The Gaping Maw

John checked his smartphone as he ran. The connection was dead, but the internal clock worked well enough still. “We’ve been away for three hours?” he said out loud. That didn’t sound right, but when following a voice through the dense jungle, time drifted by mercilessly. The position of the sun agreed with the reading.

They slowed down shortly before they reached the shoreline. John was not sure what they would find, but he did not want to incur Gaia’s Ire. Bad luck was the last thing he needed right now.

He heard the screams echo through the silent jungle before he and Rave broke through the underwood. All signs of their Abyssal background hidden, they ran towards the survivors camp. Little had changed about it since they had landed. Tents had been put up and, judging by the wrappers lying about, nutrient bars had been distributed at some point.

John soaked in all the details, while looking around for someone, anyone, who was not in some kind of pain. In the first moment, he saw two different kinds of reactions to whatever Izha had done. One was the screaming. People were pounding their heads into the sand, letting out every bit of air that could fit in their lungs in horrific screeches of agony. The other was more immediately distressing: seizures.

More than half of the survivors were spasming, settling on the ground with frothing spit forming at the mouth. John clenched his teeth and considered his options. What could he do? Nothing. He could do nothing, lacking all of the medical equipment that mundanely would have aided in the recovery of seizure victims, he could do nothing but watch.

‘In moments like this, I fully understand Romulus,’ the Gamer thought, trying to at least assure that no one drowned on their own fluids. He considered pouring the healing potions he had in his inventory down the throats of as many people as he could. That invited a danger he could not face. ‘Why would Gaia not kill him for this?’

The answer manifested itself over the next 30 minutes.

No one died.

Past that point, when everyone had screamed themselves hoarse, one by one, the people recovered. They remained passed out or unresponsive from the exhaustion, but the truth of the matter remained. No one had died. It was incredibly relieving and alarming. John had a hunch that he confirmed quickly.

All of them, every single one of the survivors, safe for one of the children, had become an Abyssal. Their auras all were bright and ignited. There were power differences between them, as there always were between a crowd of Abyssals. Observe revealed to him the weakest to be at level 9 and the strongest at level 51.

John sat in the sand, trying to digest what this meant.

“Talk to me, tiger,” Rave requested, seated next to him. “I might be able to ask you some stupid questions that keep your brain running.”

Too shocked, John skipped out on the usual beat of assuring her the questions would not be stupid and just started vocalizing his thoughts, “Obviously, Izha has a method to awaken mundanes to magic. This might be somewhat forgivable to Gaia if he prepared it well enough… Since he was confident that he would not be punished for it, I have to assume he did.”

“How would he have done that?” Rave asked.

John chewed on his thumb for a bit. The lower front teeth hit the nail with soft tacks. There was only one answer, ludicrous in scale but completely possible here. “He already had enough control over the flight network to make sure we were booked, so he could potentially have made it so the only people with us on the flight, even the pilots, were people he had pre-screened for his experiment. What I do not get is… what for?”

“Can’t parasitize the mundanes?” Rave suggested.

“But then why are they still normal?” John asked. His contact lenses shifted to magical sight, searching for any of the signs of Lorylim infection. He found none, not even the mildest trace, neither on the people nor any of the nutrient bars they had consumed. “I’m piecing together a picture… Izha’s work with alchemists, his contacting of summoners through corrupted processes, attacking the Gestalt guilds… Izha was trying to further his mastery over his power with some goal in mind, but what? Just widespread awakenings of potential Abyssals?”

“How does the **** Zone fit into that?” Rave wondered.

“It doesn’t. That was Tiamat’s project, I understand… the two aren’t always aligned…” John stopped biting his thumb. “Is he keeping secrets…? But to what end would he…? Or is this just to prevent Gaia from coming down on him full ****? A first batch to test the theory to… SHIT!” The Gamer kicked sand in impotent rage. “If he’s willing to die for it, if he prepared long enough for it, he could turn entire swathes of the mundane population into fodder against us!”

“…Fuck, John, what about your parents?! What about Hailey’s parents!?”

The only reason why John’s stomach did not knot up at the mention was that the thought had already crossed his mind. Stress reached a level where his calm in the face of danger kicked in and he simply and grimly stated, “We can only wait until we get off this island. No amount of worry will change reality.”

“So that’s our whole plan? Sit around?” Rave asked, surprised.

“No. Once we have verified what is happening with everyone here, we’ll try to uproot the Lorylim influence over the island. It is evident that Izha’s telepathy is not absolute. If we can destroy the local infestations, then his reach may be limited enough that we can get messages through again.”

“I could start with that now?” Rave offered. “No need for both of us to sit about here.”

He held her by the arm before she could jump to her feet. “Two reasons not to,” he told her. “First and foremost, I do not trust that whatever they have in store here is not strong enough to stand up to us. The **** Zone proved that the Lorylim could get absurdly powerful if given enough time and this one had a very long time. Second reason is that it makes little to no difference how swift we act. At maximum speed, the Boating Seaquence can go consistently at 140 knots and even that will take them over a day just to get to our last known position.”

“So, what, we are doomed to do… nothing?”

“Sometimes, you just gets outmanoeuvred and all you can do is watch as your opponent makes their prepared move.” John lamented every word of saying that, but no matter how much he hated it, physical reality was such. The only way he could have prevented this was to live his life at an even greater degree of paranoia. That would have given Izha other angles to exploit, no doubt.

“I hate that,” Rave muttered, but remained put.

It only took a few more minutes for the people to stir from their exhausted coma. The higher-levelled individuals woke up first. There was no defining characteristic between them beyond that. The rest of the people awoke afterwards, with the one child that remained apparently mundane being the only one not to wake up in time.

“What the fuck just happened?!” the female pilot that John had been dealing with shouted, her calm that she had held so far finally breaking. “I had… the most horrible headache in the world…?” She looked around, into the confused faces of the others. They nodded along, some breaking it into their own rants. Hysteria was held back by the next thing she voiced, “Now I feel… fantastic?”

“You should,” John grabbed everyone’s attention with those two simple words. He stood now and was, alongside Rave, the only one to do so. They were also the only ones around who weren’t utterly confused.

To make sure he wasn’t interrupted, he let his emotions manifest as an aura. There were no mundanes here anymore. In their place were several dozen new Abyssals, all of them in need of guidance that he had to give them despite his foul mood and fear for the future. He swallowed all of that and focused on manifesting an aura of calm confidence. He did not have to fake it. The cold, calculating part in him had run the math on this or similar scenarios many, many times before. At his current level, he believed he would ultimately win.

He just had to prevent himself from considering what he would lose in the process.

“It is my questionable pleasure to inform you that magic is real,” he told all of them, “and that all of you were now dragged into the layer beneath reality where we use it. We call it the Abyss, for it is vast, dark, and often untamed. It is a world where laws are hard to enforce and where the creed that every man is created equal can no longer be followed.”

John extended a hand to the right. His fingers curled to allow the three Arc Rays that shot from the tips to meld with each other into a silver beam of condensed mana. The sand was sliced and melted simultaneously, then water turned into steam, lightning crackling within. After dismissing the spell, John put his hand back into his pocket.

“You will have many questions, to which I can give a few answers. Why did this happen to you and how did it happen, I cannot answer with confidence. It seems you were dragged into my affairs, but also that you are only the first of many more who will get pulled into the Abyss because it is the opportunity. As for who I am, my name is John Newman and I am the…” he hesitated for a moment. “…the ruler of Fusion, the guild – or state – that lays claim to most of North America. By proxy, all of you are now under my protection.”

He let those words sink in for as long as they needed to. He half expected confused shouts of disbelief, but between his aura, his show of power, and the uncertainty that came with being part of a large crowd, everyone around was docile in their acceptance of the situation. It never ceased to worry John how swiftly entire lives could turn around. It took less than a minute to explain to someone that everything had changed, if there was the **** to back it up.

“You will find that many if not all of your old aches are gone. Mana now courses through your system, transcending biological restraints. Low level Abyssals can typically perform on the level of an Olympian. If you make it off this island, you will likely find your bodies to change quite quickly. Muscle will be easier to gain, fat easier to lose – and all of that is amazing. However, take heed. I did say this was a dangerous world and all the superhuman powers you now have, others have as well and such might often leads to **** between mankind and there is far, far worse out there than mankind. To keep the mundane world separated from the tyrannical hand of those born with too much power, the supreme deity Gaia punishes those that would bring magic to the regular people. Which brings me to a question of my own… do any of you have experience with the supernatural? A show of hands, please.”

The first hand rose quickly, the second more hesitantly, but one after another all hands went up. After that, he asked a selection of them a few more direct questions on who, what and when.

The connective tissue there was evident after just three people. Everyone had been encountering supernatural hints over the past year. They had ramped up over the months, a slow boil exposure that ranged from odd happenings around the house to outright ghost meetings. Izha had prepared them quite well. How he had known to pick those that had Abyssal potential was a mystery likely answered by his powers. A telepath with the same degree of potential, and more of it realized, than John himself was… terrifying.

It made John wonder if there was a thought he had that Izha was not privy to. What was the nihilist aiming for? It sounded like he wanted to be remembered, a paradoxical yet quite common goal for nihilists.

Their shared supernatural experiences gave them something to bond over, which aided further in them remaining calm. John was quite happy to exploit that, pulling his aura away and letting people experiment with the newfound magical powers. There was a brief moment of surprise when Siena rose from the shadow of the pilot, but beyond that nothing much was said.

John walked over to the still **** child. He was breathing, laying in the arms of a concerned mother. “Why is he still out cold?” she asked him.

‘I don’t know for certain,’ was the true answer. It was not one that would keep her calm. He formulated a theory carefully, “In the Abyss, a late awakening of abilities usually speaks to the powers being stronger. That is for natural awakening, which all of you all must have gone through at some point in your childhood without knowing. If he was not made to awaken yet… he may be destined to be quite powerful indeed.”

Those words created a little spark of hope in the eyes of the mother. A joy that John would not have taken from her by informing her how slim the chances were that they all made it out of this. A plane crash was nothing compared to the fight that would be had on this island.

Izha would not let them go easily. John planned to challenge him ahead of time, but there was no doubt that, once his girls were close, the human part of the Lorylim hivemind would let the leash on the primordial creature slumbering here slip. A Lorylim, a true Lorylim, not the chimeric abomination that they had become.

Before John went to face that, he needed to prepare the best shelter he could for these people.