War Aeternus: The Beginning Read online

Show me your true form tonight, and I’ll vote against my own motion, a telepathic message came to Augustus. If not, you’ll be stuck with the weakest Herald imaginable—unleveled and unprepared in one of the cruelest wars we’ve had.

  While Augustus was weighing his options, debating whether or not it was worth it to reveal his identity to get Mary off his back, Lenfers snickered loud enough to quiet the others and draw attention to himself. The old and wise God of Architecture never said anything unless it was to crush the dreams of a plotter. He leaned forward for a moment, making sure he had everyone’s attention, and said, “But Mary and Sord can’t vote,” before leaning back. It was as if he knew Mary’s plan and could see the struggle in Augustus as he tried to decide before leaping on the bandwagon and shooting them both down instantly.

  “That’s right. Since this war has both Mary and Sord in it as well, neither can take part in this vote as they would be involved or interested parties,” Siegman said. “In that case, since it needs a unanimous vote, if anyone objects, speak now. Otherwise, we will assume the motion to punish Augustus by delaying entry to his Herald has passed.”

  For her part, Mary seemed to be more horrified than Angelica when the vote actually went through without a hitch. Augustus just winced, knowing nothing could be done about it.

  The rest of the meeting was uneventful for the most part, but the brooding Angelica darted over to Augustus as soon as it was adjourned.

  She made him promise and swear to do his best to keep Lee safe before storming over to Mary and yelling so many choice words at the unsuspecting woman that the God of Blood fled in the most dignified way possible before drinks were even served.

  No one stood up for her, either, even though they had all been in on the vote—a fact that Angelica had not ignored during the meeting as she went out of her way to crush any motion attempted by another god and continued to treat them colder than frozen liquor afterward.

  Well, at least she’s no longer mad at me. Augustus tried to take the small victory where he could as he sipped from his bottomless beverage and followed Mary’s example in leaving early.

  Chapter 1

  Lee’s brain slowly shut itself off as he sat at his desk typing out code like a copy-paste machine. After all, much to his disappointment, thought wasn’t needed for this part of his job. He had needed the squishy stuff between his ears to get his degree, to get his internship, and to subsequently land himself a job as a paid employee at the company, but after that, it felt more like an accessory than an actual requirement. His dormant brain would occasionally turn on during a heated online debate, and he could feel the familiar old cogs in his head dust themselves off when he was trying to figure out why a particular line of code didn’t work, but past that, it never saw much action.

  The problem was that he just didn’t have much use for it these days. He had worked tirelessly during his university courses, learning all the necessary and seemingly unnecessary bits of higher-level mathematics, and he had proven to be rather adept when it came to parsing out the necessary logic needed to construct algorithms and functional programs. After he secured his position with the firm, however, he found that he rarely had the need to push himself. He wasn’t creating any new, ground-breaking methods, and most of his work revolved around maintaining systems that he had already put into place and keeping them updated as necessary. Random quirks and unusual errors occasionally showed up, but most of those were easily solved. In short, he wasn’t being challenged, and he wasn’t going to challenge himself by recreating the wheel or by giving up a lucrative and secure position.

  The mind-atrophying banality of his repetitive existence wasn’t just limited to work, either. There was so little change or variation in his day-to-day routine that there were times when Lee felt like he had more in common with the computer in front of him than any person around him. Whether it was his job, his home life, his socializing with his friends, playing MMOs where all he had to do was hit the same four keys over and over again in the same order or the calls he made to his parents, Lee could pretty much predict what was going to happen and how things would play out. As mechanical as his life was, however, he just didn’t see that there was anything to gain by changing things up. There wasn’t any profit to be had or friends to be made by shaking the system. Things were familiar; things were comfortable.

  He managed to autopilot every annoying part in his life, whether it was dealing with his overbearing manager or filing eight TPS reports on Mondays, and the good parts were magnified time and time again as his nest egg continued to grow, and he expanded his creature comforts. He didn’t just play video games on a computer, he played them on the fastest computer money could buy—one he built himself. His bed felt like a sculpted cloud, his TV was large enough to almost entirely cover one of the walls in his apartment, and his food was almost exclusively takeout from a great hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant he had found. Even his favorite chair was perfectly contoured to his every facet. As someone who spent most of the day sitting in a chair, whether at home or at work, he had researched the perfect one for almost half of a year before finally pulling the trigger. Its soft memory foam coddled him into an almost trance-like state as soon as he plopped down on it. It was amazing, and it was the perfect end to each day.

  With all of these things to look forward to, it simply didn’t make sense to try and rock the boat or change things up. His life was perfect the way it was, and perfection wasn’t something someone changed just because it was repetitive.

  He was so used to his routine and the fact that nothing ever changed that he didn’t notice any of the small, exotic and unusual behaviors that a few animals began to exhibit around him one morning. He was blissfully unaware of the statue-still crow perched on his windowsill that stared at him as he slowly munched on his breakfast and read the news on his smartphone. He was oblivious to the leashless dog that followed him onto the subway during his trek to work, and he didn’t even catch sight of the squirrel that chased him onto the elevator and stood quietly between his feet as they went up a dozen floors together. Taking notice of any of these abnormal behaviors would have required that he turn on his brain, and his higher mental functions were already comfortably on hold as he began yet another day on autopilot.

  That’s why, with his brain snoring through the day, he didn’t notice a small mouse as it crawled up the wall of his cubicle and scrambled across his desk to stand in front of his computer as he continued to click and clack away on his mechanical keyboard.

  “I still can’t believe it. Level zero?” The white, beady-eyed mouse squeaked and put one of its tiny paws in front of its face as if to suppress a laugh.

  “Hahaha, noob,” Lee responded by reflex upon hearing that someone was level zero. Slowly, a gear began to turn upstairs as he realized he had just responded to someone; yet, no one was around, and he wasn’t wearing a headset or even playing a game. He looked away from his screen in search of whoever had spoken as he gradually processed what he had heard.

  Huh? Who? Level zero? His brain slowly but surely started to shake off the rust as his autopilot failed to handle the all unexpected data points. Who in the heck is level zero? Who said that? His eyes searched the room around him before finally finding the anomaly and resting on the small white mouse.

  Lee stared at the tiny creature blankly and without blinking as he waited for all the gears to warm up. He simply couldn’t come to grips with what was in front of him, and his mental functions failed to register the connection between what he was seeing and what he had heard. Both were so unexpected and out of place that his senses and his conscious refused to associate the two things. “Mouse,” he said finally, uttering the one word like it was the most foreign concept he had ever come across.

  “You’re very perceptive, aren’t you? Yes, I’m a mouse. At least, I am for now, anyway,” the mouse answered in a squeaky voice, his tiny laughter piping through Lee’s ears. “Would it help if I were something else?”

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nbsp; Lee took a deep breath and tried to say something smart or witty in response, but all that came out was: “Mouse.” He wanted to say more. His brain had warmed up enough that it had reached a point where he knew something was out of place. He wanted to shout for people to come and look so that he could confirm that it wasn’t all entirely in his head. He wanted to ask what a mouse was doing talking to him. He wanted to ask what was level zero. There were hundreds of thoughts, questions and words bouncing through Lee’s head as his once dulled-out-of-existence gray matter came back full force, but the only thing that managed to escape his chamber of thoughts was that one word yet again for a third time: “Mouse.”

  “Oh, dear me.” The mouse released a tiny sigh before jumping straight at Lee.

  Lee flinched, raising his hands and bracing for the inevitable rodent impact only to have nothing happen.

  “Will you quit monkeying around and pay attention to me?” a Japanese macaque asked with a hearty chuckle as it spun Lee’s chair around to face him.

  “Monkey . . .” Lee muttered. His eyes spread open even wider, and his mouth hung agape as the macaque’s head tilted from side to side, inspecting and examining Lee’s now-stiff body.

  “Seriously? Is this thing broken?” the macaque asked. “Do humans come with reset buttons? You work in some sort of primitive IT job, right? You should know how to reset yourself. Maybe your internal cache is stuck, and you can’t hold more than one word in the memory box at a time . . . No, that can’t be right,” the monkey asserted, grabbing a handful of Lee’s hair and pulling.

  Lee’s shock and confusion were outweighed by the sharp pain and the adrenaline that shot through his veins. He snapped out of his confusion-induced torpor the moment the macaque’s hands pulled on Lee’s ruddy locks, causing him to instantly jerk back and swat the hand away.

  “Oh! We’ve uncovered a new ability!” the primate chuckled, withdrawing its slapped hand.

  Lee toppled over his chair as he stood up and pointed at the primate. “Someone! Help! There’s a . . . a monkey! Hey, someone help! There’s a monkey loose in the building!”

  “You can keep yelling and throwing your arms around like a wild ape, but it’s not going to help you, you know. If you haven’t noticed, you’re the only one in here working at the moment.” The macaque shifted shape again, changing form like liquid poured from one glass and into another. It morphed into a sloth and climbed up into the chair in the cubicle next to Lee’s and then sat back and reclined leisurely. “There really is just no way to get comfortable in these, is there? I don’t know how you sit in one for so long. It’s like some specialized form of torture to keep an employee awake.”

  “S-sloth!” Lee gasped this time, his eyes darting around the room. This can’t just be me. There has to be someone else who can see this besides me. I’m not going nuts, am I? Lee’s brain scrambled as he tried to find another witness to the madness that was going on in front of him.

  “It’s really only you here . . .” the sloth taunted derisively. “Everyone else is in the break room. They’re taking the time to enjoy themselves while you pick up the slack—not that you would even realize it. I can’t imagine someone like you would have a very high intelligence stat at level zero, would they?” The sloth smiled snidely. It reached up with one of its clawed paws, and a gourd-shaped vessel materialized out of the thin air within its grasp. The small creature took a large swig from the gourd as if it were a flask and made it vanish again.

  “W-what the . . . No way. Th-this can’t be happening!” Lee’s voice elevated as he refuted what every sensory organ on his body assured him was real. “This isn’t happening. This is a joke, right? This is a prank. This . . . This is a trick. Mice and sloths don’t even have human voice boxes. How could they talk even if they knew how? This has to be—”

  “An elaborate prank?” the sloth cackled. “That’s rich. That’s really rich! Do you really think any of these miserable cretins are going to waste their time on anyone besides themselves? Much less you? Look. This isn’t going anywhere. If we’re going to ever get around to a productive conversation, we need to raise your level to at least one. Otherwise, there’s no way you’re ever going to have the intelligence score needed for meaningful discourse.”

  Everything around Lee went quiet—deathly quiet—as if Lee had put on soundproof headphones over earplugs.

  “Wh . . . what’s going on?! What in the heck is this?! What did you do?!” Lee was practically shouting at the top of his lungs, but the words felt strange and eerie as they left his mouth. It was as if he were underwater, and the sounds were almost entirely muted before they ever reached his ears. “Hello?! Can anybody hear me?!” he screamed again.

  Darkness began creeping in at the edges of his vision until everything turned black, and he was blind. Then, the floor beneath his feet disappeared and numbness set in. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see, hear or feel anything. Even his heartbeat was gone. It was as if he were dead, his senses had failed, and the reaper had forgotten to take his consciousness along with the rest of him.

  “Yes, I can hear your stupid whining, you idiotic human, but it’s taking me a minute to convert you over to the system. Will you just shut up and let me finish executing the program?” a disjointed voice answered, sounding like a disappointed parent scolding a small child. “I swear, you humans always scream and shout like that’s somehow going to be helpful. Every. Freaking. Time. Has screaming ever helped you? Ever? Any time? No? That’s right. I didn’t think so. Hmm . . . It seems that I can’t get your stat screen to display correctly until you level up. It keeps rejecting the full conversion . . . This system just isn’t built with the proper parameters to handle someone like you.”

  “You know, it’s really kind of hard to gain levels in a game you’ve never even heard of, much less bought! And what is all this?!” Lee was growing increasingly annoyed with his smack-talking captor, and despite his condition and seeming out-of-body experience, his natural instincts began taking over once the word ‘game’ was mentioned.

  “You really should stop talking until I figure this out,” the voiced cautioned. “I can hear you, and I understand you, but you sound super dumb right now. Another primitive quality you humans all share: as soon as you forget how to hear, you suddenly forget how to speak. I mean, seriously, this is you.” The voice was replaced with a sound that was clearly Lee’s voice but garbled and all over the place.

  Lee cringed when he heard himself yelling incoherently. No one ever enjoyed hearing a recording of their own voice, and the garbled noises he had made it even more embarrassing.

  “Yeah, that’s right. That’s the appropriate face to make when you realize that you sound worse than a talking dog. But! No reason to exist as muffled data any longer. The conversion just isn’t going to work until we level you, so . . . here we go!”

  The world around Lee began to be restored even as his tormentor sloth finished insulting him. Everything began to fade in around him, one tiny blocked pixel at a time, until Lee was able to make out that he was standing in an arena—a giant coliseum, actually—just like the one in Rome. It had to be at least three hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide, and it felt empty and barren without a single soul in sight across the wide red sands.

  “Where . . . Where am I?” Lee asked in alarm. Even though he had been in reasonable control of himself only seconds ago, this was just a little too much for him to handle. His heart started pounding in his chest, and he felt like he couldn’t get a solid breath of air. Unable to understand what was going on, Lee began hyperventilating. This was just too much for anyone to comprehend, much less accept. One minute he had been dutifully working away in his office, following his normal routine, and now he was in some foreign place holding conversations with a talking animal.

  After a few minutes passed without anything happening, however, a nascent sense of curiosity started to override all of his confusion and fear. He began to calm down and control his breathing
once more.

  “What’s going on?” Lee called out around him. “Is anyone out there?” His heart was still beating a mile a minute, and he was gulping down air as fast as he could, but at least he had some kind of control now. He looked around him warily, hoping to find some sort of escape path.

  “I’m out here,” the voice returned. “And don’t worry, I’m going to send you some company soon enough . . . Someone with a level and intelligence score almost as low as yours,” the sloth’s voice responded and started to chuckle again.

  “Huh? Send me someone smarter?” Lee looked around, nervously turning his head from side to side. What’s coming? What’s going to happen to me? Is the person he is sending going to kill me? There was no way Lee was going to trust that this shape-shifting thing, whoever or whatever it was, was friendly. He felt like he was in the third act of a horror movie and something was going to pop out of the sand at any moment—probably something like a giant sandworm from one of his favorite movies, Dune—and eat him.

  “Yeah, with how obtuse you are, that just isn’t very specific, is it? Someone smarter could be anyone,” the voice laughed. “Well, here we go. This should do it,” the voice said with finality.

  Then, no more than ten feet in front of Lee, a hand began to materialize out of thin air. The pale, grayish flesh continued to extend backward to create an arm, a torso, and a body, and after a few seconds, an entire zombie stood in front of him. It wasn’t an overdone zombie from a B-rated flick, where the makeup artist had more fun with the costumes than the writer had with the script, but rather just a gray-skinned corpse with patchy hair, decaying flesh, a funny smell, white eyes and a partially-missing nose.

  The zombie cracked his neck as soon as he was fully materialized and began pulling at his clothes—a disheveled blue suit with a dirt-covered tie, loafers and shirt—like he wasn’t sure what they were.

  “Brains . . .” the zombie moaned, dragging the syllable out as he stared wide-eyed at Lee. “Braiiinssss . . .”