Asphodel – The Sixth Age – Third Year – Seventieth Sun

“Okay do we want the good news or the bad news first?” Georgia asked. She was standing in front of a large holographic screen with Faraday, her partner from the first day Adam came to Tartarus.

Mary sighed, “It’s been one of those days, just give us the bad news first.” Mary leaned on one leg and crossed her arms, eye’s never leaving the holographic screen where Georgia and Faraday were about to display their findings.

“Very well,” Georgia turned to the screen and pulled up a variety of different documents and video feeds of user experiences within Asphodel. There were also hand written notes initialed ‘T.H.” that Adam could only assume they were from Tomas Hidarian’s personal collection, possibly his journal. HTG must have had a massive reach in the real. Any information regarding Hidarian was relinquished to his son after an extremely long and bitter court case about the ownership of what his dad left behind.

“Wrathic skin, is some of, if not the toughest material in Asphodel. Problem is, all of the lore and information that we’ve collected surrounding Wrathics indicates that Adam is most vulnerable when he’s transforming. Since the transformation process is longer than a normal Shifter, and hasn’t sped up since we’ve gotten Adam up to his current level of 9, it’s safe to his transformation speed won’t decrease as a normal Shifters would. My process for example…”

“Hold on,” Adam interrupted her. “You’re a Shifter?”

Georgia smiled and leaped forward unexpectedly. In the half second that it took her to close the ten foot gap between her and Adam, a very lean and muscular looking predatory cat took her place, landing silently on all fours. Her skin and fur was black, but displayed dark spots when caught in the right light and her shoulders were five feet from the ground, bringing her massive head to just about eye level with Adam.

For the first time since Adam had known the duo, Faraday spoke up, “She’s a Black Tooth. A very rare form of large predatory cats in Asphodel, the design was based off of saber tooth tigers.” The Black Tooth gracefully walked over to Faraday and rubbed her head against Faraday’s shoulder before circling around the back of her and standing at her side. Faraday smiled softly, and her eyes spoke of a relationship that went beyond working companions, maybe even friendship.

“Georgia’s initial conversion was quite long and painful, it took about forty five seconds. She was only a level 2 when it happened. Most Black Tooths get their first transformation early and it’s one of the more painful processes documented…outside of a Wrathic that is. With each level though, the process became more manageable, and now at level 70…well you saw.”

“I just didn’t…I mean it makes sense.” Adam said. “A Shifter studying a Shifter that is. Are you a Shifter too?

Faraday smiled and shook her head, “No, I’m a Nexus. We’re a subclass of Wardens that can ride Shifters. We can bond with Shifters as long as they’re open to the proposition and,” She bounced her head around trying to think of how to describe the relationship best. “create a very personal, semi-telepathic link between each other and feed off of each other’s powers.”

The Black Tooth cooed at Faraday’s side. Faraday reached down and scratched her behind the ear, and the cat made a loud purring sound. “Some of us though, we bond with only one Shifter. It’s possible to focus on the bond further in order to make it stronger.” Faraday looked down at her partner. “Okay you, enough showing off.”

The Black Tooth leapt back in front of the screen and Georgia’s human form landed on both feet. “Point is,” Georgia said continuing her presentation. “My transformation time decreased at every level, and still does. As with all Shifters. With Adam though, we’ve come to the same conclusion with all of the training sessions he’s taken part in. His time hasn’t changed once.”

“Well,” Faraday interjected. “As we’ve seen in the last session, he can focus on different portions of the transformation, his arm for example, and speed up that process.”

Georgia finished her thought. “But the overall time doesn’t change.”

“Right.” Faraday said.

They stood there for a moment, waiting for the pair to continue. “You said you found something?” Mary asked after a few seconds.

“Yes!” Georgia pointed to the screen. “We’ve found several different accounts that talk about how painful the Wrathic conversion is, but nothing on how to combat that.”

Faraday took over. Now that she had spoken up in front of Adam, her shy nature melted away, and she was feeding off of Georgia’s confidence. “So we started digging through Hidarian’s notes and journal from back when he started developing Asphodel.”

“Even prior to that,” Georgia added.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said interrupting them again. “How did you get access to Hidarian’s personal files?”

Georgia and Faraday shifted their gaze, bouncing their heads back and forth. They didn’t want to answer the question because they weren’t sure how much Mary had revealed about HTG. Mary spoke up before Adam pressed the issue.

“I already told you, Wardens operate in Asphodel and the real,” everyone waited for Adam’s response. Mary made the stakes very clear when this all started two months ago, but this was the first time that they admitted to any sort of illegal activities. Mary had spent a lot of her time managing the trust being built between them and this moment would either be a testament to that or the work that still needed to be done.

Adam nodded, “That’s right. Go on.”

The tension eased and Georgia continued. “Well we couldn’t find anything cohesive. Hidarian’s mind became obsessed with Asphodel and Wrathics and it was no secret that he started losing some of his sanity toward the end. He also had a habit of using code, ciphers, and his own personal language to write down some of the more secretive information, but” the holographic screen change to display three different papers with hand scribbled notes. “We did find these.”

Mary and Adam stared at the screen in silence. There was no decipherable word or even letters that they could make out.

“What are we looking at?” Mary asked.

Georgia and Faraday were practically beaming with excitement. “Hidarian hid a secret alphabet amongst his other notes. Most of the symbols were buried in other detailed accounts of what he wanted to do in Asphodel.”

Faraday wasn’t able to hold back. “We had to crack ten cyphers just to be able to read the material that these individual letters were hidden in, and even then it took a whole lot of digging and sleepless nights to understand what was going on. He just dumped them at the bottom of pages with no discernible explanation as to why they were there.”

“See every letter…”

Mary cut Georgia off. “What do they say?”

Georgia grew a little sheepish at the fact that she was getting off track. Her and Faraday were very excited about their discovery and all of the work that their team put into finding it. “Right sorry. They’re skills! Wrathic skills...well a skill. We think they’re all the same skill, but he had a hard time of narrowing down a specific name. The descriptions are very similar though. We found one called Phoenix Ignition, Red Blaze, and last but weirdest VOK.”

“VOK?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Faraday said slowly. “It stands for…well let’s just say a very vulgar, slang term in the old Africaans language.”

“It’s where sector six is now.” Georgia confirmed, as if it was a concern. “Anyways, the details change from note to note but the overall idea is that Adam can learn a skill that would allow him to burst into flames and have an immense amount of power while transitioning.”

“Everything in here comes at a price, so what’s the catch?” Mary asked. There was no possible way that Hidarian would put something so powerful in the game without having some sort of drawback attached to it.

Georgia shook her head. “See that’s the thing…we can’t find one. I mean there’s not a lot a material on this power to begin with, and even though we have some direction on how to go about getting it, there is a possibility Hidarian never had a chance to add it.”

“Doubtful,” Adam said. Everyone turned to look at him. It took Adam a second to realize that he had said that out loud. “I uh, I mean Hidarian was obsessed with wyverns, and prospect of digital consciousness. Everything points to Asphodel being a platform to not only fund that endeavor, but also to keep the public off his back after the rumors came out of his studies. Hidarian was meticulous and purposeful in his implementation of the mechanics behind Asphodel, he wouldn’t have added Wrathics unless they had a purpose, not with how rare they are.”

Everyone thought on Adam’s point. “Hold on,” Mary said breaking the silence. “This sounds like good news, I thought you were going to give us the bad news first?”

Georgia smiled sheepishly, “Sorry the conversation kind of got away from me. From what we can understand, Adam has to complete three quests in order to find the skill. At the very least, he has to complete the first quest alone. He has to fight the protector of Neramith cave, which will give him the ability to retrieve an artifact from Cloudhelm and that will allow him to locate and handle the skill in Frostbay. They must be done in that specific order.”

Mary visibly relaxed. “Well that’s not so bad. Nobody else can use it…unless there’s another Wrathic in Asphodel that we don’t know about, but that seems highly unlikely given their rarity, our reach, and our network of information. Not to mention they’d have to find out about it first. Neramith is guarded by a level 20 Ogre and Adam’s already dealt with them in training. Cloudhelm is controlled by Shifters from Harrot Bay, they don’t like us, but they do fear us. A show of force will make them back down. Frostbay could be a bit of an issue since it’s currently held by raiders. So we have to use Tartarus to keep leveling Adam up and when he’s ready…”

“That’s the bad news,” Georgia said before Mary could finish. “According to everything we’ve read, Adam needs to be at a specific level to embrace this skill, otherwise…he loses any chance of getting it.”

Mary blinked several times before asking the question she knew she wouldn’t like the answer to, “What level?”

Georgia took a deep breath. “His next level, 10. If he levels up to 11 during the three quests, it cancels the whole event and makes the skill useless. If anyone but Adam tries to grab the skill without the artifact from Cloudhelm, it cancels the event and makes the skill useless. Essentially if we don’t do it as instructed, the skill becomes void.”

“Shit,” Mary shook her head and started pacing around the room. “That’s impossible, he’ll never make it past Neramith at his current level.”

Adam took a step closer to the holographic screen and looked over the notes. “There has to be a way. Hidarian wouldn’t have added this if it wasn’t possible. I can kill higher level enemies if I get a critical hit right?”

“Adam you’d be in that cave alone, no backup, no way for us to support you if things went south. Ogre’s are mostly dumb and slow, but a NPC twice your level is nothing to screw around with, and odds are that Hidarian made this one more of a challenge.” Mary stopped pacing and walked over to him. “We don’t need it, it’s not worth the risk. We just have to be careful about protecting you during the transformation.”

Adam stopped looking at the screen and turned to Mary with conviction in his eyes. “I can figure it out. I can do this, I need to do this. If Hidarian hid the process to digitizing consciousness within Asphodel and went through all the trouble of hiding something like this, then you can be damn sure that it’s required to make everything work in the end.”

“He has a good point,” Georgia said.

Mary shook her head and frowned. She turned away from everyone and rubbed her eyes for a few moments, trying to process the situation. She needed more information to make the decision, but she also knew Adam was right. Everything they found in the research about Wrathics since Adam started working with them had turned out to be true. They needed this to move forward. On top of all that, Mary was confident that discovering the process to transferring consciousness was the only way of helping the Dark Angel.

Mary finally turned around and glanced at Georgia before turning back to Adam. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But if we’re going to do this, we need to make a stop first.”

“All right!” Adam shouted clapping his hands together. It was the first time that he had shown any real excitement since working with Mary. “Sorry, I’m just really amped up to get out of Tartarus.”

Mary rolled her eyes and walked over to Georgia. “Power up your flash door, I’m sending you the coordinates now.”

Georgia’s expression contorted into a look of confusion. “Are these coordinates right?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah. I’ll explain later.”

Adam heard the exchange but wasn’t really paying attention. He practically ran over to the flash door on the other side of the room. In Asphodel time, he had be training in Tartarus for several months and while the simulation was amazingly realistic, he knew it was fake. Leveling up didn’t feel rewarding. He wanted to get out into the world where the stakes were higher, where his decisions actually meant something.

Mary came up behind Adam and put a hand on his shoulder. “I need you to remember something, Asphodel isn’t Tartarus. You die, and it’s game over. Here, and in the real.”

Adam’s excitement started shifting to anger. Nobody knew how important this was to him. Nobody knew how he felt when he’d disconnect from Asphodel and go back to the real. The overwhelming sensation of dread that he fought off every time his mind re-calibrated in the real; his withering legs constantly reminding him that death could be a heartbeat away. He could drop at any moment regardless of where he was. Mary could never understand what he was going through and the fact that she’d question his excitement at their first real discovery in months made him momentarily rethink their relationship.

Adam did his best to hold back the rage that was building just under his skin. The frustration in his voice however, was strikingly apparent. “I’m the only person who doesn’t need to be reminded of the consequences. There’s not a second that passes where I don’t think about the fact that it could be my last.”

Mary held his gaze and Adam’s anger started to dissipate. In that moment he caught sorrow in her eyes. She wasn’t trying to be condescending; she truly cared for him. “I…” she started. “I promise I’ll try to remember how hard this is for you.”

The flash door powered up next to them and Adam gave Mary a small nod of thanks before stepping through the door.