Behind Terry, Juan suddenly blurted out in surprise. “I’m sorry, what! You can speak English?”
Ben’s eyes flicked over Terry’s shoulder, then back. But the tension drained away with that simple movement and the man sighed.
“Yes, I speak English,” he replied wearily.
Juan strode to Terry’s shoulder. “Bro, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Why the hell you been stealing our food for months?” He pinched at his belly dramatically. “I’ve lost like six kilo. My abuela’s never gonna let me live this down.” His tone took on a high, reedy tone. “Juan Carlos! I told you this superhero garbage isn’t for you. You’re as thin as a stick and been missing for two months.” His voice switched back to normal. “This is around the time she’d swat at me with a flip flop or a newspaper or a—”
“Juan?”
The man cut off, looking toward Terry.
“Yeah?”
Terry gave Ben a meaningful look, then turned toward Juan. “I’ll explain everything to you later, okay? But right now, Ben and I need to have a talk.”
Juan’s eyes grew incrementally wider as Terry spoke, culminating in him mouthing the word: Ben, in slow motion. After a moment, he seemed to finally pick up on the tension in the air.
“Oh, yeah, sure thing, Terry.” He began slowly backing away, his hands raised dramatically. “Don’t mind me.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Only scorched seven of the vampires.”
Terry shook his head, knowing he had been curt with Juan. He’d make it up to the man later. For now, he needed to get to the bottom of the entire reason they were in the Underworld to begin with.
And how they were gonna get out of here.
Turning back to Ben, he opened his mouth to ask just that, when Ben also started to speak. They both stopped abruptly.
“You first,” Ben said.
Terry considered that for a moment. As much as he wanted to get his answers, he didn’t want his lines of questioning interrupted if Ben got impatient.
“No, you first,” Terry insisted.
In the little time Terry had known the man, Ben had been unusually stoic. So it was a surprise when he started biting his lip nervously.
“I’d like to know how you’re able to manifest multiple Class Skills?” he asked. He hesitated a moment, clearly not done. “And…the metal elementalism.” He seemed to become suddenly embarrassed, as if Terry had made some expression. “It’s an unusual powerset, is all,” he quickly added.
Terry narrowed his eyes, confused by that sudden shift in Ben’s tone.
“Well, since the cat’s outta the bag, you’ve probably already figured it out. I can catalog others’ abilities and then make them part of my own powerset. It’s called Affixing and I can only have a certain number active at a time—and only at my rank or lower.”
Ben was nodding along, so Terry continued.
“And as for the metal elementalism—” Ben’s face hardened, as if bracing for impact. Terry hesitated, studying the man’s expression. But there was nothing to be read in that icy set of his lips, the loose-lidded gaze, except rapt attention. “Well, I copied those Skills directly from my grandfather, Silver. He’s an S-ranker who started as an Elementalist and transitioned to Duelist.”
The tension visibly released, Ben’s eyes relaxing, his lips no longer pressed tight. He snorted, shaking his head.
“Thanks for explaining, Terry. I know the details of a super’s powerset are particularly private and you didn’t have to, so…thanks.”
Terry nodded, not quite put at ease. There was something lingering, niggling at the back of his mind that wouldn’t let him move on to the topic of his Quest, even though it was all he could think about moments earlier.
“Why,” he started, wondering how to phrase the question. “Why did you ask about the metal elementalism, specifically?”
Ben took on a chagrined expression, rubbing at the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Ah, forget it.” He shook his head like it had been a silly thought. “Just someone I knew once had the same set of Skills. Wasn’t named Silver, though, so not the same guy.”
Terry’s stomach flipped, goosebumps forming on his arms.
“Ben…” he said slowly.
The man’s eyebrows rose in concern. “What? What’s wrong?”
Terry took a deep breath, trying to slow his racing heart.
“Was the man’s name…Lance Gunnar?” The sudden widening of Ben’s eyes was tell enough, but Terry couldn’t stop, like a rock rolling down a mountain, the words fell out of their own accord. “Also known as…Gunmetal?”
Ben’s mouth gaped open and shut multiple times, as if he were forming words, then yanking them back. Their eyes met, the sudden realization passing between them unspoken.
Suddenly, Ben turned away, taking three halting steps before stopping.
“So, the old bastard’s still kicking,” Ben muttered.
Terry took a step toward the man, feeling the connection so suddenly, realizing it might have been there the whole time.
“Ben, who is he to you?”
The man scoffed, shaking his head. “No one…” Terry narrowed his eyes and Ben looked back over his shoulder, the emotions writ clear across his face. “And everyone.”
Terry knew the answer, but it needed to be said out loud, pulled free like some spell on the cusp of completion, ready to fizzle out if left incomplete.
“Silver. Lance Gunnar…he’s your dad.”
A strangled laugh left Ben, full of acidic humor.
“Sure is, in so much as a man you haven’t seen in forty years can be anything to you.” He turned to face Terry, his expression constantly shifting between a kaleidoscope of emotions. After a moment, a sad smile took hold. “Guess that makes us family.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Penelope’s son? Or did Dad have more kids after I…” He trailed off, the hurt clear in his voice.
Terry took another step forward, closing the gap.
“Yes, Penelope’s my mother.” Terry hesitated, wondering how much to say. After a moment, he realized that Ben had been offworld for decades. The pain of never knowing what happened to your family must have eaten away at him, leaving a hollow husk of a man. “Silver—Lance, or whatever.” He snorted. “Grampa, sometimes. Well, he…he also went missing.”
Ben’s head snapped up.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“What do you mean? He’s gone?”
Terry shook his head. “No. I, uh, I don’t have all the context, but he was on his Capstone for some forty odd years—like you, I guess. Only came back last year. That’s when I met him and learned some of his Skills.”
The revelation seemed to draw a mixed reaction from Ben. Terry watched the war inside of him as he tried to reconcile the news. After a moment, a question seemed to spark behind his eyes.
“Wait, forty years? So he left right after me?”
Terry nodded, which caused Ben’s eyes to darken.
“What about Pen? She was just a kid when I left on my Midmark…”
“Sol—Solomon Rosenthal—took care of her while he…” He trailed off as Ben’s eyes turned cold, ice-blue magic ringing his irises.
“He…left her?” The words were soft, but Terry felt a deadly energy lacing them. Rime frost began to coat the floor, chill the air, rise up Ben’s clothes. “He left her—” His voice raised, turning into a bellow. “—for forty years!”
Terry took an involuntary step back as cold air blasted him, sending a shiver up his back. He looked behind him to see the entire cavern stilled. Ghouls watched in violent anticipation. Al’Ruzan touched the tip of his knife hilt with a single clawed finger. Juan held his ball of fire to his chest like it was a baby chick. Chippy and Py Dar shifted behind Al’Ruzan discreetly.
Of the five of them, only Mara-Lin-Jaid seemed unconcerned, her stone-still expression watching the two of them stoically.
When Terry turned back, the aura and frost had begun to dissipate as Ben’s shoulders sagged. Despite being a giant of a man, he suddenly seemed so small and tired.
“I should’ve gone back,” he muttered. “I should’ve protected her.”
Sensing an opening, Terry stepped forward.
“There was nothing you could have done. You were on your Quest and—”
Ben’s head shot up, his eyes opaque with chips of white-blue magic that looked like a storm. His voice full of ice.
“Yes, there was!” His voice echoed throughout the cavern and he seemed to suddenly realize that every eye was on him. Lowering his voice, he repeated himself. “Yes, there was. I could have gone back after my Midmark.” Terry’s eyes widened at the revelation. “I…chose to stay. My own arrogance—my useless, stupid need to one up my father.” His eyes found Terry, the white-blue magic slowly subsiding. “I wanted to come back an S-ranker. Be the youngest, reach the rank the fastest. Shove it down my father’s throat so he’d be forced to acknowledge that I was better than him.”
Terry shook his head, something not quite adding up.
“So you chose to stay in the Underworld? But why haven’t you…” He trailed off as Ben shook his head.
“I didn’t stay in the Underworld. I transitioned to the Underworld.”
Terry furrowed his brow at that. “What do you mean transitioned?”
Ben didn’t respond immediately, his eyes scanning the floor fitfully, like he were reliving distant, painful memories. After a moment, he sighed.
“I was on a planet called Makaros for my Midmark. When I completed my Quest, my System gave me a choice.” His eyes lifted, meeting Terry’s. “Return home until my Capstone or transition to an adjacent world to continue advancing.”
Terry shook his head in confusion. “But why? What was the payoff?”
Ben snorted, looking around with a humorous twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know, Terry. There was opportunity for quick advancement—more Quests, higher danger, higher reward. But I…” His eyes caught on Crimson Spear, the other ghouls observing from afar. “I could have finished my—” He cut off, an obvious notification flashing in his vision. He sniffed, clearing it with a flick of his eyes. “I could have returned home an S-ranker decades ago.” He waved to indicate the ghouls. “But I’d have been leaving them to die.” He shook his head, his voice low. “I couldn’t do that, you see?” His eyes took on a steely glint. “Cause we’re the reason they’re dying. Us heroes—” He spat the word. “—stole what wasn’t ours to take…” His hand reached down to the Singularity cube, patting it gently. “But now we have a chance to right that wrong. A chance to restore the Bloodsplatter Clan to prominence. Give their world another shot at life.”
It was so much to process, Terry had to take a minute. Over his shoulder, he spotted the others still watching them, though only Juan would have understood the conversation.
None of it made sense to him.
“Why? Why do the Systems give the S-rankers a Quest to collect the Singularities if by doing so, they’re killing these other worlds?”
Ben sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t have all the answers, Terry. I only know one thing for certain.” He lifted the cube, weighing it in his hand. “Losing this Singularity is killing this world. If things continue as they are, the ghouls, the liches—even the sanguine—will go extinct. They survive on that black liquid back in that chamber—the Blood of the Mother, they call it. And since the Singularity was taken, that blood has become a finite resource.”
Terry nodded reluctantly. “Their pool did seem incredibly small. Back in Wichita, my other grandfather’s ghouls have a lake as wide as this cavern.” He thought back to Hoping Tree’s words. “They called it the wealth of their clan.”
Ben’s eyes widened at that. “There are ghouls back on Earth?”
“Yep. My grandfather has thousands of them. The Bonesplinter Clan. It’s where I learned ghoulish.”
Behind him, Juan suddenly gasped.
“No way!”
Terry turned in confusion.
“No freakin’ way!” Juan repeated, looking between the others before realizing they didn’t speak English. “You’re Terry Fairway? Like, prince of Wichita, grandson to Emperor Necroton!”
Terry felt a flush rise to his face as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Uh, yeah,” he admitted lamely.
Juan’s eyes somehow grew wider and he slapped Chippy’s arm in excitement.
[Chippy]: Why do you hit me, Juan Carlos?
[Juan Carlos]: Terry’s famous! His grandfather’s like, a crazy powerful supervillain.
Terry groaned, rolling his eyes.
[Terry]: He’s not a supervillain. And I’m not famous, no one’s even heard of me.
[Juan Carlos]: You have your own HeroWatch entry, bro!
Huh, that was news. I wonder what it says—no, focus!
[Terry]: We can talk about that later. We’re dealing with something a bit more important here right now.
[Al’Ruzan, third of his name]: And do you care to share?
Terry could see from the giant’s posture that he was none too pleased to have been left out of the conversation. He held up a placating hand, turning to Juan.
[Terry]: Juan, maybe you can dictate for me? I can’t do both at once right now.
Juan nodded hurriedly and the streams of text began to roll in a few moments later. Turning back to Ben, Terry brought the conversation back on track.
“So, things are that dire here?”
“Yes,” Ben said with a nod. “And with the recent losses from that raid, it’s only gonna get worse for the clan. I have no idea on the state of the other clans, but I can’t imagine it’s good.”
Terry bit his lip, trying to make all the pieces fit together.
“Every A-ranker on their Capstone gets the same secondary Quest, right?” he asked, thinking out loud. Ben nodded along. “There has to be a reason. Why give every single super a Quest to gather the Singularities to become the Omega? Maybe we need the Omega for something else, something bigger? Or maybe the Omega could fix all this,” he added with a wave of his hand toward the ghouls.
Ben seemed to mull it over for a moment before responding.
“Maybe…” he said hesitantly. “But the fact that you have this, brought it here, to the Underworld…doesn’t that tell you anything?” When Terry didn’t immediately respond, Ben sighed. “It tells me something.” His eyes narrowed. “Your System wants you to restore the Singularity to its rightful home. Not become some all-powerful, arbiter of Earth.”
Terry considered that in silence. Ben was right, it was difficult to reconcile those two facts. Why did his System give him the Deny the Omega Quest? It’s not like it could have possibly expected him to do anything else than what he had done. It clearly had intended him to accept the Summons and bring it with him to the Underworld—the Aura Filtering Container was proof of that.
No, Ben was right about one thing. He had definitely been led to come to the Underworld with the Singularity. Which meant his System either didn’t want the Omega to form…or hadn’t wanted the person being chosen to become the Omega…
The implications of that rocked him. Was that it? Had his System specifically not wanted his mother to become the Omega?
“There’s too many unknown variables—”
He was cut off as Crimson Spear suddenly rushed over, his aura pushing forward in an urgent shape.
“Scouts returned,” he said in rapid fire ghoulish. “Another sanguine raid is incoming.” His eerily human eyes looked between the two of them. “This one is much bigger.” He nodded toward the chamber behind them. “We go to secure the spawnling and as much of the blood as we can. The surface is our only option—”
Ben cut him off with a shake of his head and an aura shape.
“Not our only option.” His eyes met Terry’s, a desperate fire there where it had once been icy cold. “We could delve deeper.” His hands traced to the cube as he looked between the two of them. “Return the Lakarot to its home.”
Terry felt adrift, like a leaf in a storm, pulled against his will with the whims of the wind. His mother had been slated to become the Omega. She was good and just and the best person he knew. Yet, his System had denied her ascension, orchestrated his Summons in order to separate the Singularities.
Was returning it to the Underworld what his System had intended all along? He pulled his Quest up and read it over and over again, filled with more questions than answers.
Bonus Objective: Restore the Lakarot to power.
Why was it a Bonus Objective? That implied there was a choice to be made, that he could return to Earth with or without the Singularity. The System made its preference known, but wasn’t forcing his hand.
Ben and Crimson Spear were staring at him, waiting for his answer. He couldn’t have stopped them if he tried, but still, they waited. Something about that filled him with a trust he wasn’t sure he’d felt before.
With a nod, he agreed.
try to make some monies so I can do this writing thing fulltime!
Book 1 - System Awakening - is live! Of course, most come to Royal Road to read for free (and because it's full of hidden gems), but for those of you that have been wondering about how to support me that don't use Patreon, the pre-order is a great signal to the almighty Amazon algorithm that this series is worth pushing.