Torgo. However, that was not the duel that fate warned us of.”

She turned and swept her hand across the air. The numerous floating mirror shards joined and revealed a vision of cheering crowds in a tremendous stadium.

“It had seemed you were meant to ascend further,” she said. “Fata Morgana, what you know as the Sacred Tournament, is due to proceed soon in the Overworld, and we thought that the fated duel would happen there.”

Devon grunted and crossed his arms. “What a useless prediction.” He nodded sideways at Rian. “He was never gonna qualify to begin with.”

“And this—” Ossyra began. The mirror shards rotated, hiding what they showed. She turned to face them and gestured to the First Gate. “This is the entrance to Fata Morgana S. Or, you could call it the Sacred-2 Tournament.”

“The what?” Rian said. “There’s another one?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Devon said. “What would that make it, the double-S-tier Tournament?”

“It is a secret event held by the Loyalists,” Ossyra said, “away from any oversight of players, GMs, and even from some aspects of the System. It is, in a way, a privately held version of the Sacred Tournament you know, but with far fewer entrants—exactly four—and, as well, a unique penalty to losing.

“The losers will forfeit all their items. The ultimate victor of the tournament will be granted passage into Yindra’s tower, where the items of the losers will be stashed for plundering if the victor so chooses. They may then proceed through the tower and go even further beyond.”

She turned to the black tower in the distance, a spire that eclipsed the sun.

“At the top,” she said, “Yindra awaits. However, there are…differing circumstances, this time around.” She smiled at Rian again, but now he thought something was menacing about it. “The System’s predictive powers have weakened recently. Fate itself can now be shifted. For better or worse.”

Ossyra opened Rian’s inventory. He stood there in shock as she manipulated his menu and pulled out the Y-Locator. She handed it to Corvis.

“Hey,” Devon and Rian shouted in unison, “what are you doing?”

“This piece has yet one more role to play,” Ossyra said. “Corvis. If you will.”

Without a word, Corvis took off with the Locator, floating down the staircase and accelerating toward the forests much faster than Rian had ever seen him move. The sound was like rising, retreating thunder.

“You’re scheming again, aren’t you?” Devon said, teeth gritted. “Let me guess: you can’t tell me what’s going on this time, either.”

Ossyra tilted her head and smiled. “We’re due for some guests in a moment. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. As you might’ve seen, Rian, the Temporal Rift entry location isn’t always perfect, so entrants tend to land far from the First Gate. The Y-Locator was simply meant to provide safe passage through the Penumbra. After all, Yindra’s location is hardly a secret to anyone. The device’s name is a bit of a misnomer.

“Now then, Fata Morgana S will proceed as such: a bracket of four players in single elimination. On your side of the bracket, Rian, is Devon.”

Rian was curious about who was on the other side of the bracket—he knew Sven was, that Dragon Knight he'd run into—but he couldn’t imagine that it would matter. This fight was still going to be near-impossible.

Ossyra faced the First Gate. The Mark of Yindra upon it shone until it was almost blinding, and the gate opened. Beyond it was an arena, an enormous square of cut stone surrounded by dirt. There were no walls, only an open view of the horizon and the warped red sky, thousands of glass shards hovering and rotating in the dim sun like slow lightning.

Rian and Devon proceeded into the arena.

“You really came all this way just to lose to me again, huh?” Devon said.

“You’re not actually Raven, are you?” Rian said. The realization came to him on the spot, though he wasn’t entirely sure. He’d sort of just blurted it out. But then Devon’s reaction gave it away: he almost stumbled.

“I…” Devon began. “So what? You think it’s gonna make any difference here? You’re gonna get crushed either way.”

Rian tuned him out, trying to understand why Devon had lied about something like that. It’d been solely to trick him. But it didn’t seem like that was all. If Ossyra had been the one luring Rian here all this time and not Yindra herself, then Ossyra had likely instructed Devon to tell him that. But Rian couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t exactly motivating to think that Devon was a top player.

But maybe the lie wasn’t meant to do that, at least directly. It had contributed a little to Rian getting tilted after their conversation—at the thought of what could’ve been if he hadn’t been injured and comatose for nearly two years. Rian could’ve been the one in Devon’s supposed position with all the power and resources.

But there was something else, too: Rian hadn’t really believed it. There was no way someone like Devon was a top player. The best of the best wouldn’t fall off that hard, from rank one to practical obscurity in the 500s, where he was now. Not unless Devon’s success was a fluke.

That discrepancy had lingered in Rian’s mind all the while. It had drawn him forward if only to seek answers. It was as if Ossyra were signaling something to him.

Rian glanced over at her. She was sitting on a referee stand overlooking the arena. She smiled at him.

“All I want to know,” Rian said to Devon, “is are you actually who you say you are?”

Devon grimaced. “Yeah. I am. I’m not Raven, but we did meet outside the game. I stole your headset.”

“And you’re not sorry?”

“Why would I be? You’re a nobody. You’re just one more person in the way. Again.”

So it was genuine after all. That complete disregard for someone else’s life. The year and a half that Rian had lost. He felt the clarity of anger settle onto him again.

Even if his best here wouldn’t be enough, he wasn’t going to go in with anything less.

He would not waver.

He would not falter or show the slightest emotion.

Because there was nothing left in him now. Anger had purged everything inside him like a wind across a frozen tundra.

All he could do now was fight.