War Aeternus 3: The Culling Read online

  War Aeternus: The Culling

  Written by: Charles Dean

  Edited by: Joshua Swayne and Richard Haygood

  Copyright © 2018 by Charles Dean

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Begin with a Finish

  Chapter 2: Crazy People of a Feather

  Chapter 3: A Bloody Good Reunion

  Chapter 4: Diplomacy is All About Class

  Chapter 5: Bear with Us Here

  Chapter 6: On-Flight Meal

  Chapter 7: A Small Village

  Chapter 8: A New Perspective

  Chapter 9: Strange Bedfellows

  Chapter 10: Déjà Vu

  Chapter 11: Shifting Realities

  Game Manual

  (Stats, Characters, Races, Items, Skills, Locations, Quests, Monsters, Gaming Terms)

  About the Author

  Other Books by Charles Dean

  Prologue

  Man was not made. His flesh does not define him, and the first of his blood, the first human, was not the first man.

  Rather, his progenitor was nothing more than a mindless beast wandering a void of sentience as he struggled for his existence. His life was as meaningless as his death, nothing more than flesh sliding down his killer's throat, a destiny shared by all beasts. Rather, the first man was made by his own hands, his own hopes and dreams, as he toiled to shape the world around him. By giving purpose to his creations, he created himself, marking himself above the brothers of his flesh. By teaching his progeny how to shape the world as well, he sealed his place in history as the first man and the origin of our people.

  Book of Lee ~ Chapter 1, Verses 1-7

  Augustus switched positions in his chair for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes, crossing his legs and then sitting on them in an attempt to get comfortable. It had been so long since he had maintained this shape for any extended period of time that he simply wasn’t used to it anymore. He liked how cozy a chair was when he was a cat or how nice it felt to sit when he was a chimpanzee. Even perching as a bird was easier than figuring out what to do with his legs as a human, but with a guest present, he felt oddly compelled not to transform into an animal.

  Realizing that, even now, he still wasn’t comfortable in the form, he looked over at Mary. “Should I make you a bed or something? Are you living here now?” he asked Mary. His frustration that she hadn’t gone home for a while was obvious in his tone of voice.

  “Shhh . . . This part is so good!” Mary had previously been so timid around Augustus that she visibly trembled at his presence and constantly lowered her eyes to avoid looking at him, but now she simply ignored him, instead casually tossing another piece of popcorn into her mouth without ever letting her eyes leave the screen in front of her for a second. “This is my favorite scene!” she explained, her voice filled with barely-contained enthusiasm.

  “Really? And here I was wondering, since this is the fourth time in a row you’ve watched it. The fact that you somehow seem to grow more and more enthralled after each viewing hasn’t given it away in the slightest,” Augustus responded sarcastically as his eyes roamed from his wall of screens to the one that Mary was watching.

  “He’s so romantic . . . so caring and so gentle . . . the way he takes care of Masha’s every need as if she is the only person in his whole universe . . .” Mary cooed in between bites. “It’s so beautiful. He’s like the best boyfriend a girl could ask for.”

  “Right . . .” Augustus nodded, pushing his chair over to watch the screen with Mary. “Like she’s a job. Some task he has to do, something he has to take care of.”

  Mary gently struck his arm as she rebuked him. “No! Don’t be so thick. She isn’t a job; she’s his love. How can you look at this and see anything besides love?”

  “We always just called it sex where I was from,” Augustus retorted. “Although, to be honest, I feel like having a dirty-minded woman like you watch his first time with her on repeat really cheapens the whole thing. Can’t you show the kid some decency and skip to the next scene?”

  “I’m not dirty!” Mary smacked his arm again, her faux attack amounting to less than a strong breeze. “And sex and love are different. This is love. This isn’t a one-night stand. That date they had leading up to this night, those romantic confessions over a home-cooked candlelight dinner, the way he spent the whole day taking her to her favorite places and then finished up the evening by making her that beautiful painting with his powers . . . That’s not just sex. It’s love. And men like you could learn a thing from him!” Mary added, her protest quickly turned into unsolicited advice

  Augustus shrugged. “You even make it sound like he was just working a job! And that right there, the way she’s arching her back, the way she’s moaning into the pillow as he brings her to climax again . . . Even that position they are in is as animalistic as you can get. I don’t see how that’s anything but just sex.”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter! This is love!” Mary continued to argue, but Augustus had already shifted in his seat and turned back to the screens he had been watching earlier. One held the image of Amber, Lee’s first real love as far as Augustus could tell, as she lay dying in his arms after the fight against the Firbolg Herald in Kirshtein. To Augustus, that was love. He knew that Lee cared for Masha--and cared for her deeply by the looks of it--but it felt more like Lee was using Masha as an escape than as any real vessel for his emotions.

  “Whatever,” Augustus said quietly, replaying Amber’s death yet again. The scene so closely mirrored the struggles he had experienced with own first love that it hurt just as much for him to watch it as it probably did Lee to remember it.

  Mary tore her eyes away from her lecherous video long enough to look over at Augustus. She opened her mouth and let it hang open for a few seconds before closing it again, simply staring at the man beside her. Augustus could feel her eyes on him. Without even looking, he knew that she had wanted to say something but had stopped herself--a thing that he was glad for. He had already gotten enough scoldings in the past from Angelica on the subject, and he didn’t need to hear another from Mary now.

  Angelica was both Lee’s grandmother and Earth’s Goddess of Regret, and most of her lectures reproached Augustus for being too uncaring, callous and cold. Both she and Mary knew, however, that it was the opposite in at least one regard: it wasn’t that he didn’t have any ability to love; it was that he needed to move on and stop beating himself up over the people he couldn’t save.

  Just as Mary seemed to have mustered up the strength to finally say something, though, Augustus interjected and cut her off. “We need to be headed to that stupid meeting of the gods soon,” he said, reminding her that it was about time for the usual weekly check-in. Time moved incredibly, incredibly slowly in the prime reality compared to the game reality. It progressed at such a gradual rate that Augustus could realistically go to another world, raise a family, and grow old--if such a thing were possible--in the same amount of time that the competition’s world completed a single day.

  Mary frowned, glaring at Augustus reproachfully as she stood up. “Fine, we can go to the meeting, but you really need to--”

  “Tell Angelica that you were perving on her grandkid?” Augustus stopped her cold with a mild threat as he grinned ear to ear.

  Mary’s eyes flickered and widened. “No, you don’t need to do that, and I was not perving. I was just . . . I was just watching. It wasn’t perv
erted!” Mary insisted. “Don’t say a thing to Angelica!”

  “Don’t say a thing to Angelica? Hmm . . . If you weren’t doing anything wrong, then why shouldn’t I say anything?” Augustus asked, enjoying the torment his words were causing her. “If you’ve done nothing bad, I’m sure Angelica won’t be mad at all.” Augustus’s grin grew even wider when he saw Mary’s face twist with shock. What? Did you really believe I wouldn’t use this against you in the future?

  “No, please!” Mary pleaded, a slight whine in her voice. “No, don’t do that!” Angelica wasn’t just the Goddess of Regret. She was also the only goddess that most would regret ever crossing. Without so much as a hint of violence or physical harm, she could destroy people.

  Alright, maybe I’ll let you off the hook if . . .” Augustus trailed off, leaving his thought unfinished.

  “If what?” Mary asked nervously. He had already asked several favors and tasks from her recently. His reliance on her was likely half the reason--at least as far as Augustus suspected--that she had grown so bold around him. He thought that perhaps she felt she was indispensable to him, and thus that she could get away with her recent more-familiar, blasé attitude. The favors had taken somewhat of an emotional and psychological toll on her though, and now, as he prepared to make a new demand of her, she was already sweating a little.

  “If . . . perhaps . . .” Augustus took his time, dragging out the words as he walked up to her until his face was inches away from hers. “You would . . .” He leaned in even farther, his cheek brushing past hers as his mouth rested a finger’s width away from her ear--“stop watching my Herald have sex while sitting right next to me!”

  Mary let out a sigh and pushed him away with both of her hands at the same time, grumbling at him. “Don’t do that to me! You nearly gave me a heart attack. I swear by the Creator, you are the meanest of the gods!” Her face was solid red as she stared at him angrily. “You really should be nicer to me since I’m pretty much the only friend you have at that table.”

  “No, that’s not true.” Augustus reached out and ruffled her hair, laughing at how noticeably he had upset her. “I still have Angelica.”

  “Really?” Mary asked in surprise, clearly disbelieving. “Even though you stole her precious grandkid to be your Herald? You think you have Angelica as a friend?”

  “Yeah, it’ll just take some time. Once this competition is over, she’ll have enough reason to thank me. It won’t be long until we’re close friends again and things are back on schedule once more,” Augustus said matter-of-factly. He never doubted the possibility of any other outcome as he backed up from her and shifted into a panther for the meeting.

  Mary waited until the shift was complete as she watched him with a frown. “You know, you could just go in your natural form. No one would ever complain about you or try to hit you with regulations again. You could own that council’s opinion if you just showed your face and didn’t insist on breaking tradition with this shape-shifting stuff.”

  “I could,” Augustus admitted, “but then things wouldn’t be on schedule if I did.”

  “Schedule? Schedule for what? Why do you keep talking about a schedule?” Mary sighed. Augustus had already bounded away, leaving her behind in moments. After effectively talking to herself, she had to run to catch up to the lithe and speedy panther so that the two of them could walk to the meeting together.

  When they arrived at the gathering, the two were greeted by a room full of stern-faced gods, each and every one glaring silently at the duo as they entered.

  “I see you’ve started keeping poor company,” Siegman observed dryly. He was the de facto leader of the council, largely because no one else had stepped up to assume the position. “Very poor company indeed.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Augustus countered as he leapt across the room and into one of two empty chairs waiting for them. Everyone else had already arrived, even though they were actually somewhat early this time, and he could tell from their looks that they were getting ready to chew him out. “I can make whatever I need, and in terms of faith, I’ve got quite a few followers these days. In fact, I just recently reached the good old five-digit-faith stat thanks to Deigha kindly donating hers.”

  “Donating? Deigha the Goddess of Ice didn’t donate anything! Your herald contravened the long-standing traditions of our game and killed her Herald in cold blood before the third month of the game had even ended!” Siegman raged, clearly disgusted. “It was a brutal, uncalled-for murder that happened simply because he’s too lazy to go about proselytizing and earning believers the proper way. How dare you try to say that she donated her faith to you and make light of her death!”

  “Well, he was trying to kill Lee . . .” Mary spoke softly as she sat down next to Augustus. “I wouldn’t say Lee went out of his way to kill the other Herald exactly, so much as he--”

  “What? Walked away from that Herald’s town unscathed thanks to the Herald’s generous and patient treatment, but then came back with an army to crush and destroy him, ending one of our precious lives in the process?” Siegman’s fury was unchecked as he berated Mary for attempting to take Augustus’s side in the matter.

  “You’re looking at it wrong,” Augustus said casually as he shifted from a cat into a giant, human-sized raccoon. He pulled out a beer in the process and threw his stubby legs onto the table in front of him instead of letting them dangle above the ground. “My Herald just did her Herald a favor: he wanted to die, but he was too much of a coward to take his own life. So, Lee helped him do it.”

  Siegman’s eyes grew even narrower as he stared Augustus down. “Are you trying to tell me that Lee just assisted a Herald in suicide? Do you think that’s any less of a blatant and flagrant disregard of the sacred traditions that our council upholds?! In the last thousand games, not a single Herald has died before a decade has passed, and your Herald has managed to flaunt indecency in the face of tradition and kill two in the first three months. And now you tell me that he was just helping a Herald commit suicide?!”

  Augustus paused for a moment, his ears perking up as if he was listening to and processing everything Siegman said, and then he nodded. “Right. That’s it. You got the gist of it on the first go. Good on you.”

  Siegman slammed a closed fist onto the table. “Of course I understood you! I’m asking how you could have the nerve to say such a thing and then the gall to raise such an impudent Herald! Did you teach him nothing?!”

  “Well, as for how I would have the nerve . . . Well, I’m sure it’s tough for you, but speaking the truth doesn’t take much courage for me,” Augustus taunted. “That wench, the Goddess of Ice, killed her Herald’s family and newborn son, so it was pretty easy to imagine why dying in a way that would kill her would be desirable. Lee’s not like us, you know, with a hundred dead families under our name, so you can imagine he’d be a bit less apathetic about the whole murdered-family thing. As for the time to teach him . . .” Augustus paused, putting one of his tiny, little raccoon claws up to his mouth. “Well, sorry about that. You see, normally, I would have had plenty of time to educate him on all sorts of things, but some annoying hobgoblin-of-a-god insisted on penalizing me and denying me two whole months with my Herald. It’s really put me behind on the tutoring of morals and whatnot. I was so busy trying to use what few words I had time for to tell him how to stay alive that I totally forgot all about those pesky values and traditions you hold so dearly. You have to forgive me on that one. If I had only had more time . . . Like two months more time.”

  The blood vessels in Siegman’s forehead bulged until they looked as if they were going to explode. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, and he growled through clenched teeth. “I will--”

  “Remember in the future not to penalize someone two months of game time just because they didn’t screw around and have more Heralds?” Augustus interjected, finishing Siegman’s sentence to the fuming god’s even greater irritation.

  “A new sh
ade he paints with each word, each sentence leaves our Siegman spurred, his own actions have this fate ensured, when punishment for punishment is incurred,” Cadwe, the God of Poetry, said, starting his usual nonsensical rhyming from his end of the table and following it up with a chuckle trollish enough to have come from Augustus.

  “Quiet!” Siegman barked at the interruption.

  “What?” Eric, the God of Smells and Spices, asked from his seat beside Cadwe. “The little ferret thingy is kind of right. You can’t expect him to teach his Herald anything when you’re the one who took away that massive block of time.”

  Ah. Augustus smiled as he heard Eric and Cadwe’s response. So, they don’t know that I’ve been letting Lee have long vacation hours on Earth. He had purposefully riled them up so that he could get as much accurate information about their knowledge as he wanted, knowing that Siegman, in particular, was the type to spill out useful info as he inveighed against him. Instead, with one sentence from Eric and the matching look on Siegman’s face, he knew that they knew nothing this time. They hadn’t figured out just how much time Lee was spending in the other universe. While it was the best he could hope for, it still left him a little disappointed. An infinite amount of time, and you all spend it so uselessly, waxing philosophical or stroking egos, he thought with disdain as he leaned back. There was no more need for him to taunt Siegman.

  “Even if it is the case that the penalty prevented him from properly training Lee, it can’t be that hard to tell him not to kill a Herald! It’s one sentence! He’s had plenty of time to say that ONE SENTENCE!” Siegman shouted.

  “You’re not in the game, Siegman. With no stake at hand, it isn’t your place to talk, tradition or not,” Angelica said from her seat opposite of Augustus at the giant round table. “I, for one, am happy it was Lee who lived and not those other Heralds, and even if he had to break tradition, I’d rather he does that than be broken.”