81

Ignorance

Rian stepped out of the Third Gate and arrived at the base of Yindra’s tower, a monstrosity built of obsidian glass. There was a hefty drawbridge that was coming down to let him in.

From what he could see, there was an empty hallway with a bright red rug leading into the tower. Somewhere inside was where Devon’s and Sven’s equipment was supposed to be—for Rian to have as the victor of the tournament. But Pitune had stolen it all away.

That was fine. Rian wasn’t here for it. None of it was going to help him anyway.

He used Mirage: Flux, temporarily rerouted his stats into Strength, and then took out the mirror shard that he’d pocketed on his way up to Devon.

With his muscles bulging against his black uniform, Rian slung the mirror shard into the sky as hard as he could. When the shard’s reflection wasn’t the tower or the red sky, he fixed his line of sight upon it and used Fast Travel.

Oddly, what he saw in the mirror was white.

***

Rian landed.

At first he thought he’d missed. There was no direct sunlight here, no red sky of the Penumbra. Only gray overcast.

An inch of blue-tinged snow covered everything: the circular floor that spanned hundreds of meters; the ruins of a small castle at the far end; the half dozen dead swordsmen that littered the ground, skeletons in armor. A peculiar blue ring of light shone through the clouds overhead.

Snow fell gently from the sky.

Rian hesitated the moment he saw it, a horrible chill running down him made worse by the actual freezing air that was clawing at his skin.

It was the same location from Shadow Spirits. The top of the final tower.

“At last,” Yindra said, the only sound for what felt like miles.

Rian hadn’t noticed them until now, but two people were standing in the middle of the floor in a circle of melted snow. They were almost impossible to see amid the snowfall, but Rian could hear Yindra’s voice coming from that direction.

He walked toward them. “Really?” he said, his breaths clouding the air. “Shadow Spirits?”

“What, you’re not surprised?” Yindra said. “Not shocked at the revelation—that you were always inside the game, since the very beginning?”

Rian wasn’t going to fall for her tricks like that. It obviously wasn’t true. It was just meant to throw him off. “No, but I’m amazed at how unoriginal you are. It’s almost a perfect replica of the level.”

“Come, now,” Yindra said. “You’re not even a little bit flustered? And I put so much work into it. You could at least question the nature of your existence a little more.”

With each step, Rian could feel the snow turning to water beneath his shoes. His body had so much latent power that it was melting the snow from the ground and air before it even touched him.

“You must’ve taken quite a deal of inspiration from Shadow Spirits,” Rian said. “Are you gonna transform into a giant crow next?”

“I could. It’s not beyond my power. You can be your character and I’ll role-play as Neve if you’d like. What do you say?”

Rian had stepped close enough to see her—and the person across from her—through the snow. They were both simply standing there, facing each other.

Yindra

Level 200 Goddess of Deception (NPC)

Alignment: N/A

Companionship Level: -1 (Adversary)

Difficulty: N/A

HP: 9999/9999

She looked exactly like in his dream—in the coma. A woman with four tall horns, fangs over red lips, black hair falling across her dark and violet robes. Golden jewelry, amethyst earrings. Her pupils shifted each moment into fractal shapes.

Across from her was Mom. Half-human, half-novai like him, with the distinct four horns that weren’t quite as tall. She was wearing Ossyra’s outfit, but her robes were light blue instead of crimson.

Azure

Level 99 Grappler

Species: Human-Novai

HP: 7598/7598

“Mom,” Rian said. “Are you really here?”

She let out a heavy breath, smiled weakly. He could see the shine of tear tracks beneath her eyes, though she didn’t break her line of sight from Yindra. “Rian.” She sounded like she was barely awake. “I’m here.”

Yindra laughed, low and smoldering, her voice a dim flame. “Don’t expect this to be the reunion you were hoping for,” she said, drawling. Her gaze landed on Rian. “Do you understand how much time passes here, compared to elsewhere? How long it takes for things to happen? Your mother has probably lost her sanity by now. I know I have.”

Time-dilation. It was still active here, though Rian had nearly forgotten. When he’d entered the Penumbra, he’d seen the time limit for World 4 and even the time-dilation ratio. A hundred to one.

“We’ve been here for so long,” Yindra said. “So long, now. Why, I’d say it’s been at least a century. What do you think, Emily?”

“I’d be glad to stay a century longer,” she said, “if it means you can’t harm anyone.”

“You’re fortunate that your Vessels don’t age,” Yindra said. “Ah, but here comes a mediator. Another element to weigh upon the scales, to shift the balance.” She curled her fingers, her long black nails catching the blue light of the ring in the sky. “Rian, tell your mother to let me go, and I will forgive her. In spite of her transgressions, I will spare her life.”

The snow continued to fall. When Rian looked to the sky, the snow wasn’t coming from the clouds but from the blue ring of light directly above them. “Is that…”

“It’s the portal,” Mom said. “The bridge between Miriad and Earth.”

Then this snow is…it’s coming from Earth?

Rian chuckled. “So that’s how you modeled your tower after Shadow Spirits?”

“I’ve had plenty of time to study your world,” Yindra said. “Now make the choice.”

“This isn’t what we agreed to.”

“We didn’t agree to anything, Rian. All I told you was to return to me, and that your mother would be here. I told you the truth. Now tell her to let me go, and I’ll spare you both.”

Rian said nothing.

“If you don’t,” Yindra said, “then this stalemate will continue forever. You’ll never get your mother back.” The breeze stopped for a moment, and the snowfall seemed almost peaceful. “One year on Earth is a hundred years here, Rian. The System makes your bodies immortal, but your mother can feel pain. Just like you. How much more suffering do you want her to endure?”

After being here for a few minutes, Rian’s body temperature couldn’t keep up. The air was unbearably cold, the breezes painful, the gusts agonizing.

“Don’t be stupid,” Yindra said. “Don’t deny it. You know what you really want, Rian. What did you come all this way for? Tell me what it is—the wish that exists deep within your heart.”

“I’m just here to see my mom,” he answered plainly.

Now that he’d had some time to cool off after unexpectedly running into his dad, he was thinking more clearly. He didn’t actually want Earth to be destroyed like he’d said during his outburst. He’d just been under a lot of stress.

But maybe Dad had been right. There was a part of Rian that felt…foreign to himself. Alien. It wasn’t just the piece of Corvis’s soul inside him—it was more than that. A reflection of Yindra, shining into him. Her presence. Like a smothering black curtain. The darkness behind the stars.

“If I let you go,” Rian said, “you’ll cross the bridge between Miriad and Earth. You’ll destroy everything. I can’t let that happen.”

“Why?” Yindra snarled. “What do you care for Earth? The world has shunned you. It has thrown you aside. Let me destroy it for wronging you. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Revenge against the world?”

“I already got my revenge. Against Devon. And to be honest, I didn’t even want it. It wasn’t worth it.” The sight of Corvis, dying in front of him again. Decha, dying before him. The Onsolian army in pieces outside the city of Gorgheit. All the suffering that had led to this moment. Over and over.

“Revenge is what you want,” Rian said. “All I want is for both of our worlds to continue. Peacefully. And I want to help fix this world however I can.”

“The only thing that can fix Miriad,” Yindra said, “is the extermination of every human within and beyond it.”

“That’s not true.” Rian checked his gauntlets to make sure they were snug. At the very least, his hands were still warm. “If you really believe that, then I’ll have to do what it takes to stop all of this.”

Yindra laughed. “You? Fighting me? You’re a candle against the sun. A droplet at the whims of the moon’s tide. You haven’t even begun to dream of what I’m capable of. How exactly do you plan on killing a goddess?”

“I’ll think of a way or two. By the look of it, you’re powerless like this. You can’t even move.”

“Ah, but you can’t harm me even if you wanted to. Neither of you can.” Yindra relaxed her neck, let her head roll around as if to stretch it, then looked at Mom again. “The both of you are my new Loyalists. There’s a piece of Ossyra still in you. And a piece of Corvis in Rian. You can turn against me, but you can’t bring yourselves to hurt me.”

Yindra gestured for Rian. “Go on,” she said. “Try it. Muster all your hatred. See how it dissolves against your companion’s will.”

He gripped his fists but hesitated. Is this a trap?

“You can try,” Mom said. “But I couldn’t do it either. This is the best I can do—keeping her locked down like this.”

“Then…” he said, “what do I do?”

Mom didn’t answer. Eventually, she said, “I don’t know.”

“Seems you have no choice,” Yindra said. “We have plenty of time. You’ll come around to it eventually.”

They stood there for nearly half a minute in silence, the snowfall the only movement. Rian relaxed his hands.

Did I come all this way, gain all this power for nothing? I can’t fight a goddess like this.

I have to reason with her somehow.

“The only way we’re letting you go,” Rian said, “is if you can’t harm Earth. Take it out on us instead.”

“Oh, how noble,” Yindra said, rolling her eyes. “Sacrificing yourself for the greater good. If you can even call it that. The portal is close enough for me to gain glimpses into your world, Rian. I can’t affect much. But I can see. I can observe. I’ve had plenty of time to watch. I know what things are like there.”

“I’m sorry,” Rian said, “but you don’t get to judge humanity like that.”

“You’re the worst species in the universe,” Yindra said, her voice dropping. “Gluttons. All of you. Seeking power to amass it for its own sake, then wondering why your world is so corrupt. How shortsighted to think that your kind is the only who wish to escape from the world you know. You spend so much time seeking other realities, bringing with you all the worst that humanity can do. It never occurs to you that perhaps those realities will someday seek to do the same to yours.

“You even corrupted my Loyalists,” she continued. “I sent them to accompany some of you, wagering that when your companionship had grown enough that the novai side of you would overtake the human side of your Vessels. But it turns out humans are more ruthless than I’d ever thought. You’re so competitive that your egos corrupt everything you touch. Even your world is dying because of it.”

“The players don’t know that this world is real,” Rian said. “They think it’s just a simulation. And yeah, sure, Earth has plenty of problems. Pretty much all of them we inflicted on ourselves. But that makes it our problems to solve.”

“Oh, please. Don’t be ridiculous. That’s all you have? Hope. Faith that things will turn around on their own.”

“Not on their own. No, there’s plenty of people working to make the world a better place.”

“You’re naive, Rian. You live in a bubble. You don’t have perspective like I do. I have the perfect solution for your world.”

“What are you planning on actually doing? You’re not just interested in showing up and killing everyone on Earth, right? What’s your game?”

Yindra looked him over, her earrings glinting. “I thought you’d have figured it out by now. Originally, my Loyalists were tasked with studying your behaviors. Learning your traits, your habits. What it’s like to be human, the good and the bad. All to create a convincing illusion. They were meant to take on your kind’s likeness, Rian. For the sake of infiltrating your world. To blend in. Slowly. Quietly. Until the right moment when I would make my entrance.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Rian said, “but you’re not going anywhere. And I’m not letting anyone through.”

“Unfortunately,” Yindra said, “the timetables have changed because I’ve been stuck here, betrayed by my corrupted servant. Trapped in the gaze of the Observer. But not forever. Soon, my Loyalists will enter your world and begin their work to fulfill humanity’s deepest wish.

“It has always been there in your subconscious: how deeply you desire that the world becomes a place of justice and fairness, that every action is judged for its worth. It’s what drove you to this world—what drove you to create the System that infests it. You and your kind ache for the presence of a god. I’m happy to oblige you.

“When I cross through the Bridge, I’ll bring this tower with me. And then I will destroy your world’s forces, render your people defenseless. My Loyalists will follow. They’ll claim your cities. Strike at your supply lines. They’ll enslave your civilians and bring them to me.

“Did you know? If every human on Earth were brought to one place and crammed together, they would hardly take up the space of a single city. All of humanity, merged into a single entity. A monstrosity of flesh. Each of your brains mapped as one, neurons entwined into a great web. I’ll consume every thought from your minds, feast upon your dreams. I’ll do to you what you’ve done to us. You steal this world’s future with each casting of temporal magic. I’ll steal your lives from you in return, repurpose each worthless neural connection in your brains to generate something of value.

“We’ll play games,” she said. “Create a virtual world inside your collective mind. Each of you will be nothing more than a processing unit, a node in a human computer. That will be your atonement for destroying my world: generating another world for our entertainment. You’ll wake occasionally as if from a dream, only to realize you can’t move, that you can’t speak. But you’ll be so happy for it. Yes, humans have such splendid imaginations. I think I’ll put them to good use for once.”

“You’re a monster,” Mom said.

“Says the human.”

“I was hoping you’d be a little more reasonable for a goddess,” Rian said. “But you’re just insane. You can’t punish all of humanity for the actions of a few greedy individuals. The players don’t know what they’re doing. They think it’s a simulation.”

“Simulation or not,” Yindra said. “It makes no difference. The true nature of humanity is to attack, conquer, and feast upon their enemies. Games are just ways of fulfilling that primal need.”

“But there’s so much more to it than that. Games aren’t just competition. There’s teamwork. Collaboration. There’s…friends.” When he thought of all he’d done to arrive at this point, he had no choice but to admit it: getting stronger for the sake of power itself was an empty, meaningless endeavor. It was just a means to an end. The ability to reach a goal. All he’d wanted was to find his mom again. But he’d found so much more than that, too. He could make a difference here.

His life had meaning here.

“We should be working together,” Rian said. “We have the same enemies. If we can drive out the GMs and convince the players about what’s really going on, then—”

“And then what?” Yindra said. “Do you think knowledge will make a difference? Human nature can’t be changed. It doesn’t matter if you believe this world’s a simulation or not. You fail to understand, Rian. When the likeness of something approaches something else, the distinction between the two will lessen until vanishing completely. A Vessel containing a replica of your consciousness isn’t just a copy of you—it is you. Just like how a virtual world that becomes perfectly indistinguishable from reality can no longer be considered just virtual.”

Rian hesitated. “You mean…is this world actually virtual? Or is it real?”

A smile crept up at the edges of Yindra’s lips. “You’re a pitiful mortal, Rian. The question has lingered in your mind since you came to Miriad, but you never once considered that it’s the same question that countless Earthlings ask themselves. ‘Is our universe real? Or is it just a simulation?’” She tapped her chin, and when she looked at Rian, her gaze was full of malice. “Ah, but you’ll never know. You’ll never truly know. You’re blind, naked creatures suffocating beneath the weight of your ignorance. And that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“That’s enough,” Rian said.

The three of them stood in silence, the snow falling gently around them. Rian sighed. He saw no other way forward. In a way, it felt like his only choice was to prove Yindra’s assumptions by fighting with her. But he still had time.

“There’s just one other thing I want to know,” Rian said. “My past selves. What were they? Why did they fail?”

Yindra straightened up and looked at him for a long moment. “So you want to know the truth? Fine.

“It all stemmed from that implant you received,” she said. “The GMs used it to create a copy of your mind and fed it into their System. Their goal was to create an accurate projection of the future in which you contacted your mother in the past. But the GMs didn’t create a Vessel for you at the time, knowing that you would eventually enter their game. So I did it, instead. I stole the mapping of your mind and planted it into a Vessel of my own creation.

“Your past selves were exceptional guinea pigs, if you will. They stopped at nothing to amass power for the sake of it, like the typical human. But they didn’t accomplish what was necessary to bridge the past and future. They were missing something.”

“Like what,” Rian said, “my soul?”

“Quite the contrary. They were perfect replicas of your neural network. The implant allowed for a slow, much more thorough brain mapping. Much deeper than a full-dive headset would allow for. And yet those copies of you failed. But now that you’re here…”

Her gaze twitched. A vortex opened in the space around Rian. He almost stepped back, but it didn’t seem to be affecting him.

What’s going on? Her powers are supposed to be suppressed…

It felt as if Yindra was searching for something in another universe, using him as the pivot. The movement in the System was like two doors unlocking upon empty space.

Two runic circles appeared on the snowy floor, glowing bright red.

Yindra grinned. “Let’s see if you’re really the superior version.”