Arcane Apocalypse

5 – Knee deep in feces

“Shit, shit, shit, SHIT.”

The entity wasn’t having a good day, it could even be called terrible by most accounts. Well, not that much of the day was that bad. It started quite great actually.

The impregnable barrier shutting off the Cosmic Realm from the wider Cosmos was faltering. The entity knew this for centuries now and counted the days till the time finally came.

It wouldn’t be the first Realm integration he oversaw, even though it turned out to be the most stressful one. Who would have guessed a Realm with no mana in it would be so infuriatingly fragile? It wasn’t like there was a precedent for it. The Cosmic Realm’s barrier not only held mana out, but suppressed anything supernatural. And now it was gone, laws of reality weakened, and everything was rapidly going to shit.

Well, not if the entity had anything to say about it. Still, that fragility was the entity’s primary source of irritation.

[Rankor System; Planet Gawril: Planetary core is absorbing mana at an accelerated rate. Surface will reach terminal temperature in 12 seconds]

[Hergal System; Planet Horl: Planetary core is absorbing mana at an accelerated rate. Planetary crust is fracturing.]

[ … ]

The entity swore again. Why couldn’t this Realm be as nice and easy to integrate into the System as the Beast Realm was? 

If the entity made a single mistake, if its attention and focus stuttered for but a nanosecond, entire star systems could be wiped clean of life.

The pure arcane mana surged into the realm, trying to fill the vacuum that the Realm Barrier’s collapse created. was a ruthless primal force that tore and destroyed if not controlled properly.

[Solar System; Planet Earth: Planetary core has absorbed extreme levels of mana. Planetary evol- ]

“FUCK,” the entity shouted, even as a thousand partitioned strands of his thought stream analysed each and every notification and sent back customised Subroutines with an acceptable solution.

“How the hell?” the entity set aside a single thought strand to look into that particular planet. It had collected far too much mana.

The answer came back a split nanosecond later, and the entity scowled. So that’s where they all went.

Over the years, hundreds, if not thousands, of Users somehow got lost outside of the System’s reach. Some wandered out by themselves, some fell into unstable spatial tears and some just straight up disappeared like a fart in the wind. As no subroutines existed to find such lost souls, it was left to the entity to look for them and find the gap, or gaps they managed to slip through.

Over the millennia, with years devoted to the effort, the entity never caught a trace of a single one of them. Yet, here was this one random planet with 987 recorded bloodlines, all of which matched with one of the lost souls’.

Of course, the System immediately Awakened all of them. It was an automatic function to ensure Users with potential for greatness didn’t die off for some arbitrary reason. Like a silly Cosmic Realm suppressing their very nature. That function was probably why the damned planet was moments away from turning into an arcane singularity from all the mana those beings drew in.

While the majority of its mind still worked on stomping out problems as soon as they popped up in the rest of the Realm, the entity set a sizable part of its mind to handle Earth.

“Rifts,” it mumbled. “Alright. It’s too soon for dungeons and they would take too much power to form manually anyway. Set the parameters for Riftmaker at 500%.”

Dumping mana into creating monsters with rifts is just a stopgap. The mana must be calmed before it can wreak havoc across the planet. Dungeons would do that, but to create so many artificially … so much power wasted. 

The entity ran a simulation, then another thousand. The planetary core was too receptive to mana. Perhaps it would even reach S grade in time.

That would be a great thing, if it wasn’t rushing too much. If it evolved so quickly, all that would remain of it by the time it got there would be a steaming fiery ball of mana charged magma.

The entity couldn’t let that happen. ‘Preserve Life’ was the first foundational rule of the System and, as its incarnation, the entity was incapable of even thinking about going against that rule.

“Alright, how should I handle this?” The entity hummed. It only had a short few seconds before the Rifts would be overwhelmed, but stretching those seconds to a few hours was child’s play to the entity. If it wanted, time would stop in the entire cosmos, even. 

Then it got an idea. It would be risky and would require control of mana on the level only the entity itself could manage, but the end results would be … interesting.

The entity quickly got to work.

*****

[Warning, residents of Planet Earth! The planetary core of earth has reached terminal mana density. The destruction of the surface is imminent.]

[Emergency actions will be taken to preserve life. Ready yourselves.]

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Mia jumped up and looked around worriedly like most of the others. The earth shook beneath their feet; the table creaked as the vibrations slid it across the floor and soon they heard the telltale sound of metal shrieking and concrete breaking.

[Worldforger Subroutine Activated]

[Proceeding with terraforming … error. Planetary surface is rapidly expanding. Quelling natural disasters]

[Proceeding with merging … ]

The vibrations were gone without a trace. The moment Mia’s eyes landed on the ‘quelling natural disasters’ part of the notifications, the whole world went eerily silent.

No one dared to speak, no one even dared to breathe.

[Merge complete! Planet Earth has been successfully merged with the Minor Plane: ‘Starhaven Continent Shard’ of the Mystic Realm]

[85 percent of the expanded planar surface is covered … requesting further power to terraform the remaining 15 percent … ]

[Request Denied … searching for alternatives … no compatible Plane found for merging … ]

That can’t be good. Mia thought, her brain barely keeping up with the rapidly arriving notifications. 

The planet was … swelling? Or something? With mana? And it had to be patched up with some terraforming and a plane from the mystic realm? Whatever that meant.

Yep. Made sense. The planet was hurt, so it got a band aid stuck onto its hurty bits. That totally made sense.

[Access granted to directly manifest Dungeons. Proceeding … ]

[Dungeons Created … surface coverage is at 100% … quelling mana surge … rerouting leylines … ]

[All issues have been resolved. Worldforger is terminating.]

Mia finally breathed as some unknowable pressure that settled around the room, and perhaps the entire goddamned planet, disappeared without a trace.

“Good God,” one man whispered as he drew a cross with trembling fingers. 

“What the fuck?” Someone said and was quickly echoed by most of the rest.

Jeff cleared his throat, still looking as stoic and menacing as always. “This changes nothing. We-“

“How could this not change anything?” A younger man shouted. Mia noticed his eyes were wide and his hands shook still. “Some alien system just fucking terraformed the planet! After it informed us that it would have fucking exploded otherwise!”

“This. Changes. Nothing.” Jeff said with a glare. “We still need food. We are still in the same building. Our biggest worry is still superpowered burglars. This changes nothing. Calm. Down.”

Mia felt strangely calm, perhaps she just went right back into a shock just after she stumbled out of the previous one. 

Above everything else, she felt tired. She almost died twice in the last hour, if the system notifications could be believed — not that she thought something that could terraform a planet on a whim had any need to manipulate her. Hell, it could probably brainwash her without a problem. She even got knowledge implanted right into her mind so it wasn’t much of a stretch.

Mia felt a bone-deep weariness spread through her body. She wasn’t built for dealing with stuff like this. I want my boring office job back. I swear I won’t complain about my moronic team again. Let this all just be a dream.

“I’m going to catch some sleep,” she whispered as she passed by Jeff, then weaved her way out of the room and practically sprinted up to the apartment.

By the time she slammed the door shut behind her, she was heaving. Mark gave her a concerned look, but she didn’t care. Mia stomped over to her room, shut the door and threw herself into bed.

Only then did she remember to kick her shoes off and free her legs and chest from their prison, those being her jeans and bra, respectively. She threw both to the side.

“I’m sleeping. Don’t wake me up,” she shouted, then closed her eyes. The day’s stress caught up with her, and Mia was snoring not a minute later.

*****

Mia groaned, still half asleep. Light shone right at her face. She rolled around, but the damage was done and her dream slipped through her fingers.

She cracked open her eyes, still unwilling to get out of bed. Looking around, she couldn’t find her phone. She squinted, trying to get used to the darkness in the room … wasn’t she just getting some light shone in her face? Whatever. Need a coffee.

She reached over to the nightstand to turn on the tiny lamp. Finding the switch took a few seconds of fumbling as always, but when she managed to finally turn the switch, the lamp refused to light up.

Mia groaned, and with an annoyed grumble rolled out of bed. Then the room’s ceiling lamp similarly refused to turn on.

Mia had a sinking feeling. The power was out … when she opened the door and came face to face with a dwarf wearing only XXS boxers slumped on the kitchen-table, did yesterday’s events come crashing back into her mind.

Then what the hell was that light that woke me up? She frowned, then shrugged helplessly. This was the least weird thing on the list of weird things she started compiling just yesterday. Magical night flies? Maybe a wisp? Ah, I can’t bring myself to care.

The dwar- Mark was snoring loudly. Mia shook her head, the world might have turned upside down, but the more things change the more some things stay the same.

If anything, becoming a dwarf only made his snoring even worse. Probably because he had a deeper voice now. Oh well, whatever.

Mia snuck over to the fridge, careful not to wake her roomie. He was annoying, but he was technically family. Cousin once removed something something. Not that there was ever any familiarity between them. They just both needed roommates, and Mark’s father worked it out with Mia’s mom right after she got out of college. 

That was three years ago, and despite both of them making more than enough money to rent a place of their own, they stayed in the shared apartment to save money. It wasn’t like either of them had any significant other to move in with.

The fridge was big and as such, far from full, but it was like day and night compared to what her fridge looked like while she was in uni. There was at least food in there, with some variety, and prepared warm food for a week.

She snatched up a lukewarm cola and gently closed the door. Standing before the window, she cracked open the Cola, sipping on it as she watched figures move in the darkness below.

It was probably somewhere around midnight, and with the dark coulda having fucked right off after they turned her into a budget store elf, the moon and stars once again hung in the sky and illuminated the night.

The sky was beautiful, revealed in its natural beauty for the first time above the town. No power meant no light pollution, after all. It was a tiny silver lining, second only to magic now, being somewhat real, but one had to find joy wherever they could.

Mia’s gaze drifted away from the sky and down to the dark street, where dark figures moved about under the cover of the twisting and turning shadows.

Why are there so many people out and about this late? Mia wondered with a frown. As she focused on them, her hearing cleared up and the inaudible murmurs coming from the distance cleared up.

The problem was, she couldn’t understand a single thing and not because the locals spoke German with an atrocious accent for once. No, that was not German, nor any language she knew of but low growls and barks mixed with chittering cackles here and there.

The dim light caught one of the forms as it scuttled up onto a parked car and Mia took in a sharp breath. It was wrong. Mia had seen humanoid cats, dwarves and even a pint-sized man she assumed was a gnome of sorts so the sight of the tiny humanoid by itself was hardly what sent a shiver down her spine.

It was the eyes it had, those sunken yellow eyes nestled within a green face so ugly not even a mother could love it. 

As if sensing her gaze, the thing looked up, right into Mia’s eyes. Its gaze held a malicious intelligence, primal as it was, and the sense of wrongness Mia felt became overwhelming.

It grinned, lipless green mouth peeling back to reveal rows upon rows of sharp needle-like teeth drenched in fresh blood. It let out a shrill screech she heard even hundreds of metres away.

Mia caught herself and threw herself to the floor, breaking the line of sight with the monster.

What the fuck was that? Mia took a shuddering breath, a breath that caught in her throat when her mystically enhanced hearing heard the mad cackle of the little green beast cut off with a pained scream, then fall silent.

More and more sounds cleared up as she opened herself up to them. Flesh tearing, pained whimpers, growls, cackled, metal on metal, glass shattering … crying and very human begging. Even some gunshots that echoed from the distance.

Mia swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. She took another peek, just a quick glimpse, then shrunk back behind the wall with her heart racing.

The shadows still made it hard to make out the forms, but combined with the sounds, she could form a rudimentary picture: chaos.

She didn’t know what kind of beings were down there, but they were fighting, and mostly each other and not humans. The human crying was barely a little blip on her radar when the streets were a battleground for as far as she could hear and see.

Mia felt a mental nudge and found her attention drifting. It was a little thing, non-intrusive and gentle, like a polite knock on the door of her mind.

Following it was intuitive, and when she opened the mental door to see what was up, a list of new system notifications popped up in her vision.

[WARNING! New Level 5 Rift ‘Skypeaks’ formed within your vicinity]

[WARNING! New Level 5 Rift 'Earthen Burrows’ formed within your vicinity]

[WARNING! New Level 5 Rift ‘Swarming Sewers’ formed within your vicinity]

[WARNING! New Level 10 Rift ‘Forest of the Wolf King’ formed within your vicinity]

[WARNING! Due to rapidly rising ambient mana levels, all nearby Rifts are overflowing. Ready for combat!]

[Due to your continued training, you have increased an attribute]

[Spirit Attribute: +1]

Shit. Mia closed her eyes, but the dreadful notifications remained until she sent them away with a mental nudge. 

Soooooo, the rifts were spitting out monsters now. Why did she have to be right when she least wanted to? Even so, weren’t stupid dungeon monsters supposed to stay in the dungeon?

Well, maybe they did, but the system distinguished between dungeons and rifts. It talked about the prior more like stable, permanent things while the latter … she wasn’t sure. What were rifts? Why did they exist? Somehow, they were supposed to calm the mana or something, is what she got from the notifications.

“Doesn’t matter,” she huffed under her breath. “They are real. As are the monsters they are spawning. Doesn’t matter why they are doing it.”

The military will kill them. That's why we have them, why we pay our damned taxes. The thought felt weak even to her. Every line of communication was fucked beyond maybe some of the top of the line military stuff they kept buried beneath tonnes of reinforced concrete and behind EMP proof faraday cages. She would bet the military wasn’t even aware that monsters were eating their citizens alive in her little town.

Even if they did, she wagered larger cities were in even deeper shit. Hell, she didn’t want to know what monsters would spawn up in the Alps. Didn’t old legends always say dragons lived up there? No? Or was that in Scandinavia? Either way, we seem to be utterly fu-

The window shattered just centimetres above her head, sending a rain of sharp shards of glass down on her as she instinctively wrapped her arms around her head.

Mia cried out in pain as she felt several shards piercing her skin and others drawing bloody lines over them. Few even struck her thighs.

Mia heard a caw, then the flap of wings and the glass shards being sent flying by an unnatural wind. It was all quickly followed by a high-pitched scream coming from the table as her idiotic roommate woke up and promptly fell out of his chair.

Opening her eyes, with her arms still up around her head and her legs hugged close to her chest, Mia saw it. A Bird, standing in the middle of the room like an imperious feathery tyrant. It radiated the same wrongness as the little green monster.

More importantly, it had feathers made of what looked like steel, and its beady black eyes stared right back at her. 

Those eyes spoke of a malicious intelligence hidden in that small body and promised a painful death.

Mia’s heart raced, sending adrenaline surging through her veins. The pain from the glass shards piercing her skin dimmed into an echo while her mind went into overdrive. Anxiety and panic that plagued her all day disappeared as if it was nothing but an illusion.

She’d always been that way. Be it exams, job interviews or other anxiety inducing events, she stressed about it like an idiot until the moment of the event itself. The moment she stepped foot into the exam hall or shook the hand of the interviewer, only an eerie calm remained.

Staring at the bird- no, the monster, she felt that familiar calm settle over her mind, the only reminder of her prior feelings were her trembling hands. It didn’t matter, her body never was her greatest asset, it was her mind.

Not that she knew whether it would be enough to save her today.

She dove for the couch, wanting to put some cover between herself and those glinting feathers.

The monster clicked its talons on the floorboards, watching on as she gracelessly flopped behind the couch.

Then it let out a shrill screech that made Mia dizzy, after which it wasted no time and pounced.

Thus began Mia’s first fight for her life. First of many more to come.