Chapter 14 – Preparations are Finished.

“Here’s what I think happened,” said Shart preparing for another discussion. “When Filly, he’s one of my best friends, realized he lost his hat he must have started looking for it and obviously we have a bond like Jim and Dalton.”

“Uh huh,” I replied as I checked the edge on a sword.

“So, he broke into Limbo, again, easy for him, and went through my secret dungeon and found it,” said Shart.

“Because your pocket dimension links to Limbo,” I asked, trying to make sure.

“Of course, all demonic energies flow into limbo which is an infinite plane of madness making everything there impossible to find,” said Shart.

“But what about all the traps,” I said absently.

“For an explorer like Filly, child’s play. It was like I just left the hat in the middle of the noobie treasure room and he just plucked it out,” said Shart.

Shart was underselling his treasure room of course, it had been an elaborately built dungeon with every trap the demon could think of inside of it.

“I liked the minecar ride,” I said.

Shart harumphed. “I figured he would have at least taken that, but he clearly went through some hitherto unknown path to get to his prized hat.”

“Which was in a little shrine to Filly,” groaned Badgelor.

“That’s Fillidelphia to you, you mangy rug!” spat Shart. “It was not a little shrine, it was just a place to keep my important stuff.”

“Like the plaque of that cat,” I offered.

“You leave my delicious pastry out of this,” growled Shart.

I shook my head.

“And you aren’t just going to check your logs?” I asked.

“Hardly, then I’d know how he did it. This is the most fun I’ve had in centuries,” said Shart. “Imagine, getting tomb raided by the ultimate tomb raider. Badgelor could learn a few things about sneaking around from Filly.

“It's been days,” groaned Badgelor.  “I can’t take much more of this.”

“I’m just waiting on Shart to wind down,” I said, tightening the straps on my new armor.

“You both suck,” muttered Shart who vanished back into my mindspace momentarily to review the floorplan of his mega dungeon again.

· Lucy: Anti-Charles armor.  Defense: 204. Magical Resistance 85%.

o Magical Absorption: Magic based damage will increase the users’s Strength

o Barrier Amplifiers: Barriers cast through this armor will be 100% stronger for the first 5 seconds.

“Who is Lucy,” asked Badgelor.

“She hates Charles,” I said, “Tries to kill him all the time, and he keeps letting her try.”

“Oh, I like her,” grinned the badger.

“I figured you would,” I said, extending the twin pairs of fighting claws I’d attached the the wrist of the armor.  Way of the Badger was primarily unarmed, but when you did fight with weapons they were supposed to be fighting claws.  The Badgerine would be proud.

“Any luck with those swords,” asked Badgelor.

“They are all great, high level, end game weapons,’ I said, glancing over at the pile I’d made.  “And none of them are going to scratch Charles.”  Badgelor looked at the few weapons that Shart hadn’t torn apart for enchanting materials and sighed.

“I appreciate the thought,” said the badger, “But I knew I wasn’t going to survive this going in.  I can kill Charles if I eat that shard of his and that’s what I’m doing.”

I nodded.  I wasn’t happy about it, but Badgelor was just done.  He’d lived for a millenia and had one last thing on his bucket list before he checked out.  He was the last War Badger, last of his entire species, and when he went their fire would be gone from the world.  It was sad, but there was a depth of strength there I couldn’t overcome.

This was all he had.

“Done,” grunted Shart, dropping the whip into my hands.

“Is this the official Fillidelphia Badgington whip?” I asked looking at the hilt. It had a small picture of a very handsome man wearing a fedora on it.

“Partially, I disassembled that, the actual whip they come with is kid safe, and used the grip on Doug’s whip,” said Shart. “Which I then upgraded.”

· Flaming Whip of Agony:  4-24 base damage, 4-24 flaming damage, Advanced Binding.

o Enchantment: Magical Disruption.  Strikes from this weapon will damage magical barriers at a ten to one ratio.

“I was hoping for more,” I said, snapping the whip several times.

“Grab something with it,” said Shart.  I looked around, we were still in the same long straight hallway that was causing my skin to increasingly feel like it was a size too large.  I spotted one of the demon swords Badgelor had stolen and snapped it up with the whip.

· Skill Learned:  Writhing Bind, your weapon will cut and maim as long as you are using it to bind a target.  Skill Rank: Journeyman due to Weapon Master.  Base damage is 75% of normal damage.

· Skill Learned: Quick Bind, you can execute a Binding attack on every strike with your weapon.  Journeyman rank benefit: You can release a Binded target instantly.

I considered that for a moment and activated Hack and Slash.  Each time I struck the sword the weapon was bound for an instant, causing the Writhing Bind effect to activate.  Each activation increased the base damage of the attack by 75%, and I could do it twenty times in a single attack for a truly awesome amount of damage.

It also sapped my stamina bar.

· Binding Hack and Slash:  20 attacks, total cost 480 Stamina.

“Dang, I wish I had that vs the Sphinx,” I thought, stretching out my arm.  I had enough stamina to do that several times, but even I had limits.  Channeling that much stamina into an attack was taxing beyond what the physical numbers described.

“Are we ready?” I said as I drew the anvil back into my personal storage.

“Not that I mind,” said Badgelor, loading a few alchemical items into his pouches that I’d made, “but you got a lot better at crafting than I remembered.”

“I earned some skill points,” I replied cautiously.

“The smelly Dum Dum is lying,” said Shart reappearing and wrinkling his nose.

“Obviously, spill it,” said Badgelor, expanding to war form to bring his head level with my own.

“I absorbed the Walker of Siers,” I said.

“His mana,” asked Shart, horrified.

“And his mana,” I continued, smiling uncomfortably.

Shart looked at me for a long moment, then hopped into my mind space and started rummaging around.  “Found him, I wondered what that smell was.”

“Seriously, Jim.  That’s all kinds of fecked up,” said Badgelor.

“He’s not really there, it is just bits of his essence and all of his memories kind of spread out in a room,” I said.  “I look in there when I want to build something and it really helps.”

“So much paperwork,” said Shart as he reappeared and groaned.  “You didn’t get everything, but you actually stripped off his class module partially intact, that’s not supposed to be possible outside of the machine.”

“Oh, thank goodness, I thought I ate his soul,” I said.

“No, your body only has room for one intact soul. If you took some shadow damage their might have been room for more, but your soul is at 100% like a normal person. You did get all of his rather distorted memories and skills,” said Shart.  “The skills are more directly transferable, as your existing soul at least has a processing scheme for them.”

“What about the class module?” I asked.

“I have no idea, it is currently attached to your soul and I’ll try to snip it off next time you go through a demon door,” said Shart. “We obviously have a way to process the removal of class modules and I can suppress one if I try but I’ve never had to remove one off of an intact soul in the field before.”

“Will that be a problem?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Shart. “Your biggest problem in the short term are the memories. You are going to have to process them eventually. When you do, you and the Walker will start blending together if you aren’t careful. “

“And that would be bad,” I said.

“Your mind can’t handle two sets of memories,” said Shart considering. “It would be like skill knowledge; you just know it like you learned it. Those memories of Walkers will eventually just be part of your memories and you won’t be able to tell the difference between them and your other memories.”

“My personal memories?” I asked, shocked.

“They are all your memories now,” said Shart. “It is just some are from a different point of view.”

“I don’t like that, I don’t want anything to mess with my memories,” I thought, it would destroy me if I lost any memories of my wife or children.

Shart shook his head, “You’d adapt, but I’ll put in some firewalls to try to keep you separate.  There is a Memory skill that will allow you to separate them.”

· You have gained the skill Memory Mansion:  You can compartmentalize memories for ease of storage and repair broken memories.  You are an amateur.  You can sift out memories that are alien to you.

“Alien memories?” I asked, locking away all of the Walker’s personal memories.  With a mindspace, that was easier to do than you would suspect. I decided to leave the skill memories intact, I needed those to be able to access his crafting skills and I figured they wouldn’t be able to do me much harm.

“There are ways to gain other beings' memories,” said Shart who thought for a moment, “Or modify people’s memories.”  I considered that, given what Bashara had been trying, she might have done that to me.  I focused and found several memories that were damaged dealing with my family on Earth.

“Don’t do that now,” said Badgelor.  “Wait till you have time to deal with it.”

That made sense, I was never very close to my wife or children despite how much I felt like I loved them at times.  I missed my wife most, but only in the most basic sense like I was sad she wasn’t around. My new skill caused a spike in that knowledge, there was a damage marker there.

Why is there a stump?

Bashara may have damaged my memories when she was poking around. I’d have to deal with the current situation first, then deal with the damage Bashara caused. The problem was I didn’t know what she did so I didn’t know how angry I should have been. If I found out something she did made me misremember, I’d never forgive her.

Shart tossed several items into his mouth then climbed back onto my shoulder.  Badgelor likewise gathered up the pile of demonic components and climbed onto my other shoulder.

“Ready?” I asked.

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” said Shart uncomfortably.

“Have you never been here?” I asked.

“No one sane goes to the Shadow Realm,” said Shart.

“I’ve only been there once, it was very bad,” said Badgelor.  I glanced over at the badger.  What he considered bad most sane people would consider horrific.

“We are just going there to save Jarra,” I said as we reached the end of the hallway.  I glanced back to the other exit where the Nothing stood waiting.  It couldn’t be worse than that.

“Don’t worry about that, I marked another way out,” said Badgelor.  “We won’t be going back through Jersey.”

There was a script written on the door, I pondered it for a moment.

“Abandon all hope,” said Shart.  Now that he’d said it out loud, I could sort of recognize the letters.  I glanced back at the other entrance where a sign saying ‘Welcome to Hell’ was prominently displayed.

’Abandon’ was written in <system> and ‘Welcome’ was written in Demonic. Now that I could see the two across from each other the similarities in the script were obvious. I wondered if my Demonic Lore skill is what started me on the process to learning the admin skill and the ability to read <system>.

No time for this.

Activating my anti-magical aura and throwing on an invisibility cloak I lifted from a demon, I stepped into the Shadow Realm.

A waiting horror sat just outside the door, but with my fields active it only stirred for the briefest of moments.  This Nothing was the big brother to the Nothing on the other side. It was massive with 64 legs and 16 jaws. The two smaller guardians with it were also larger than the Nothing in Jersey.

“So super hell,” I muttered.

The gateway on this side was not on the side of a building, We were on the side of a massive cliff that seemed to go on forever.  On top of the cliff was a twisted wall that covered the top.  The only reason you could tell the difference between the two was because the ‘natural’ stone wasn’t bleeding shadows.

Jersey, which was supposed to be hell, looked like somewhere out of a Mad Max movie.  Destroyed piles of civilization scattered over a chemical plant would have been my best descriptor.  It was utterly terrifying and depressing, and any sane person would consider it the worst place imaginable until you saw Newark. Newark looked so much worse that Jersey seemed nice by comparison.

I leapt off the wall, falling hundreds of logs before using my flight skill to level out and land. Without Shart’s assistance, the landing was loud and I had to dart away from the landing point as dozens of shadowy wolf creatures with 5 legs ran over to the spot I’d left. They sniffed the air and I waited patiently as they looked over their shoulders before they decided to move on.

The massive snarl from the darkness told me it was time for us to move as well.

We walked in silence for minutes, searching the area for a sign of where we were.  As we walked a massive, twisted mutant floated overhead searching the ground for any sign of life.  A tentacle shot down and pulled up a snarling fell beast that was larger than Ultimate Badgelor and yanked it into one of its 13 mouths.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked mentally. Everyone was being careful to not ‘say’ anything out loud.

“The Shadow Realm is a twisted after image of Ordinal, but I didn’t think it was this bad,” said Shart.  “You are in serious danger here, we might need to bail.”

“As long as there is any chance Jarra is alive,” I thought.

“We don’t even know where we are,” thought Shart.

“The Barrier Wall,” replied Badgelor.

“That’s in the Southern Kingdom,” thought Shart looking around.  I was clueless so he continued.  “Remember the donut?”

“That cat you were so fascinated with?” I asked.

“Shut up about the cat, Matt is going to be upset,” growled Shart.

“Who’s Matt?” I asked.

“Probably an admin or something,” said Badgelor.

“He sounds amazing and good looking,” I stated.

“And not very litigious, one would hope,” replied Badgelor.

“Yeah, the map of Ordinal is shaped like a donut. A donut with a bite out of it?” I said.

“I’d like to take a bite out of a donut,” replied Shart.

"Focus you idiots," growled Badgelor.  "The Barrier Wall is in the southwest, way south of Narwal.”

“And Jarra is in Windfall,” I thought.

“Grebthar’s spell wasn’t complicated from what was described to me, he probably just opened a hole in the fabric of creation and slipped the target through,” said Shart.  Basically Ordinal and the Shadow realm were mirrors of each other, if you could travel between the two you’d end up in the corresponding spot, so Jarra was probably in a dungeon near Shadow Windfall.

“Do they have fast lanes?” I asked.

“Nope, the infrastructure for those doesn’t exist down here,” said Shart.  “Even demons don’t want to play down here.”

As I scanned the area I saw a tiny fleck of light appear on top of the wall.  A tiny drop of a soul in this place of horror.  Then a tentacle shot up around it and dragged it away.

“Sometimes something leaks over,” said Badgelor.

“This place is horrible,” I thought as the tiny drop of goodness in this horrible place was devoured.

“This is a bad spot, it's not always this horrible,” replied Badgelor, pointing over a vast ocean of undulating blackness.  “Windfall is that way.”

“What makes it bad?” I asked.

“People,” replied Badgelor.  “More people, the worse it gets.  Lots of energy slips through so the creatures come to feed.”

“Windfall is full of people,” I said, remembering how many people I’d just sent there.

“Whelp, good try, I’ll see if I can figure out a spell to get us back,” said Shart.  “There may be a rift around here I can access. They are usually locked, but I should be able to manage something. Barring that, I could always eat you guys and then go to limbo.  I can probably get Bruce to let Jim out, then he can summon us.”

“We are finding Jarra,” I said.

“Jim,” said Shart sadly, “She’s dead, she has to be.”