System

*** *** ***

Multiple anomalies detected. Designating anomalies α, β, γ, δ, ε, ζ.

Anomaly δ located.

Assessing Anomaly δ.

…

Assessment completed. Anomaly δ compatible with Tapestry. Integrating Anomaly δ.

*** *** ***

Jason

Jason wasn't sure whether he was conscious or not. He did know that his mind was sore in some manner that was both physical and … something else. Some part was mental exhaustion. Maybe the rest was spiritual? He wasn't a religious person and hadn't really given much thought to the possibilities of a soul before this, nor did he spend much time on that thought now. He found just existing to be taxing enough at the moment.

As he gradually grew aware of the passage of time, he sensed something hovering on the edges of his mind.

*** *** ***

Greetings, Traveler δ!

You have been accepted into the Grand Tapestry of Rhofhir.

The following announcements will inform you of your ability to affect the Grand Tapestry. Introduce new patterns that the Grand Tapestry may absorb or strengthen existing patterns to increase your ability to affect the Grand Tapestry.

Your acknowledgment is required to proceed.

*** *** ***

What the hell? What was Rhofhir and this Grand Tapestry thing? Was he going insane? Had the damn wires fried his brain? Was he in a coma, or dying, and having weird hallucinations? Jason had never had a dream like this before.

*** *** ***

Rhofhir is the designation assumed by the inhabitants of the area protected by the Grand Tapestry.

The Grand Tapestry shields Rhofhir from Primal Chaos, imposing sufficient Order to maintain continuity of Life through the strength of the patterns within the Grand Tapestry.

Acknowledgment of comprehension received.

To review your current capabilities within the Grand Tapestry, project the command [Status].

*** *** ***

[Status]? Jason found himself repeating the thought before he had a chance to think better of it.

*** *** ***

Designation: Jason Jefferson Kline

Species: Human (Traveler)

Titles: Specialist

- - -

ACU: 14

BRW: 13

DEX: 11

INT: 13

WIS: 9

CHA: 10

HTH: 13

LCK: 10

- - -

Health Pool: 10/26 (2.1/hour)

Mana Pool: 0/9 (2.6/hour)

Will Pool: 3/9 (2.6/hour)

- - -

Aspects: —

Skills: —

Designs: Traveler (91%)

*** *** ***

Jason blinked. The [Status] command gave him information that looked a lot like a character sheet, but he wasn't sure what the acronyms stood for. Was ACU accuracy?

*** *** ***

ACU - Acuity: Primary. The measure of an individual's ability to recognize patterns. Higher acuity allows for quicker recognition and deeper comprehension of pattern effects.

BRW - Brawn: Primary. The measure of an individual's physical capacity. Higher brawn allows for greater effects when interacting with physical patterns.

DEX - Dexterity: Primary. The measure of an individual's physical control. Higher dexterity allows for more precise manipulations of physical patterns.

INT - Intelligence: Primary. The measure of an individual's capacity to create and refine model patterns. Higher intelligence allows for quicker adoption of new Skills and Designs.

- - -

WIS - Wisdom: Secondary. An individual's ability to apply appropriate patterns in any given situation. Higher wisdom reflects both the number of patterns an individual has learned and the effectiveness of applied patterns.

CHA - Charisma: Secondary. An individual's ability to induce other individuals into participating in a given pattern.

HTH - Health: Secondary. An individual's physical durability.

LCK - Luck: Secondary. An individual's innate ability to position themselves within a Grand Pattern.

*** *** ***

Apparently just thinking hard enough about a question could get him an answer. Without knowing the scales used for the measurements, Jason wasn't sure what it all meant. He generally agreed with the shape of the ratings, however. He was best at finding patterns. That was what drew him to the study of Economics. But what was this thing with aspects? And what about not having any skills?

*** *** ***

Aspects are modes of perception that help or hinder the acquisition of new Skills, and influence the nuances of an individual's Designs.

Skills are minor patterns obtained by performing related actions. Additional actions spent refining skill patterns increase skill proficiency.

*** *** ***

Ah. While still unsure of how these Aspects would affect him, Jason realized that the lack of listed skills made a kind of sense. He had yet to demonstrate anything this Grand Tapestry, this game system, recognized as a skill. That left Designs to be explained.

*** *** ***

Designs are complex patterns initiated by an individual and, usually, requiring minimal participation from other individuals.

*** *** ***

Oooh-kay. And the Traveler design meant …?

*** *** ***

Traveler: a design fulfilled by individuals that instantiated outside of the Grand Tapestry and have been deemed compatible with the underlying patterns of the Grand Tapestry. Completion of this design provides the ability to communicate and interact with other individuals contributing to the Grand Tapestry.

*** *** ***

Yeah. Jason was going to just accept this as part of some strange hallucination.

*** *** ***

Traveler Design Completed. Aspect of the Gamer created. You have acquired the Aspect of the Gamer.

*** *** ***

*~*~*

System

*** *** ***

…

Anomaly γ located. Assessing Anomaly γ.

…

Assessment completed. Anomaly γ highly compatible with mana regulation patterns of Tapestry. Integrating Anomaly γ. …

*** *** ***

Lena

*** *** ***

Greetings,Traveler γ! You have been accepted into the Grand Tapestry of Rhofhir. The following announcements will inform you of your ability to affect the Grand Tapestry. Introduce new patterns that the Grand Tapestry may absorb or strengthen existing patterns to increase your ability to affect the Grand Tapestry. Your acknowledgment is required to proceed.

*** *** ***

It felt as though one moment Lena had been sitting in her garage, ghostly words whispering against her skin where Candy had placed the telepathy patches, wonder just breaking through her shock at experiencing Brad and Candy's success. The next moment, Lena found herself physically senseless and emotionally neutered. After a timeless moment of disorientation, Lena found herself alone in her mind with an odd, shiny-feeling voice that felt … foreign. Lena decided to proceed under the tentative hypothesis that this was an intended part of the experiment.

As she considered the message, knowledge replaced Lena's questions about the details of the shiny-voiced message.

*** *** ***

Acknowledgment of comprehension received.

To review your current capabilities within the Grand Tapestry, project the command [Status].

*** *** ***

*** *** ***

Traveler Design Completed.

You have acquired the Aspect of the Gamer.

*** *** ***

*** *** ***

Design of the Analyst unlocked.

*** *** ***

*** *** ***

Congratulations, Traveler Lena Marie Weston!

During your integration into the Grand Tapestry of Rhofhir, you have expanded the reach of the Grand Tapestry. In honor of this feat, you are recognized as the Arbiter of the newly created Zone [γ]*.

To access control features for the zone, project the command [Zone Management].

As the Arbiter of Zone [γ]*, you have acquired one point each in the skills: [Mana Manipulation], [Tapestry Reading]

*** *** ***

Interesting. [Status].

*** *** ***

Designation: Lena Marie Weston

Species: Human (Traveler)

Titles: Arbiter of Zone [γ]*, Traveler

- - -

ACU: 15

BRW: 8

DEX: 12

INT: 15

WIS: 8

CHA: 9

HTH: 9

LCK: 14

- - -

Health Pool: 10/17 (1.6/hour)

Mana Pool: 10/15 (.8/hour)

Will Pool: 4/8 (2.4/hour)

- - -

Aspects: Gamer

Skills: Mana Manipulation: 1; Tapestry Reading: 1

Designs: Traveler, Champion of Order, Analyst (10%)

*** *** ***

Lena found the same process of simply forming her query provided her with the essential concepts represented in this [Status] state. She found the vagueness of the Champion of Order design mildly … inefficient.

*** *** ***

Champion of Order: this design is completed by greatly expanding the efficacy of the Grand Tapestry, either by the taming of Primal Chaos or contributions that improve the patterns of the Grand Tapestry. Completion of this design grants the designer a permanent boon relating to the manner of its completion.

*** *** ***

Lena didn't know what words to use to frame her confusion around the title "Arbiter of Zone [γ]*", but the focused curiosity provoked an answer of sorts.

*** *** ***

Zones small enough to be controlled by an arbiter have been designated as "dungeons" by the inhabitants of Rhofhir. Arbiters of such dungeons may designate their own titles within the [Zone Management] control patterns.

*** *** ***

So, she was now a dungeon master according to this Tapestry? Cool. She projected the thought [Zone Management].

*** *** ***

Zone Designation: Zone [γ]*

Zone Arbiter Title: Arbiter

Zone Nature: Simple

Mana Pool: 1289/1000 (0.84/second)

Mana Consumption: 0/hour

[Structure] • [Guardians] • [Resources]

*** *** ***

Lena focused on the prompt for the [Structure] command.

*** *** ***

No structure currently exists. Please implement a structure.

*** *** ***

The options that then made themselves apparent to Lena left her feeling as if she was suddenly immersed in a thick fog bank, the fog something she could shape like clay. The first needed thing, she decided, was some space without the fog pressing in on her.

*** *** ***

Establishing ground costs 1 mana per cubic meter and requires an expenditure of 1 mana per 5 cubic meters per hour to maintain. Do you wish to proceed with clearing 8 cubic meters?

*** *** ***

How much space do I have to establish? Lena wondered.

*** *** ***

Space within a zone is dependent on the mana used to maintain it.

*** *** ***

What can I build here? Lena asked herself, her emotions returning to her with a burgeoning creative buzz.

*~*~*

Lena felt both challenged and disappointed to find that she was limited to building her zone's structure with only "discovered patterns", of which she began with Dirt, Stone, Water, Air, Light, and Portal. The Portal turned out to be the means by which Zone [γ] connected to the rest of Rhofhir. At the point where the maintenance cost for what she had built was about a third of what the zone regenerated, she paused in playing with the basic elements and returned to check out the other options on her menu.

[Resources] looked like it would require less time to understand, so she went there next. It led to another sub-menu of choices:

*** *** ***

[Material Patterns] • [Organic Patterns] • [Mana Patterns] • [Exportables] • [Research]

*** *** ***

The Materials Patterns listed the same structural patterns Lena had already played with. The next three menu items led to empty lists, but the last, [Research], looked promising.

*** *** ***

No pattern research in progress. Provide a sample of a pattern to replicate and allocate hourly mana points to research the integration of that pattern into your zone.

*** *** ***

She returned to check out the [Guardians] menu.

*** *** ***

You have no contracted zone guardians. Establish contracts before providing guardians with zone boons.

*** *** ***

Disappointed again, Lena returned to the structure menu. She confirmed that she could selectively disable the maintenance costs for anything she built in her dungeon. Then she wondered what would happen if she didn't use up her zone's mana regeneration. What was the danger in exceeding the zone's mana pool?

*** *** ***

Excess mana in dungeon zones leads to spontaneous creation of mana-filled patterns, such as monsters and monstrous foliage, until mana levels are within the operational capacity of the dungeon zone. During that time, any individual present in the dungeon is exposed to the excess mana, and has an increasing likelihood of suffering mana poisoning. Mana poisoning destabilizes individual patterns, which often leads to incompatibility with the Grand Tapestry.

*** *** ***

What happens then?

*** *** ***

Elements incompatible with the Grand Tapestry are deconstructed so that their mana may be recycled into the Grand Tapestry.

*** *** ***

That sounded like it could easily spiral out of control, and Lena was pretty sure she didn't want to discover the tipping point where that downward spiral never righted itself. Deciding not to find out the hard way, Lena continued building out her dungeon, finding that she enjoyed making the lifeless environment at least as beautiful as she could.

*** *** ***

Design of the Artist unlocked.

*** *** ***

*~*~*

System

****** ***

…

Anomaly ζ located. Assessing Anomaly ζ. …

Assessment completed.

Anomaly ζ compatible with Tapestry. Integrating Anomaly ζ. …

*** *** ***

*** *** ***

…

Anomaly ε located. Assessing Anomaly ε. …

Assessment completed.

Anomaly ε compatible with Tapestry. Integrating Anomaly ε. …

*** *** ***

Aaron

"Aaron!Aaron! Wake up, dude! Don't make me-! So, help me, you little bastard, you *will* fucking wake up!"

Those last words were accompanied by rough hands picking Aaron up by his shoulders and vigorously shaking him. For the first few seconds, all Aaron could do was flop. Then, all at once, his body was moving, instinct taking over. He swung his fists, kicked his legs, and screamed with wordless rage.

The hands let go of him. Aaron scrambled back a meter and somehow found his feet. His chest heaved. He looked around, saw Rob, and started yelling. "Don't you fucking do that, you asshole! Why the fuck did you-?"

Then Aaron saw the dunes and lavender tinted fog around them both. And nothing else.

Rob tackled him, hugging him and shaking. "Motherfucker, don't you fucking scare me like that again! You weren't breathing!"

Aaron's first instinct was to punch his brother, but he realized Rob was actually, honestly, crying, shaking with relief. It felt weird to hug Rob back, to be the calm one for a change. Except, Aaron wasn't calm. He just hadn't caught up with his brother yet.

That weird dream. That feeling of being lifted out of his body, his mind and soul splintered and … remade. The abrupt waking. This limbo-like landscape. Roberto Morgan Garcias, of all people, his brother, breaking down. That was the most surreal aspect to this of all.

"You weren't breathing!" Rob whispered into his shoulder.

"I'm here," Aaron told him, the same words their mother crooned to them after they had gotten lost at Giant's Stadium the summer Rob turned fourteen. He kept repeating that until Rob stopped shaking.

When Rob leaned back, Aaron asked, "Where the hell are we?"

Rob's eyes were wider than normal, giving him a spooked look. "I don't fucking know."

*~*~*

System

****** ***

…

Anomaly α located.

Assessing Anomaly α. …

Assessment completed. Anomaly α compatible with Tapestry.

Integrating Anomaly α. …

*** *** ***

"Move your tails!" The deep, masculine voice that shouted that order competed with the whistling roar of the wind. Six bipedal forms strained to comply, following a seventh toward the hope of safety, a darker shape in the prismatic haze of the mana storm. Two of the six carried an eighth form between them, a limp thing flopping with each jarring step they took.

The dark shape resolved itself into a cave mouth set in the side of a cliff wall. The rocks forming the cliff were all sharp angles and smooth planes, but the color was impossible to gauge through the mana soaked air. The leader stopped at the mouth of the cave and swept his arm in a vertical circle, herding the others into the cave.

"Vi! Shield over the opening!" the leader ordered as soon as the last of them passed into the deeper shade of the cave. "Cord and Nilis, burn whatever mana has made it into the cave! Perth, Krar, set up camp! Stylard, see to our guest!"

"Yes, sergeant!" the others said, already in motion.

The sergeant removed a dull translucent crystal from one of several belt pouches. "Soak Light!" The sergeant commanded the crystal, moving to set it beside the limp biped. A dim glow kindled in the heart of the crystal, brightening slowly as it began soaking in the ambient mana.

The air pressure in the cave shifted, increased enough for most of them to shake their heads to help adjust to the change. The volume of the wind decreased drastically.

"Shield's up, sergeant, and I've got it soaking from our side to start with. I'll need to switch it if we're stuck here for more than a day," the one named Vi stated.

Balls of light took form, ranging in diameter from 4 to 12 cm, and spread out toward the walls and ceiling of the cave. They all began by shedding a pure white light, but the light balls transitioned to shades of yellow and pink by the time they settled into a sedentary position about 30cm from the cave walls.

Stylard hissed, speaking before he could be asked what caused his reaction. "I don't think we rescued a gnelf or a beast kin, Sarge. Not unless this … body absorbed a lethal amount of mana."

The sergeant returned his attention to Stylard and the biped. Stylard had torn open the strange cloth garments covering the biped, revealing hair-less, fur-less, scale-less skin. The skin was not white, black, or brown, but something more pinkish. At least it was pinkish where it wasn't mottled with yellow or purple. The sergeant squatted down on the other side of the biped and, taking care not to drag his claws too roughly over the unarmored flesh, pushed the creature's mane off its face.

Lateral symmetry, two eyes currently closed, protruding nostrils but no muzzle, flexible lips, rounded ears. A gentle lifting pressure on the lips revealed incisors and grinder teeth, but no fangs. The sergeant leaned back on his heels. "Human. Blood and bone, what is a human doing on the Rim?"

"Human?" Stylard's scales paled. "What do I do? I've never treated a Human!"

The sergeant shook his head. His eyes focused on Stylard and his voice came out calm, confident. "They're one of the ancestral races. Whatever will work across the races should work on a human."

Stylard opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. "Right. Right. Ancestors." Stylard sucked in a deep breath, held it a moment, and then began again. He pressed a small, flat gem to the human's torso, between engorged mammary glands. The gem lost its luster. Both Stylard and the sergeant blinked at that.

The sergeant cleared his throat. "Is your mana stone broken?"

Stylard lifted it off the human and just the contact with his own skin returned a faint luminosity to the gem. "Vi! Check the mana stone for me!" Stylard ordered, holding the gem up.

When Vi took the stone, it brightened even more. "It's working. What's the problem?" Vi asked.

Stylard took the gem back and put it, once more, on the human's torso. The light within the gem dimmed again.

Vi hissed appreciatively. "Mana starved, huh? Nilis, over here!" Vi knelt down next to Stylard.

"Need me to pull the ambient in for you?" Nilis guessed.

"Yep," Vi said, already cupping the human's head in his clawed hands.

Nilis curled his tail in concentration and held his claws apart as if imagining a ball roughly 40cm in diameter between them. As soon as a faint green glow took shape in the center of his imaginary ball, Nilis said, "I've got the thread started."

Vi laid his tail against Nilis' leg. "Here we go."

Half an hour passed before the glow between Nilis' claws brightened. By that time, both he and Vi were expelling a faint mist from under their raised scales. Vi released the human, opened his mouth in a jaw-cracking yawn, and sat down hard.

Nilis closed his hands, dissipating the glow, and sat down next to Vi. "I got two skill ups in [Mana Manipulation]. How about you, Vi?"

"One in [Mana Manipulation], and unlocked something called [Tapestry Integration]," Vi answered.

The sergeant asked, "What the Wastes is that?"

Vi's eyes had the unfocused look common to those focused on the Grand Tapestry. "Says something about assisting something called a Traveler in adding their patterns to the Grand Tapestry. I'm not getting any more information. Must be something, though. I got a boost to my mana pool and mana regeneration for the unlock."

The sergeant leaned back. "You said Traveler?"

"Yes, sergeant," Vi said.

Cord asked, "What is a Traveler?"

The sergeant did not answer. He was too busy inspecting the human.

*~*~*

System

*** *** ***

…

Anomaly β located.

Assessing Anomaly β. …

Assessment completed.

Anomaly β added to pattern "Contained for Observation", Overseer: Dibbons.

*** *** ***

Brad

«Bradford Ajput Singh? Are you ready?»

The question confused and startled Brad. There was a familiarity to the voice, as if he had heard it before, but he couldn't place where. And what should he be ready for?

Sparks, followed almost immediately by the sickening scent of burnt metal and plastics, popped from the computer tower. Candy's laugh cut off and she bolted to her feet. Jason's arms and legs flailed, catching Candy in the ribs. Aaron and Rob reached for the sensors.

Brad hit the floor, not even aware that he had reached toward the sparking computer until his head bounced off the tower frame. As he lost consciousness, his last thought was, "I've killed my friends."

*~*~*

Dibbs

"Did it work?" Archmage Feltz burst into the summoning chamber the moment Dibbons released the wards.

Casper Dibbons suppressed the urge to snap at the senior mage. He was beyond tired from the depth of information he had to put into the mana recording of the session, never mind the extra-planar summoning just to speak with the demon who answered to Bradford Ajput Singh. Instead, he handed over a spherical sapphire the size of his fist. "See for yourself. I hope I didn't cause the demon a terrible amount of trouble, but that was the clearest I've ever been able to speak with it."

Feltz held the sapphire up to eye level and made a thorough examination. His expression underwent a subtle change from fiercely worried to fiercely excited to fiercely intent, ending with a respectful look that was a strange combination of fierce and grim. "I think you may have exceeded your bargain, Dibbs. I believe you have captured the demon in this."

Dibbons sputtered. "What in the odd balls of Chaos are you talking about? That's impossible! The Tapestry destroys demons! I couldn't have brought it through the Weave intact, let alone stuffed it in a memory stone!"

"Look for yourself." Feltz handed the stone back to Dibbs. Feltz waited until Dibbs took back the sapphire, then added, "Rhofhir's Tapestry destroys what it cannot wrap within a stable pattern. While you and I, and every mage worth his mana here knows, that demons are simply varying forms of intelligence existing beyond the Weave of the Tapestry, that's not what comes to the mind of the layfolk. Do not confuse the academic definition of demons with the superstitions of the uninformed."

Dibbons barely paid attention to the old fart's lecture. The burst of focus quickly faded, exhaustion sucking away at Dibbons' mental clarity. The memory patterns in the stone did not feel sapient, not the way the demon had during their exchange, but there was something … odd about the patterns. They were no where near so clear as they had been when Dibbons had acted the conduit for their inscription within the memory stone.

Feltz's heavy hand settled on Dibbons' shoulder. "Go get you some sleep. What's done is done, the pattern closed. If you've no objection, I'll study this a bit longer. Perhaps you simply caught an Advantage within the Grand Pattern and this is now an Artifact of Memory."

"I-. You know, sleep is probably the best course of action. Please do hold on to it. I think if it is not left in your care that Vorbolinsh will attempt to appropriate it." On that note, Dibbons rose, allowing Feltz to take the sapphire once more. "I mean, it's only the fate of our world. Why should that get in the way of the hallowed traditions of petty politics?"

Feltz snorted. "You are tired to say that outside of a privacy ward!"

Dibbons nodded. "And frustrated, my old teacher. I never did have your patience with long-eared arrogance."