Test Summoning: Apocalypse

A canvas bag was slung over my head after I left the shopping district with Gully Jack's four goons. It was a the classic "I don't want you to know where we're going" tactic. Of course, the only reason I knew how to find Jack at all was the first time around the goons back then used a threadbare bag I could see through. These four were far more competent and used a decent bag.

We traveled in a complex, winding path where we spun around a block a few times to confuse me. It worked since I had lost track of where we were. These four were really good. I suspected they had an Advancement under their belts and weren't just fresh orphanage graduates pulled into the gang.

We had to stop once to allow me to rest. Kids? Don't do drugs. Walking a couple kilometers after what I did to my body was torture. And you won't have your damage magically reset every three months. I also spent some time getting hosed off by a water attuned caster. I had to endure being stripped to nothing, with the bag remaining over my head, while being blasted with cold water and having snide comments made about my entirely average manhood from the gang. Then we continued our trip.

I knew we were at the crafting hall when I heard telltale sounds of people cutting leather and hammering fake gold buttons onto handbags. I felt my panic rising once more at the prospect of where we were. I promised to never see Gully Jack again and I proved myself a liar.

We moved into the warehouse area and moved through the maze of crates to the secret one. It was a little easier this time since I couldn't see what was going on. Without the visual cue of the crate opening to the passage below, I didn't have my panic attack. Based on the number of steps I took, I knew I passed my glorified prison guest room and still avoided the breakdown. Not having to see it helped immensely.

After I heard the door to Jack's cabana-slash-court close, Gully Jack spoke with a deep, rumbling voice. "What have you four brought to me?"

"Sorry, boss," I heard the woman who was the leader of the little crew say. She ripped the bag off my head with a dramatic flair like she was revealing a big secret. "We found the dud hero wandering around near the place we make Augury."

Jack snorted and leaned over, looming over the room with the plague mask. "Sounds like he was looking to get a free supply based on what I've heard of him. Why did you think this was worth my time? Dispose of him somewhere and make it look like an accident. Shouldn't be hard."

"He claimed he was there following someone wanting to take over the old shopping district," the woman stated.

Jack laughed. "Oh really? A drug addict looking around our manufacturing site said there was a group trying to take over? How dumb are you? Don't answer that. You'd be an Exterminator or bureaucrat if you had any brains."

I could hear low growls from the four behind me, though they didn't act since they had little interest in tangling with Jack. While they groused, I took the opportunity to take a few steps forward and flashed a brief hand sign toward Jack where I knew the others couldn't see it. It was the only sign of their secret language I learned, "Lisa".

Jack's demeanor changed. "You four, leave. I want to speak with Oliver alone."

"Sir? I thought you wanted us to dispose of him," the woman said.

Jack flared tendrils of water from the ground and formed spears of ice in the air. "I said leave. And make sure no one else disturbs us."

"Sorry, boss," the woman meekly replied. She and the other three backed away out of the room and closed the door.

After the four left, Jack's face subtly shifted to look at me through the mask and released the spell. "You, explain yourself."

"Gold flecked potato," I said.

Jack's posture jolted in surprise. Then, with a slow, methodical effort, the mask came off, revealing a young rabbit-clan woman around the age of 24. She had incredibly beautiful features with her black-and-white broken rex pattern and striking blue eyes. Gully Jack was really a rabbit-clan woman named Lisa, the third in a long line of Gully Jacks handed down from parent to child.

"Tell me where you heard that code. I use unique challenge codes to identify who betrays my real identity. Yet there is precisely one person who knows that specific code. Me." Her voice was velvet smooth and seductive. Her mask had a voice changing crystal embedded in it to make it sound like she was a deep-voiced man.

"You told it to me, Lisa" I said. I then launched into the explanation of my time loop. The entire time, she nodded along, fully believing my words.

"This is interesting. Had you not spoken the phrase only known to me, I'd have thought you mad. When is the world ending?"

"The day after tomorrow."

She frowned. "So why are you coming to me? If you were seeking my help, wouldn't you have approached sooner?"

My old memories began flooding back. I couldn't help it. Seeing her face and hearing the words made my mind recall the time I spent with her long ago.

The first time, I was investigating the slums. It was a few loops after I stopped seeing Void, Lia and Tizek to try and find a solution on my own. I had a much better reputation at the time since I made it a point to gain access to the Exterminator's Guild library on every loop. This involved killing six albatwitches on my own with my bow work in the arena.

I had gotten Lisa's attention from my display, but because I usually lived out of high-class hotels and spent my time in the Guild library, she didn't have access to me. It changed when I tried to get into the Mage's Guild and was turned away. I was griping about discrimination to the receptionist when she whispered to me low that I should go to the slums for help. It was rather cryptic and the receptionist refused to elaborate. With little else to do, I decided to visit the slums.

It turned out the receptionist was an agent on a deep infiltration of the Mage's Guild and directed me toward Gully Jack. It was mostly self-interest since there was an outstanding reward to bring me in for a talk. I was found by a different member of the gang quickly and brought in before Jack. I explained what I was doing and how I was trying to avoid the destruction of the world. Predictably, Gully Jack wasn't fully convinced. However, she agreed to help out and began using her Mage's Guild connection to smuggle out texts.

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Jack proved to be a rather exceptional host. She provided me with a great room to stay in and excellent accommodations in the cabana. The only thing missing was the magical sleep stone I had in the bed of the castle room I enjoyed the first night of my loops. Of course, I was struggling with the ethics of taking advantage of the resources of a criminal who made her fortune from drugs, racketeering, protection schemes, elder scams, mild graffiti and other heinous crimes. I justified it under the expectation I'd just loop again and it didn't matter.

As for the texts? They were mostly dead ends. I learned a lot, then forgot, about casting spells I couldn't because of my damaged mana channels. I had little control over what I got since it was all opportunistic smuggling, though I was lucky to get the portal book and learned how passing physical material through one was impossible. I still chose to keep going and seeing whatever it was they got out.

It wasn't until the actual apocalypse began did Jack reveal herself as Lisa. She finally believed me when the massive rupture in the sky appeared. She showed her real face, taught me the hand sign for her name and gave me my unique challenge code. She explained the only other people who knew her identity were her immediate family and each of them had a different code. If I knew both her identity and a unique code she hadn't used before, it would make it obvious my time loop story was true.

I proved her prediction true when I marched out of the castle on the next loop and, after helping out Lia and Tizek like always, went directly to the secret lair. Lisa was surprised I arrived and, after explaining how I obtained the code, she immediately got to work helping me.

I still didn't have any control over what books arrived, but I did get a different sampling since I started the process much earlier in this loop. Causality has a substantial impact on how things play out.

Also like the previous loop, Lisa proved to be a very gracious host. Great room, great food and she was a great conversationalist. Her behavior changed around me now that I knew her secret. I was, in her eyes, a trusted insider. For an underworld kingpin, she had charm, class and charisma.

That was, at least, until she brought her reputation to bear.

This is the hard part to remember and something I had to get control of to talk with Lisa now. It was a month into the loop and Lisa came to my room with the latest batch of magical theory books. Most of them I didn't understand in the slightest since I didn't have the proper prerequisite titles to build myself up to that level of theory.

That wasn't the problem. The problem was when Lisa decided she was romantically interested in me. I'm not exactly a hot commodity, at home or here. Lisa was mostly interested for other reasons. She's a mid-20s woman with a crazy libido and severe paranoia. She won't get involved with anyone who she doesn't trust enough to know her true identity and everyone who knows her true identity is related to her. Since she wasn't from Daulien, the whole Lannister Family Reunion thing wasn't an option.

Then there was me. The sole person unrelated to her in existence who knew her secret. She was someone who was borderline ready to explode to get her first action. She proposed we go at it right there in the room when she delivered the books. I, of course, politely turned her down. Even though she lost all her memories in the loop, I was committed to Void. I wouldn't cheat just because no one would remember. I'd still remember.

When I turned her down, she went quiet and left. I had assumed she was disappointed and needed time to think about the rejection. Her personality and charm had made me completely forget she was a ruthless crime lord used to getting what she wanted. It was something I was reminded of rather forcefully when she returned carrying a syringe.

Lisa threw me to the ground, jabbed the syringe in me and injected the contents. Almost instantly, my soldier down below the belt stood at attention. Then the rest of me went limp. The crazy woman shot me up with magical ED medication cut with a paralytic. Then she forcefully dragged me to the bed, stripped me to nothing, pinned me down and had her way with me.

I know there are people who fantasize this very situation. Here's a very attractive and fit woman who wants you. You're hard, ready and she's now riding your midsection. Great fantasy, right?

Wrong. It's absolute horror. It was a degrading experience seeing yourself used like that. She spent a full hour roughly exhausting my nethers and enjoying every moment of it. She let out deep moans of pleasure, rubbed her bare body all over mine, deeply kissed me with her tongue in my mouth and dug her nails into my skin so hard it cut a bit from my health pool. All the while I was immobile. I couldn't even speak or yell out. All I could do was listen to the nasty slap of fur-on-skin as she went to town. My mind struggled to deal with the contrasting experience of physical release while being abused.

This happened daily and, when she was in the mood, it could be twice. I tried to resist, but what could I do? I was locked into my gilded prison and at the mercy of a lunatic with three Advancements to my none. She would enjoy her sessions at my expense then lay on my chest to cuddle. She whispered about the future like we were willing lovers and even started talking children. The crazy woman was planning to use me as a prized stud to propagate her dynasty. She fancied herself the Queen of the Underworld and I was to be her unwilling prince consort. She even used weird terms like "issue" when referring to future kids.

She even rented me out to her two sisters. They had few qualms with sampling the exotic human-clan summoned hero. The whole family was screwed up. They had to be when raised by the crime world's nobility.

The most screwed up part? She kept her end of the promise and delivered magical books. When she wasn't shooting me up with go juice, she continued on as if we were best friends. She cheerfully chatted about her day masquerading as an impoverished street vendor in the slums to keep an ear out for information. She talked about what she wanted for the future and spoke of things like murdering rivals with the same energy as if she had come home from her job at an engineering firm.

The entire experience left me drained. I could barely read the books I was given, not that I could understand or cast any of the magic in my state, and I jumped at every sound from the hall. Little noises made me think Lisa was about to come in again and add to my growing track marks in my arm to have her daily emotional bonding session. The more it happened, the more I felt like I was betraying Void. I felt violated, dirty and unlovable. It took me nearly a century of looping to come to terms with what I had gone through in these two months, though not enough to come here and see Lisa again.

Soon, Lisa started to instinctually know the time was coming. I never divulged when the apocalypse was going to happen, just that it was in late summer. After one of our sessions, which was the day before the tear appeared, she asked me. Of course, I had to wait until the paralytic wore off to answer. I lied my ass off and said it was still a week away.

I also had thoughts of revenge. I told her I was starting to come around to our arrangement and I'd like to have our next romantic encounter the next day just after 9Mor, which was right when the portal appeared. I knew she liked to take her time with me and kept the door locked. She wouldn't notice the chaos going on since we were deep in a bunker.

The following day, she arrived at 9Mor on the dot. She still didn't fully believe my claim I was ready for a voluntary relationship and she jabbed me again. As she worked, the portal in the sky opened and the caustic gas flooded the city. Gas which filtered down into our twisted love dungeon and began to consume Lisa's flesh.

I reveled in the pain the gas caused me as I silently watched her dissolve before my eyes. I watched her fur fall out and her skin curdle and melt. I saw her nervous system instantly shut down and collapse on top of me. I saw the look of betrayal in her eyes that I lied. What did you expect, woman? You've forced yourself on me nearly 80 times in two months. I gladly suffered through that experience just to see the awful kingpin of Leoren die an agonizing death.

"Oliver? What's wrong? It appears your skin is weeping," Lisa asked with her odd charismatic voice. I knew it was intoxicating venom and she was trying to get me to fall into a metaphorical pitcher plant.

I scrambled to come up with a lie for my panicked state. "It's a sign my people are getting hot or are nervous. It's the latter. I wasn't sure how you'd react. This is the first time I used the code."

Lisa let out a musical chuckle with undertones of sympathy. "Don't be silly. We must have had a wonderful relationship if I willingly revealed my identity. I can see why you were hesitant to come see me until the last moment. Now, what is this about the world ending in two days?"

I had to wipe the sweat from my palms on my short shorts. "Simply put, I believe someone beneath the shopping district invited the monster. I need your help finding where this group is so we can stop it next time I loop."

Lisa tapped a finger on her gaudy throne up on her platform. "I see. That makes sense. There are extensive ancient catacombs from ancient Vialina under the slums and I have an idea of where they will be. I think it would be wise to bring as large a force as I can bear to test their strength. They'll have power to be able to call a being capable of destroying our world from another realm."

I hadn't considered that angle. I doubt whoever set up the dinner bell for squid face had simply abandoned the site. They'd likely still be there cleaning up after themselves. I doubt they invited an interdimensional horror without expectation they'd still be alive afterward to enjoy it. Plus, they'd want to obscure their involvement in the invasion even if they made out from the arrangement. "I suggest we leave immediately."

Lisa strapped her plague doctor mask back on and her deep voice returned. "I agree."

I followed Lisa out of her cabana and found the four goons waiting for us beyond the door. "You four, gather everyone at the drug manufactory immediately. You have 30 minutes."

"Sir? I thought you said he was just looking to score free Augury," the wolverine-clan woman stammered.

I felt the air cool as Lisa pulled her water magic threateningly. "I don't pay you to argue. Do it."

"And by everyone you mean?" the woman added with a dry swallow of fear.

"Yes. Everyone. Even the other gangs on our orbit. We have an invasion to fight off," Lisa snarled with a voice reminiscent of the black helmet guy from the space opera I can't remember.

The four snapped to action and rushed down the hall while Lisa went room to room ordering everyone inside to mobilize. Even the deer-clan woman who served as the fence for my belt during my failed MASER loop joined. Lisa was many things, someone who did things by half-measures wasn't one of them.

After that, we were off to the shopping center. The people of the slums knew something was going on when they saw a growing crowd of gang members, led by the illusive Gully Jack herself who never showed in public, marching down the street. The population quickly vanished from public view and we had an eerie trip through a silent, empty section of town all the way to our destination.