KiaLeep

  A wave crashes over my head as I open my mouth to yell for my brother. It hits me like a punch to the jaw, and I’m sent reeling, spinnih the waves, bubbles crag in my ears as I fil for the surface. I e up and gasp in a lungful of air, then had cough as saltwater spshes down my lungs.

  “álvaro!” I scream. “álvaro!”

  Behind the roar of the o, I hear an answering call. “Nye! Nye, I’m here! Help!”

  I lunge in the dire of his voice, even as the waves tio throw me bad forth like flotsam. Panic is all that’s keeping me going, thrashing against the cold and the burn of saltwater in my throat. I take a breath and hold it, dug uhe surface as another wave colpses on top of me. I breach, panting from the exertion, but still mao summon the energy to call for my brain.

  “Here!” he responds, his voice hoarse and weary. “Here, Nye!”

  Finally, the waves part long enough for me to catch sight of him. Water has pstered his hair against his skin, his head barely kept above the surface. He looks exhausted and terrified.

  That makes two of us.

  By some stroke of luck, the waters let me close the gap before the wave crashes over us. I grab the front of his shirt to try to hoist his head up higher, treading water with one hand, aches onto that arm like a lifeline. I have to kick extra hard to keep us from both going under.

  Weariness pulls at me like an anchor.

  “I’m sorry!” álvaro cries. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to go so far. The rip tide—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I pant, whipping my head around. Which way is the shore? “Let go of my arm. Help me tread. We o get back to nd.”

  “I know,” álvaro sobs, like he’s nine instead of een, but he lets go. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die.”

  “We’re not going to die.” I’m relieved to have found him, but the absence of that ay just makes room for the exhaustion to hit even harder. My bones feel like they’re made of lead. “ you see the shore?”

  “No,” álvaro says, looking around frantically, eyes wide. “We’re lost. Oh god, how did we get so far out?”

  I don’t waste my breath responding. We o figure out which dire is our best bet and start moving. We ’t survive out here much longer, even if our family knows to look for us. I go the sky, searg for birds, but only the stes overhead. Where had it e from? It had all happened so fast.

  “Nye, watch—”

  It’s the only warning I receive before the wave crashes into me. My brother’s shirt is ripped from my grasp as I sm into the water. I try to gasp in a breath, but I inhale a lungful of water instead. My body vulses, every muscle ag instinctively to expel the lungful of water. The same instinct forces me to draw in another breath, hoping for clear air. But I’m still uer.

  My mouth and nose and eyes burn from the salt. I writhe against the pain and wrongness, fingers g at the o, my throat, mind screaming for air. I kick my legs, desperate to reach the surface, but I no longer have any sense of up or down. I struggle and gasp and fil senselessly, terror overing every other thought and feeling.

  I’m only semi aware that I’m fading as the darkness closes in.

  The darkness ges. It bees more disorienting, less physical, and I still think I’m drowning for a long time as I struggle and fail to uand where I am or how much time has passed. The very idea slips away from me as I try to grasp it, and the disorientation sends my mind spinning. Yet, I’m thinking more clearly now than when I was before.

  álvaro? I call. But I ’t make a sound. My call echoes out into the void. I try to move, but I ’t feel my body. Nor I feel the o. I ’t feel anything anymore. álvaro? I call again, trying not to panic.

  Hello? There’s another voiearby, though it isn’t my brother’s. What’s happening?

  I don’t know, but that doesn’t frighten me as much as not knowing if my brother’s okay. I push past the strange new void keep calling for my brother. álvaro? álvaro?

  There are more voiow. More… presences. I ’t make sense of it. They’re all afraid or fused. Some are clustered together, as if that could stave off the surrounding abyss.

  But it’s ly an abyss. There’s another sciousness here, which I’d missed at first, because it seems to be everywhere. It’s ed around us like a . Abruptly, it tightens, snapping around us with malice so inte seems to be a physical pressure.

  Some of the voices scream and struggle. The darkness is eating us. Biting into our very esseripping bits of us away. Like the others, I’m scared, and I try to escape, but it only hones my panic down to one idea: My brother. I o find my little brother.

  Nye?

  Hope washes over me as I hear—feel—the voice. It’s álvaro! He’s close. Like we’re swimming through the o all ain, I struggle against the force of nature that’s trying t me down, colliding into the mind of my brother. I want to hug him. I want to tell him it will be okay. But I ’t do either.

  I’m here, I say instead.

  There’s movement all around us. The… thing that has us trapped has turs attention elsewhere, but that doesn’t take the acidic pain away that’s slowly dissolving my sense of self. I almost see something. A distant spark of light. Muted voices. Sea salt. Fshes of emotions pulse through us: anger, indignation, huriumph. And smaller flickers too: fear, , regret. I don’t uand. Who’s feeling these things? Why are we being made to feel them?

  Some of the sounds finally resolve into words. “...I don’t pn to die today.”

  They fill me with renewed defiance. We’ll make it out of here, I tell álvaro. I promise. Even if I don’t know how, I’ll find a way to do it.

  There’s movement. A struggle. It’s all the rest of us do but endure as we’re whipped bad forth, more fragmented bits of reality reag us.

  Then, a fsh of light. The minds around me vanish in an instant, including my brother’s. No, I cry, reag into the nothingness, desperately grabbing for someone who’s no lohere. No!

  I don’t have much time to be scared for my brother, for the moment, paihrough every atom of my being. I scream, writhing against the malice which seems to have stabbed through my very soul, and I feel myself crumbling around it. Being ed by it. This time, I’m fully aware when I realize I’m dying.

  And then it’s gone, and I’m gone, and I fall bato reality.

  When I awake, everything is dark, and when I try to gasp in a breath, I discover it’s because I’m lying face-down. I groan, spitting grit and sand, as I roll over onto my bad stare up at a beautiful night sky. A warm breeze passes over me, and stars twinkle overhead.

  Had that all been a dream? Some horribly realistiightmare? I almost still feel that hatred eating into me, and I shiver at the thought. It had to have been a dream. There’s no other expnation.

  Then I remember what had happened before. The riptide. The storm. álvaro.

  “álvaro!” I sit up with a jolt. That had been real. What happened? Have we washed up on shore? But as I look around and start to process my surroundings, my mind only spins with more fusion.

  Despite the low light, I don’t have much issue being able to see what’s around me, but that does little to settle my disorientation. I’m at the bottom of a hill, I think—no, a crater. The base I’m sitting io be rod cy, but all arouhe walls are made of sand. Like some sort of impact blew a hole in a pyground. How did I survive whatever left this crater? In fact, as I tio look around in bewilderment, I realize I’m not alone.

  [New user reized. Poputing stats.]

  I flinch at the voice, so close it feels right in my ear. Nearby, a man groans, shakily crawling to his hands and knees. He looks around frantically, and his gaze quickly nds on me.

  “What was that?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Was that you?”

  “What?” is all I mao croak out, thhly baffled.

  The thing is… I’m irely sure the person I’m talking to is human. His skin is gray, and his ears are pointed, and through his grimace of fear, I make out two fangs where his es should be.

  [pition plete. Role assigned. Dispying stats.]

  [Name: Nye]

  [Species: Dhampyr]

  [Css: Guardian]

  [Level: 14]

  [HP: 125/125]

  [Mana: 40/40]

  [Role: The Knight]

  I whip my head from side to side as the voice speaks, determining it’s not ing from the man across from me; at the same time, the words appear in my vision.

  The man yelps, swatting at the air in front of him. “What the hell is this? Dhampyr? Level? What’s happening?”

  Took the words right out of my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “But it looks like it’s happening to both of us.” Now that I’m speaking in plete sentences, my voice sounds strao me. I clear my throat as I push myself to my feet, mumbling a few trial words to myself. I’m pretty used to pitg my voice slightly lower on a daily basis, but when I try to do that now, my words sound too deep. Weird. Maybe I’m ing down with a cold.

  I start to dust off my pants, then stop. I’m wearing clothes, but they’re not mine. Bck boots, trousers, a shirt and a scratchy cloak—but it’s the bits of leather strapped to my arms and legs and ay chest that have me tilting my head in curiosity. They look like pieces of armor, I think. The man across from me is wearing something simir. There’s a dual crest moon-like symbol etched over the chest pte that I don’t reize.

  “No,” the man is mumbling to himself, still on the ground. “No, no, no. This ’t be happening. This isn’t real.” He moans, clutg his head.

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow at him. I mean, yeah, this is all very strange and fusing, but that seems a bit dramatic. I decide to address the most pressing issue first.

  “álvaro!” I call, turning in a slow circle to survey our crater. “Are you there?”

  ures are scattered over the nearby ground, besides the man experieng a mental breakdown. I step toward the one, but it doesn’t respond. In fact, it doesn’t move at all. I frown, w if I’d mistaken a boulder or bush for a person in the low light.

  [Check,] the voice appears again. [Human remains. Skeletal.]

  A chill runs down my spine. “What?!”

  [Check,] the vaguely robotic, vaguely feminine voice repeats. [Human remains. Skeletal.]

  I probably should have crified I meant, ‘What the hell?’

  I take a step back from the bodies. Because as I gnce around the crater, I ow tell that’s what the rest of them are, too. “Who are you?” I say aloud. “Why am I here?”

  [This unit has been designated Echo,] the voi my head says. [The user’s sed request is uified.]

  I guess it’s not big on the existential type questions. “What are you?” I ask instead.

  [This unit acts as an audiovisual interface between User and System,] Echo says.

  “System?”

  [The variegated are work which gover neuromagical adva.]

  Yeah, that all makes plete sense. I turn back to the man who is still whimpering on the ground and wonder what his deal is. Once more, Echo is happy to oblige.

  [Name: Hans]

  [Species: Dhampyr]

  [Css: Brawler]

  [Level: 19]

  [HP: 135/135]

  [Mana: 50/50]

  [Role: Beast Tamer]

  Some notable simirities and differences. We both have around the same numeric stats, but different csses and roles. The same species, though. Wait. What does that mean about me?

  I look down at my hands. Even in the reduced light, I tell there’s something wrong with my skin. No longer brown, all the pigment’s been leached away to a dark gray, like I’m a living bd white photograph. I touch my ears, and find them slightly poi the tips. Running my tongue over my teeth, a prickly nervous sensation runs through my body when I discover the small fangs in py es, just like Hans.

  I nervously run my hands down my arms. Things just went from disorienting to uling. Why isn’t this my body? I guess that expins the ge in voice. And I don’t hate it, exactly. This body is muscled, lean, and a couple ialler than what I’m used to—which is to say, still on the short side. But I feel strong.

  I feel like I should be freaking out more about all this. Maybe not Hans-level of freaking out, but something weird is happening, and I’m pletely in the dark.

  Right, dark. I g the stars overhead. Maybe this new body is why I see in the dark, too.

  “Hey,” I say, heading over to Hans. “Pull it together, alright? We o figure out what’s going on here.”

  He’s still mumbling to himself, so I lean dout a hand on his shoulder in what I hope is a f gesture. It isn’t until I’m close that I make out what he’s saying.

  “I died, and it’s going to kill me again. I died, and it’s going to kill me again. I died, and it’s going to kill me again.”

  I pull my hand back reflexively, his wivihe willies. “We’re not dead,” I tell him. I mean, at least I don’t think we are. I don’t feel dead. But how had I gotten from the o to here? I thought I remembered drowning, the water in my lungs, but… I mean, if I died, I wouldn’t be here, right? And where’s álvaro?

  I shake my head, trying to dislodge the string of unfortable questions. No point in dwelling on them. I don’t have the answers, anyway. I try to refoore immediate s.

  “What do you think is going to kill you?” I ask.

  That stops him, and he cocks his head. “’t you hear it? The whispers.”

  “Echo?” I wonder. She’s definitely strange, but her helpful (if not blunt) entary doesn’t strike me as murderous.

  Hans shakes his head. “No, no. The whispers, underground. They’re hurt. Mad. They’re ing.”

  Another shiver goes through me. I ’t help it, this guy just knows exactly what to say to give me the creeps. “Then maybe we should get out of here,” I suggest.

  Hans looks up at me in despair. “It’s too te. They’re already here!”

  “What’s here?” I ask, nervously gng around the crater. The skeletons haven’t gotten up and wandered away, so that’s good, I guess.

  He frowns, in tration or worry, I ’t tell. Then he looks up at me with wide, ear eyes. “The cactus.”

  I ’t help it. A ugh bubbles out of me. “Cactus? A cactus is ing for you?”

  Seeing I clearly am not taking him seriously, his gaze drops back to the ground aarts mumbling to himself again, scratg his fihrough his hair. “I don’t uand. I don’t uand what you want!”

  I’m beginning to think this guy might be one crayon short of a full box.

  “Okay, well, while you worry about the murder cactus, I’m going to climb out of here and figure out where we are,” I say.

  Hans begins rog bad forth. “Requirement? What requirement? I ’t do it. I ’t!”

  “Right,” I say, drawing out the word. “Well good luck with—”

  And that’s when the murder cactus bursts from the ground.

  KiaLeep