Quantum shift, p.2
Quantum Shift, page 2
part #1 of Phase Shift Series
He was sure, now; the darkness was pulling back, the pain slowly receding. It spiked and ebbed, but he ignored it, concentrating only on holding to this moment. Each breath was easier, now, and it was as if each lungful of air was drawing in new energy, restoring his body and pushing back the shadows in his vision. He took a final, deep breath and almost burst into tears as the last of the pain faded and vanished.
His clean sheet looked like he’d been murdered on it. Blood and other fluids he didn’t want to think about stained it beyond redemption; he’d never get it clean, especially not in the nearby lake or using the hand pump outside the cabin. He gathered his strength and staggered drunkenly to his feet, grasping the side of the upper bunk to stabilize himself. He was dreadfully weak, but with each breath, he could feel his strength returning. Wearily, he yanked the sheet from the bed and unthinkingly stuffed it into the glowing embers of the stove, slamming the door shut. He saw a flare of orange as the sheet caught flame, and as he did, he could have sworn he saw a shimmer of red light flash from the stove, but he chalked it up to exhaustion and sat back on the bed, wondering what the hell was going on and what had just happened to his body.
Chapter 2
Character Creation
As Troias glanced down at himself, trying to see if the strange pain had damaged him in any way, the strange voice began speaking again, accompanied as before by a wall of text that simply appeared in his vision and hung there, no matter how he turned his head:
Congratulations, Earthling!
You have survived the Phase Shift!
Expected Survival Rate: 1 – 5%
Actual Survival Rate: 2.33%
As one of a small percentage of humans to survive
this change, you have the chance to become more than you ever dreamed. In this new reality, all things
are possible, even what you would have deemed
magical or mystical before!
First, you must choose your path in this new world…
Troias shook his head and sighed in relief as he suddenly realized that he was dreaming. He’d been so exhausted, he’d collapsed into bed without checking it and was probably getting eaten by bugs. He figured that the buzzing sound of the generator outside, the bug bites, and his earlier thoughts about his injury and the video games that had helped him deal with the long hours of convalescence had all come together to create this incredibly vivid, if somewhat morbid dream. Only 2.33% of people in the world surviving? he thought incredulously. If there are 7 billion people, that’s something like 15 million people living, right? Or wait, would it be 150 million? I don’t know, I suck at math, but it’s still a lot of dead people, either way.
Relaxing, he let his eyes drift back up to the scrolling text. He’d heard that you couldn’t read in dreams, but then, he’d also heard that if you hit the ground when you fell in a dream, you’d die. He’d hit the ground in his dreams a bunch of times, and he was still breathing, so he guessed that a lot of what people thought about dreams was probably bs.
First, you must choose your path in this new world. There are three
main paths you may choose from: the Mage, the Adept, or the Savant.
A description of each is listed below. Choose the path that speaks most
to you, as choosing an unsuitable path will probably lead to a quick death.
The Mage
The Mage utilizes mana, the external energy that cycles through the world, to
power their abilities. A Mage gathers power to themselves and directs it
outward; this means that while they are excellent at affecting the world
around them, they have great difficulty using their mana on themselves. Mages
benefit from a high Intellect score, helping them to learn and master
the arcane rituals they use.
The Adept
The Adept is, in many ways, the diametric opposite of the Mage. An Adept uses their internal energy, called ki, to empower themselves and their abilities. An
Adept turns their power inward and therefore has difficulty affecting anything outside of touch range with their abilities. Unlike a Mage, an Adept’s powers
are used intuitively and come from a deeper understanding of the self and their chosen Energy. Because their power flows through them at all times, Adepts are often best served by a high Endurance score.
The Savant
The Savant is a hybrid of Mage and Adept, a person able to use both mana and ki, albeit in much more limited ways than either the Mage or the Adept. The Savant turns their abilities toward altering the world about them by creating
and empowering various objects, meaning they have difficulty affecting living things of any kind. Savants gain their Abilities by imposing their visions of reality on the world and thus benefit most from a high Will.
Please Choose a Path.
This is a weird, freaky dream, he mused as he read through the options. The different paths – he supposed they were kind of like classes in other games, or maybe specializations in some of the shooter games – relied on ability scores, but he didn’t even know what his ability scores were. How was he supposed to min/max his build when he didn’t know what was high and what was low?
Well, he supposed the descriptions gave him a pretty good idea of what the abilities were supposed to do, and Troias knew himself well enough to figure out what he’d be good at. The Mage seemed like some kind of wizard/scholar combo, and he’d never liked to play wizards in games. They were mostly lopsided characters, totally focused on one thing – usually damage, but sometimes crowd control or summoning – and weak in everything else. He preferred hybrid characters. Plus, he was honest enough to admit that Intellect wasn’t his strong suit; Mage was a no-go.
As far as hybrid characters went, it looked like Savant was the clear choice; reading through it, though, it felt like a crafting class to him. Sure, crafting was cool and useful, but he liked PvP – player versus player – and crafters were usually weaker overall in combat. He didn’t want to play a character that made really great stuff for everyone else to go out and fight with.
Which just left Adept. A quick read-through made the class sound kind of like a monk, or one of those kung-fu practitioners from the movies. While that wasn’t his thing, really – he’d spent too much time explaining to students over the years that, no, they would not be learning how to do a Kame-ha-ha wave, or whatever the thing was called – it still sounded like more fun than the other two. Shrugging, he selected ‘Adept’, and the text flashed and vanished. A moment later, the voice resumed, accompanied by more text:
Excellent!
You have chosen the path of the Adept. Hopefully, this will prove to be a wise choice. Your next step is to choose a totem animal that will help you decide the best way to walk the path you’ve chosen.
When you next sleep, you’ll be given the chance to choose a totem. Choose wisely, as the choice you make will guide your steps for the rest of your life, however short that may be.
Good luck, and welcome to your new reality!
After the voice and text disappeared, Troias felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him. He sank back onto his bare mattress, his eyes feeling unnaturally heavy. “What the heck?” he muttered as he fought to stay awake. “Am I about to go to sleep in a dream? That’s pretty meta, isn’t it?”
He yawned and decided there was no point to fighting the urge to rest. In fact, he wondered if falling asleep would actually wake him up in the real world. That would be pretty cool, and it was certainly worth a try. Not that his dream wasn’t interesting, but it was a little too vivid for him, and he’d rather wake up and try for another dream that was maybe a bit more mundane.
With a shrug, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
It was immediately obvious to Troias that he had not, in fact, woken up. Instead, he found himself standing in a large, open meadow. In front of him, the meadow was bounded by the wall of a cliff face, rising tens of feet above the ground before disappearing into a silver-gray mist. Strange lights flashed in the mist, weird bursts of radiance that strobed in every color of the rainbow, plus a few colors he couldn’t quite put a name to. Something seemed to beckon him from the top of that cliff, a voice that he couldn’t quite hear but that he was certain was calling his name.
Forcing his gaze away from the mesmerizing pyrotechnic display, Troias turned to his left. The meadow on this side sloped gently down and ended at the edge of what looked like an enormous, perfectly flat lake. No wind stirred its surface; no boat marred it with a wake. As he watched, an enormous fish, easily eight feet long, breached the surface and slipped back under without making a single ripple. The fish rose back to the surface and glided toward him, its glittering scales undulating smoothly and gently as it approached, its dorsal fin cutting through the water without leaving a trace. He felt an enormous sense of calm emanating from the lake, as if it were a place of utter peace and tranquility, but he also had a feeling that a deep, untapped power lay within. The fish held his gaze, and he felt himself being drawn toward it, but he shook himself free of the hypnotic moment and turned to his left once more.
The meadow in this direction sank sharply down, descending into what looked like a gaping hole in the earth. Despite the bright light filling the clearing, coming seemingly from nowhere and everywhere at once, the chasm before him was blanketed with shadows and darkness. As he watched, an inky, black panther leapt from the hidden depths of the chasm and settled to its haunches at the very edge of the meadow. He could feel the danger within the cat, the potential for violence and destruction, but he could tell this violence was controlled, restrained, and tempered by a mind free of anger or passion. The cat’s unblinking gaze pulled at him, and he felt a sense of kinship with the creature, but he knew he had one more turn to make, and he reluctantly shifted to his left, leaving the feline behind.
The meadow here rose sharply, turning into an outcropping of bare stone. He could feel the solidity of the rock, the depth of the foundation it stood on, strong enough to hold up the world if need be. Atop the outcropping stood a single, copper-colored bull, its horns shining silver in the ubiquitous light, its hooves glowing a fiery gold. The bovine stood for several moments, unmoving and immovable, before slowly turning its golden eyes to rest on Troias. There was a deep current of power there, one that moved slowly but inexorably, able to crush anything in its way.
“You must choose,” a deep, booming voice echoed from the bull. “I am the bull, creature of the Earth Facet. My power is deep and immovable; I grant the gifts of patience and endurance.”
“Wait, what do you mean, choose?” Troias repeated. “Choose what?”
“You must choose your totem,” a cold, emotionless voice purred to his right, and Troias glanced over at the panther coiled at the edge of the shadowy chasm. “Choose that which calls to you, to which you feel a connection. I am the panther, of the Death Facet. I am violence restrained and controlled, used as a tool for greater purposes. I grant the gifts of skill and mastery over combat.”
“But I feel a connection to each of you,” Troias protested. “How am I supposed to choose just one?”
“Yet, choose you must,” a soft, liquid voice said gently. Troias turned to face the great, prismatic fish he had seen first. “Only one of us can guide you on your path. I am the marlin, quite obviously of the Water Facet. I am the bringer of calm and tranquility, yet I hold a quiet power within, and once I am unleashed, I am impossible to restrain. I grant the gifts of adaptability and peace.”
Troias turned from the mighty fish and glanced up at the flashing lights overhead, swirling in the silver-gray mists above. “So, what’s up there?” he asked curiously. “Why isn’t something coming from there to greet me, too?”
“We do not know what lies above,” the bull rumbled.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Troias asked with a trace of suspicion. “How can you not know?”
“We know only what we have seen,” the panther hissed coolly. “Those from above do not deign to descend to our level, so we do not know them.”
“We have no knowledge of those above,” the fish added, “and the very few who have attempted to ascend have never returned to tell us.”
Troias walked over to the cliff and stared up at it. Although the face looked sheer from a distance, up close he could see the myriad cracks and crannies that would allow a skilled climber to ascend. Troias had done free-climbing before – he’d once dated a girl who was into it – but he wasn’t an expert or anything. Still, something in the dazzling display above reached out to him, beckoning him, urging him to climb.
Plus, while he felt drawn to each of the creatures around him, none of them truly spoke to him. Each of them seemed to represent a single aspect of his personality, but none of them captured the whole. The bull promised stability, but without flexibility, that would lead to stagnation. The panther promised him skill, but when it was wielded by someone who wasn’t at peace within themselves, violence inevitably became its own end, rather than a means to greater ends. The fish offered tranquility and adaptability, but without a solid foundation to stand on, adaptability would become pointless change.
Whatever waited for him above, it spoke to all of him, not just a part of him. Without considering what he was doing, Troias reached out and grasped a handhold, placing a foot in a crack and heaving himself onto the cliff.
“Be warned,” the bull rumbled from his right. “Once you begin the ascent, you cannot return. You must continue or perish in the attempt. You may still turn away and choose one of us.”
Troias barely heard the creature’s words, as his entire being was focused on the next handhold, on placing each foot securely. He didn’t look up or down; his attention was only on the next crevice, the next crack to hold his weight. Slowly but steadily he moved upward, foot by foot.
Some part of him told him that the cliff was far higher than it had appeared to be. At the pace he was moving, he should have reached the mists overhead in ten minutes or so, but it felt like hours had passed. That part of him screamed for him to climb back down, that he would be ascending forever.
He ignored that voice, as he always did. Step after step, hand after hand he mounted the cliff. The climb seemed interminable – he had long ago lost all sense of how long he’d been ascending – but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the moment, the next handhold, the next foothold.
As silvery mists began swirling around his head, Troias felt a presence to his left. “I am the hydra,” a cacophony of voices whispered at him. “I am of the Facets of Earth and Water. I am solidity with flexibility…” Troias glanced only briefly at the mud-brown body and multiple, serpentine necks before refocusing on his climb. The creature’s voice resonated more deeply than those below had, but it still didn’t connect fully with him. Step by step, he left the monster behind, continuing his ascent.
“I am the kraken,” a deep voice boomed to his right. “I am a creature of Water and Death. I am the peace that violence brings, the ultimate end to that means…”
Again, Troias merely glanced at the massive, squid-like creature before putting it out of his mind and ascending. Violence for the sake of peace was certainly a worthwhile pursuit, but it didn’t speak to him; he wasn’t a crusader, and he had never used violence for any purpose but self-improvement. Every competition, every victory or loss, every opponent faced was a chance for him to grow, to learn, and to better understand himself. To Troias, that was the only pure motivation; anything less was just too easy to abuse.
He continued his climb, passing the massive, lizard-like drake that represented Earth and Death. It spoke of using violence to protect, to keep what was his secure, but he simply ignored it. Above that, he hesitated briefly when he faced the leviathan, a giant serpent that embodied all three elements from below. The creature called to him, certainly, but the cliff face continued its ascent. He knew that whatever lay above was still calling him, and despite the obvious power the titanic creature offered him, Troias reluctantly turned aside from it and resumed his climb.
Hours or even days passed as he climbed, surrounded by swirling mists. His arms never faltered, and his muscles gave no signs of fatigue in this dream state. He had seemingly endless stamina, and it occurred to him that perhaps this wasn’t a test of strength so much as it was a test of perseverance. He could imagine how easy it would have been to embrace one of the creatures below and accept its obvious power, especially when faced with a rock wall that had no seeming end. Doubts tried to sneak into his mind – had he gone too far? Had he passed the final creature and would now be climbing forever? – but he pushed them effortlessly aside and focused on the moment. He didn’t count his steps, because the only step that mattered was the next one. He didn’t look up to see what lay ahead, since what was important was right in front of him.
At last, the mists cleared, and he clambered up to the top of the cliff face. He stood at last upon firm ground, his feet squarely upon the beginning of a marble path that led up to the very pinnacle of the mountain he had climbed. He took a single step, and as he did, he felt a gentle breeze begin to blow against his face. Another step, and the breeze grew slightly stronger. With each step, the wind picked up speed, until after a dozen steps it was whipping his clothing and forcing him to squint his eyes to see.
Ten more steps, and the wind was a palpable force, trying to push him back down to the edge of the cliff, and perhaps over that edge where he would fall for…who knew how long? Another ten steps, and he was leaning into the wind, his eyes shut to mere slits, his feet sliding on the smooth marble but never seeming to slip backward. He focused on each step, not looking at the peak but just forcing himself to move forward, one step at a time. The wind screamed in his ears, tore at his body, seemed almost ready to lift him from the path and fling him to his probable doom, but he lowered his hands to the ground and almost crawled forward, one step at a time.
