Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex stepped forward. His chest buzzed as it impacted the cracks in reality and his stomach shriveled like a raisin. He stumbled. His foot hit the ground. He stepped free of the warped space as if nothing had been in his path, left with only a mild, fading discomfort.

Did I hit it at just the right angle to end up passing straight through? Unlikely, but hypothetically just as possible as getting sent out in every other direction. So I guess it's technically no less likely than any other option — unless the fragments have different weights to the direction they send you in?

Oh, fuck it.

Alex stepped back into his magic. His stomach twisted, his foot fell and he stepped through Funhouse for the second time, arriving exactly where he'd been aiming to.

I see. So it either doesn't work on humans, or it doesn't work on things bigger than it.

Alex focused on his connection to the magical cracks splitting the air before them. He'd already burned through a fair amount of the magic he had to work with. It seemed that Funhouse drew power purely just to keep it active, and it didn't care what happened within it.

He pushed more magic into the warped zone. Cold fingers wrapped around his brainstem and his teeth clenched. Blood thumped in Alex's ears and the chill spread through his body.

The cracks in the air expanded in every direction. Even though the magic was soundless, power hummed in Alex's skull. His energy drained away rapidly as he expanded the space that the fracture in reality occupied.

What had once been enough magic to last him another few minutes without any troubles was now on course to deplete within seconds. There was no time for him to wait around. As soon as the space Funhouse occupied was larger than he was, Alex strode into it.

The world jerked.

Color blurred. His foot hit the ground behind him. His hands went one direction, his head went another. Each of his fingers set off on their own journey. His entire body seemed to split at the seams.

Then it snapped back together.

A wave of dizziness slammed into Alex like a freight train and the ground rushed up to meet him.

He grabbed onto the bedframe at the last second, just barely managing to catch himself before he slammed face first into the floor. As quickly as it had come, the disorientation peeled away from his mind.

Something popped in the back of Alex's mind. His connection to the magic snapped like a taut rubber band that had been cut. The cracks in reality reversed themselves, stitching the air back to normal.

Damn. That was kind of awesome. Like a really twisty roller coaster.

Alex slowly pushed himself back to his feet. Funhouse had spat him out at an angle. It had used pretty much all of the power he'd had left to get the magic big enough to actually fit a human into it, but at least he'd confirmed that it worked.

I definitely feel like I have more magic than I did before I leveled up. I suppose I'll need even more if I want to use Funhouse to reliably mess with people's positioning.

His head tilted to the side. That brought up yet another question. Alex wasn't sure which aspect of leveling up was the one that gave him more magical power. It could have either been advancing his Mind Palace or just allocating his magic into advancing his skills.

I'll test it whenever I next get enough energy to level up again. I imagine that I should be getting more than enough during the upcoming Initialization event. For now, I'll rest a few minutes and gather my energy back.

Alex glanced over at Claire. Her eyes were still closed in meditation. He couldn't quite remember how long it had been since she'd started. Leaning forward slightly, he squinted through the dirty window and at the night sky beyond it.

The moon hung in the air above, well on its way back to the horizon. Distant pricks of faint yellow and white splayed across the dark sky like droplets of spilled paint. They were strikingly large. It struck him that the sky had never been this clear back before the Apocalypse — nor had the stars ever been so close. They were almost three or four times larger than what he remembered.

Did all the smog and pollution really vanish that quickly? I wouldn't have thought it would happen that quickly, but what do I know?

Alex carefully climbed onto the bed, taking care not to disturb Claire from her meditation, and made his way over to the window. He grabbed the old, rusted latch holding it shut and gave it a sharp tug.

The metal let out a small screech as the handle ground open, then popped free of its lock. Alex swung the window open and poked his head out of the building to get a better look at the night sky.

He blinked in surprise. There had been so much dirt on the window that it had almost been acting like a makeshift shade. The night was even brighter than he'd thought. Silver shone down from the stars and illuminated Towntown with such intensity that the night could have been mistaken for an overcast day.

It was oddly beautiful, as if the entire city was under a sea of silver water. Minutes slipped by as he stared out into the night.

A shadow passed across the streets.

Alex jerked his eyes back to the sky. A coil of darkness engulphed one of the stars and its light snuffed out. All that remained where it had been was an empty patch in the sky amidst the blinking lights.

It wasn't the only one.

All around, stars vanished. They were plucked from their rest and swallowed by darkness one after the other. Within mere seconds, nearly a third of them had vanished.

That was when the screaming started.

A keening wail filled the air and pierced into Alex's ears, threatening to rupture them. He nearly leapt out of his own skin in his haste to jab his fingers into his ears and block the noise out.

The effort almost felt moot. The noise intensified in spite of him. Agony drove into his skull. It wormed past his fingers and gripped at his brain, trying to shake it free from his spine.

Claire's eyes snapped open. She rolled out of bed and dropped to the floor, plugging her own ears and crouching. Her mouth moved as she yelled something, but Alex couldn't hear anything over the incessant screech.

A rattle gripped the walls and worked into the floor beneath their feet. It intensified into a tremble. The bedframe started to shake beside them and the window banged shut, shattering and raining glass down on top of the bed.

Alex rolled under the bed, taking shelter beneath it, and Claire mirrored him. The ground bucked and heaved beneath them. It threw Alex's back into the wooden frame above him and he covered his head with his hands to protect it.

He'd never gotten a chance to use the earthquake training he'd gotten in school, but something told him this wasn't exactly the situation that his teachers had been envisioning.

The tremors grew stronger. Alex felt the rough carpet pressed against his skin shudder as something cracked beneath it. The floor started to dip beneath them. It felt like very building was being ripped apart.

Still, the screaming grew louder.

Alex would have rolled free of the bed if he'd been able to find any purchase on the ground. That was a little difficult to do when his body was doing its best ping-poing ball impression between the carpet and the bed above him.

A brilliant flash flooded the room with bright white light. An instant later, the screaming gave way to a muted, distant crash. The entire building trembled, and then there was silence.

Distant ringing swallowed his ears. The world danced around him. Something wet trickled down the side of Alex's cheek. He reached up to the side of his face and his fingers came away red.

Alex dragged himself out from under the bed, moving on all fours. He clawed onto the side of the bed and dragged himself up. The blood running down the sides of his face dripped from his chin.

Claire dragged herself up beside him. Her lips moved once more. This time, Alex could just barely pick out a whisper of sound. His magically-enhanced body was already healing the damage his ears had taken. He didn't wait around for his hearing to return. He fell onto the bed, the world still swaying around him, and dragged himself over to the window. Fallen glass shards littering the bed jabbed into his skin.

He grabbed onto a part of the frame, avoiding the remainder of the glass jutting out from the remains of the window, and peered out of the building. His eyes went wide.

A huge white boulder the size of a house had crashed down in the center of Towntown. Twists of palid smoke twisted up from the meteor. Its pockmarked surface glowed like a miniature sun and forced Alex to tear his eyes away from it.

His ears popped.

"What the bleeding hell is that?" Claire's voice reached his ears, little more than a whisper but growing louder with every word.

"I… think it's a star."

"What?" Claire screamed into his ear, practically bursting his eardrum a second time. Alex flinched. It looked like his hearing had returned faster than hers because of the amount of energy he'd poured into his Mind Palace.

"It's a star!" Alex yelled back.

"God, you don't have to yell," Claire said, rubbing at her ears and taking a step back. "I don't have any idea what the fuck is going on, but we better get out of this building before—"

A loud crunch split the air. They both spun back to the window and stared down at the street. Cracks ran throughout the pavement, growing at a rapid pace. A large chunk of the ground bulged upward. Rivers of debris rolled down it as a skeletal hand the size of a large dog burst free of the ground and slammed down, its boney fingers digging into stone and finding purchase. Rivers of silver energy shimmered around the bone like translucent skin.

The ground was broken a second time as another hand burst free on the other side of the mound. Two more hands followed it, and more bulges started to form all along the street. Alex and Claire backed away from the window and exchanged a glance.

Neither of them got a chance to say another word. A chime rang in Alex's ears.

Local Announcement for Subsector 735

Part [2/3] of the System's initialization has begun. Cull the Meek has been assigned to all intelligent lifeforms within the Trial areas. The Local Leaderboard has been initiated.

[Trial Assigned: Cull the Meek]

Objective: Survive.