Meager Power

"Yeah, boss, that isn't real helpful," Arla said, looking at him oddly.

Daniel just shook his head. "The Godsgame has not occurred for a very long time, and the last time it did, it ended the third era. It is a time of tumultuous change."

No one really knew how to respond to that. Arla seemed mollified, taking her hand off of her weapon, but the professor was almost - no, he was vibrating with excitement. Evelyn was looking with amusement at her husband, whereas Kelessta just looked a bit nonplussed. Before any more conversation happened, noise gathered our attention as Basrith and Thenishale returned to the Sanctuary, water pouring off of them as they carried a dozen different bags into the room. Six backpacks, as well as six carried bags of differing quality and size. They unceremoniously plunked them down near the entrance and shed their soaked clothes, huddling closer to the fire as soon as they could. The rest of us just stared at them as they made themselves comfortable.

It took a few minutes for the latecomers to settle down, but eventually they did and were able to take in the odd atmosphere. Basrith narrowed his eyes, but Thenishale just sighed. "What happened?" The elf asked.

"Apparently we've got a couple beyonders here, and they're gonna change the fuckin' world or something," Arla told him, an amused smile on her face.

"Beyonders? Hell's that?" Thenishale asked.

"People who originated from beyond Avare, another realm of existence," Daniel responded. Dude was animated as hell.

"Huh. Okay." That seemed enough to mollify him, so Daniel turned to us. Well, rather, me, due to me being the one who was talking the most.

"So, we are truly amidst a Godsgame? May I ask who you represent?"

"Uh, well, no," I said, a bit taken aback. How much did this guy know? It was possible he knew more than us at this point. "We haven't even discussed that with each other."

His eyes widened. "You both represent differing divinities? Yet you're working together? Is this not counterproductive your goals?"

"Maybe? Fuck if I even know what our goals are. Apparently that was one of the 'rules.'" I shook my head. "So, we figured there wasn't any particular guarantee we had to be at odds, and we trusted each other... oh, shit wait." I got up and approached the entrance, looking out into the rainy night. "There was actually a third Champion here, but, eh, we didn't really get along. If you run into a white guy about yea tall, smarmy look, and a nasty axe named Nathan, just kinda make him go away and don't let him stab you in the back. Complete sociopath. Wouldn't honestly mind if you stabbed him in the back, either."

Kelessta notably shuddered when I turned around to look at the room. "Just what we need, another zealot out for blood. I bet he's Jeyl's."

I tried my hardest not to react. I knew the name of literally one god, two I guess. Had one of them used one before? Well, honestly, I got one command from the boss, and that was to take down this labyrinth, and I did. Well, we did. Was gonna seek out civilization next, honestly."

"Wait, you already cleared the fucking labyrinth?" a disbelieving voice rang out from the entrance. The elf was giving me a disbelieving look.

Basrith just scoffed. "Of course they did. As if anything on this expedition could go right. Boss?" He asked, eyes flashing toward Arla.

She shook her head at him. "We'll figure that out later. Still getting info." She turned toward me again. "So. You're working for a god, yet you don't have an objective at all. You cleared one, and you were just gonna look for people?"

"That's putting things awfully lightly, Ar-" Daniel started, but she cut him off.

"Getting a baseline, boss. Safety comes before anything else. Is that it? You're from beyond, and you just have no goals right now? None?"

I shrugged. "Find people. Get info. Figure out what the hell we're doing."

Arla just stared at me. Silence reigned for a few awkward moments, before Kelessta snorted off to the side, and all of our eyes found her, and she crossed her arms. "Just stupid enough that I believe it, honestly." The lamia pointed her chin at me. "What's your level?"

I was about to respond before my brain had a slight short circuit. "Uh, is this one of those things that I shouldn't bandy about?"

"Normally," Arla responded while I saw Thenishale mouth 'bandy about' silently, "you'd want to keep those things to yourselves. Is that not how it works in your realm?"

Shaking my head, I sighed. "No, we had games and such that approximated things like it, but our reality had no magic. No levels, no labyrinths."

"Nothing?" She seemed taken aback.

"Not a thing."

"How the hell would such a world even exist?" Basrith asked, finally finished with sorting through their sodden supplies.

"Fuck if I know. I was told something that meant maybe there had been magic there at one point? But not for a very long time, if our history is correct." Rachel snorted, and I gave her a sideways look. "The broad strokes, at least."

"That's really weird, but I guess we'll go with it?" Arla said, almost asking herself the question.

"I'll say, you're taking this 'other world' thing remarkably well, just taking our word for it," I threw out, mildly amused.

"The concept isn't completely alien," Evelyn interjected, "and you saved our lives. It has already been said, but we certainly would not have made it through the night without casualties had you not been present. Thus, we are not only in your debt, but we are currently your guests. Doubting your words would be the height of impropriety."

I smirked. "Impropriety doesn't mean it doesn't happen, though."

Evelyn leveraged her aloof look into a slight smile, but didn't respond. Arla just waved her hands to bring the attention back to herself. "My lady, please let me guide this. Yes. We're taking this well because we're professionals. I will probably have a talk with my team after this, but there's nothing we can do about it right now. Quite honestly, we shouldn't even be this lax to begin with. We're your guests, but we need to get on task." She looked at her group. "Kel, set up a watch, you're our least injured. Thenny, get us situated over where these ladies aren't sleeping. Basrith, when your mana's fully recovered, give everyone a once-over again, as well as our new friends, if they allow it. Boss, my Lady, please get yourselves set up normally in our little section." Arla rose, bringing her hand to her side over her wound with a wince. "I'll get dinner started. Allison, Rachel, anything against travel stew?"

"What's in travel stew?" Rachel asked, perking up. She was tired of the same foods every day for the last month, just like I was.

"Uhhh, I think our current bag is some juva root, onion, venison, and whatever herbs Bas put in. He made it."

"Thyme and hurlin," he cut in, trawling through one of the bags he'd recovered. "At least let me help you set up, it's not like helping with dinner will slow my mana recovery."

"I recognized some of those, but not all, so know what, I'll be glad to try it," I said happily. I glanced at Rachel and she gave me a thumbs up, eyes shining. Yeah, we were already resigned to dried meat for the next long while. This would just be a surprise treat. "Is that normal?"

"Travel stew," Arla grunted as she lifted a pot that was far too large out of the bag (oh my god - goddess, fuck - is that bag bigger on the inside? Fuck yes.) and hauled it over to the fire, "is whatever we make that can keep. I've got a cantrip that'll allow me to dry and condense the cooked food, so all we really gotta do is add water and heat, and we've got a repeatable meal. It gets less good over time, but it's better than nothing."

"Cantrip?"

Rachel huffed as Basrith placed a small metal table over the fire, and lifted the pot onto it. "Cantrip. Little spell? Shit, you never answered. No magic, right. What level are you guys? Not being picky, just gotta know what we're dealing with here."

I took a deep breath, but decided to keep with the honesty. "I'm fifteen. Probably, dunno if that fight there pushed me over to sixteen. Should probably check the lens."

Basrith stopped for a moment, gaping at me, then looked over at Rachel who nodded. "You completed a labyrinth at level fifteen?"

"There's a lens here?" Daniel exclaimed.

"You willingly fought tainted at level fifteen?" Thenishale added, incredulous.

"Fifteen? How old are you? Teenagers?" Kelessta blurted from the Sanctuary entrance.

It seemed like we were extraordinary, and I couldn't help but shrug with a small smile. "Yes, yes, yes, technically twenty-five."

They all blurted things out again, but Arla whistled with sudden power that it hurt my ears, and they all stopped. "Don't overwhelm the poor woman, people. One at a time." She looked around and pointed at Daniel. "You're the boss. You go first."

His eyes belied a rabid excitement, and he stepped away from what he was currently doing, to the annoyance of his wife. She didn't motion to stop him, though, clearly amused by the action enough that it overwrote her irritation.

"The lens. Where is it?"

I just pointed at the door to the Lens Room. "Just past there."

"Boss, don't just -" Arla was unable to finish her sentence before the human man crossed the distance with surprising quickness and entered the room. We heard a shout of what could only be delight, and the door disappeared.

"What the fuck just happened to the door?" Arla yelled, looking at me with furious eyes.

"Uhhh, that always happens when someone accesses the lens. Is it not supposed to?" I asked, hands up in complete surrender.

"No! It just fucking locks," she responded, reaching toward her weapon.

"Worry not, Arla," Evelyn said from the other side of the room. "I have shared at least some of my husband's interest in these things. He will be out shortly."

"If you say so, my Lady," the spear wielder huffed, still looking at us with suspicious eyes.

We waited a few tense moments, but eventually the door reappeared and Daniel entered the Sanctuary. "Fascinating! A second-model Lens. Working completely fine!"

"Boss," Arla called out, still displeased. "Please take an escort around. This is an unknown zone."

"Of course, of course, I was just excited. I'll wait until after dinner anyway, we should get some food in us."

"That's the plan, boss." She smirked. "Let's settle down and get to know each other, yeah? No better way to do that than over a good meal."

We all settled in, nervousness slowly falling away. The food was decent (at least it was new!) and the adventurers were pleasant to converse with. The professor was a bit annoying, given most of his questions were regarding the godsgame we knew basically nothing about, but it wasn't so bad. We'd successfully made contact with the people of Avare and begun a dialogue. I had hope it was the start of something good, but time would tell.

Eventually, the meal petered out and the travelers began to fall asleep. I volunteered for the first watch of the night, and I joined the mage, Kelessta, who was sitting close by due to her previous station, but not exactly close enough for me to reach with my hands. If it was for safety's sake, I didn't mind. It was what it was, but at least eventually she opened up to start up a little conversation.

"So. What's it like?"

"You're gonna have to be more specific," I responded with a look in her direction.

"Being in another world? How'd you get here?"

"Hm." I tapped my chin. "Well, I died." I heard her suck a breath in. "Nah, don't worry about it, I don't remember the dying part. Got brought here by my patron, and it's really just been taking on this labyrinth." I let out a sigh. "Honestly, for most of the time, it was very lonely. I'm super excited to explore an entire new world, but..." I closed my eyes, swallowing down tears. I did not want to break down right now. "I miss my dad. I miss some of the day-to-day stuff. I miss feeling... safe."

"Sorry. I know what it's like to miss family," she said, a sympathetic look on her face. The end of her tail swept back and forth, but I didn't really know her well enough to tell what that meant.

I couldn't help but shrug. "I mean, I was dead either way. I'm just lucky enough to have a second chance at all." I couldn't keep the pained grimace from my face. "Sorry to hear that from you, too."

She shook her head, unkempt black hair swishing around. "It was a long time ago."

"Doesn't mean it can't hurt."

Her eyes found mine, looking for something, and likely found it. It's a pain that most people learn at some point or another. Kelessta nodded. "I know. But you mentioned safety?"

"Yeah. At first, I was told this place would be safe, but then I learned that I'd have to fear other people almost right after coming here. It hurt, really. I'd hoped I'd left most of that behind." The hurt bled into my voice despite my attempt otherwise.

The lamia - no, sekiss, I'd learned over dinner - laughed quietly, but I could tell it wasn't at me. It was one of those bitter laughs that covered up only a world of hurt. "I'm afraid not, little human. The world you're in may have monsters and tainted, but the most dangerous of them all will always be other people." It sounded like a personal pain, one I could definitely identify with.

"Typical. All those ridges in our brains and we still use it to stab each other."

"Ridges?"

"You ever seen a brain?" I asked her. She shook her head again. "Well, if you do, a person's brain is all wrinkly and shit because it can pack a lot more surface area into a small space. As a general rule, though it's not always the case, if a brain has a bunch of ridges, that creature is probably smart. Crack open one of those wolves' heads and you'll find some, but not nearly as much as ours." I knocked on the side of my head. "'Course, that's only humans that I know about."

"How in Miyla's name do you know that?"

"Miyla?"

"Oh, ah, the god of healing and physicality." She scratched her cheek. "He's my personal prime."

"Personal prime?" I couldn't help but keep asking this stuff, it would probably be important.

"Prime means the god you feel closest to."

"Okay, that makes sense. I wonder if my patron would be my prime?" I thought out loud. Hrm. "Well, uh, Earth has very advanced medicinal knowledge, and the anatomy of a human is mostly figured out. We're not sure fully how the brain works, but we know all the parts of it and such."

"Though it still amuses me that you call your home 'dirt,' I have to wonder if you were some sort of healer or doctor."

"Hah, no. That was just stuff we learned in school." I looked out into the pouring rain. "No, I just kinda floated. No real path to take in life."

"That's incredible, though, that you learned such things without trying to specialize." She sounded awed.

"Not really, it was part of the required curriculum. Children were required to go to school, and there was a standard to which we'd be held."

"Children? All children?" The awe hadn't left her voice.

"Yeah," I said, and my mind went back and realized that it was truly a 'modern' idea that all kids would be educated, regardless of economic status. It was one of the few things we'd gotten right, even if we constantly fucked it up. "Ostensibly, a more educated populace meant a better nation."

"Incredible," Kelessta said, leaning back on her bulky tail. Her pretty blue eyes were wide as she seemed to process the idea in her head. The thoughtful look on her face, keyed with slight wonder, made her features come alive with introspection. She was clearly thinking through the implications and the very possibility of such abundance, and here I was, just staring at her face. Smart women were hot.

She finally spoke, her eyes finding mine. "Yet you still had strife?"

Damn, she'd jumped through all of the logical conclusions, that we had food and prosperity, that we had enough that we could invest that much time into every child.

I numbly nodded, breathing evenly. My quick infatuation was burned mostly away by anger (aw damn, that's what it is, yeah, no, let's not run around trying to get into the pants of random women that meet our fancy. Even if she doesn't have any.) "Yeah. You can remove the humans from the cave but you can't remove the cave from the humans," I responded bitterly. "We could solve world hunger, forever, easy. But no, we're still bickering like fucking idiots. To be honest, as wonderful as it was and as much as I miss it, I won't miss the feeling of powerlessness I felt in the face of eight billion idiots."

"Eight billion??" came a voice from nearby; Daniel was staring at me from under the covers, oblivious to the countess giving him a sour look.

"I said what I said. Go to sleep, professor, you can interrogate me tomorrow," I said to him, and despite holding it back, I couldn't keep all of the irritation out of my words. He stared at me for a moment, but turned away and I heard a muffled, 'sorry dear.'

"Still, eight billion people. That's unthinkable," Kelessta whispered.

I shrugged. "Turns out when you get far enough along, you can sustain a lot more people. How many live on Avare?"

Kelessta cocked her head to the side, thinking. "Telar Muar has around one million people? It's the biggest city in the world, supposedly, and they brag about that number constantly. Capital of Aldon."

"Is that abnormally large?"

"Yes. I've been to a couple cities, and it was probably twice the size of the others."

I thought about that. "I'd roughly estimate maybe half a billion people on Avare, maybe? Could be totally wrong, we didn't have magic."

"Still, that's an absolutely incredible amount. Eight billion. And you still fought."

I looked at her, spirits falling. I didn't like thinking about history. "When you've got enough people, unfortunately, things can get bad." I smiled grimly. "World war."

Her eyes took on an incredulous look. "A world war?"

"I think, even though my life has probably been, on the whole, much more peaceful than yours, my people are far, far better at the application of killing." My mouth wavered. Damn, I was gonna break down after all. I didn't want to think about it, not when it brought up bad memories, but these people did need to know just the kind of monsters that had been unleashed on their people. "Guess how many people died in that world war."

She looked shaken, but could tell how much this was affecting me. She slithered closer to me, concerned. "A world war. I hesitate to both underestimate it, but also to overestimate the possibilities... a hundred thousand?"

I choked out a singular laugh. Damn you, Elias. "Twenty. Million."

Kelessta reached out a hand toward me, horror in her eyes. "Twenty... million?"

I looked up at her, straight in the eyes. "Only twenty million." She flinched. "Wanna guess how many when we did it again?"

The sekiss woman stared at me, her graceful face now contorted in concern and disgust. "...Again?" She asked in a small voice.

"Seventy."

I broke. I hated that I knew these figures. I hated that I knew all these facts about these wars and that I could not forget them. They were burned into me by trauma and we were monsters. We killed and we killed. The 'monsters' that lived here were just following their natures. These 'tainted' were ruined by things beyond their control. But the humans of Earth? We were capable of evil, and now echoes of that possibility had already hit here. Nathan proved it. Avare was not prepared for us.

I realized, as I sobbed, that at some point Kelessta had put her arms around me in a big hug. She felt nice. Soft and warm, and even her scales were a balm against me, rough but not harsh. I wanted to push her away even as the unwelcome part of me was extremely happy to have her around me, but I couldn't help muster up the strength. Maybe in the morning I'd get to be awkward about close contact with a pretty girl, but right now, I just wanted to drown in sorrow and memory.