002 – What the —

Time to Seal: 07:53

“That is a valid question, I suppose.” Gabriel sounded like she needed a smoke. Before she began her explanation, I found the settings for the chat and enabled transcription, which made her previous remark show up in my chat, and portraits. Next to my line there was an image of my actual, human, face. Gabriel wasn’t exactly biblically accurate. Two gray eyes on a very pretty, very human-looking face, framed by golden locks and topped with an honest-to-god halo.

“Since we don’t have much time, I’ll keep my explanations very brief, so understand that anything I say is focused on what’s essential for your survival, not an extensive explanation of everything you eventually need to know, okay?”

I continued looking through my other menus, but replied with a quick [“Okay.”].

“Hell has invaded your reality and wants to destroy humanity. There are systems in place to prevent this from happening, but they not only circumvented those but were also very well prepared this time. The UI you see and your ability to shapeshift are part of the Blessing’s effort to bolster humanity, to give you a chance at surviving this.”

There was a Task menu, which was grayed out, even though it had an icon for outstanding notifications inside.

“Currently a seal is being placed on this reality. It will both limit the ability of Hell to unleash their power here, and also prevent contamination from spreading to other worlds. This will take about eight hours to fully form. While the seal forms, Hell can absorb the soul of any human who dies. Souls carry power, and they burn them up to unleash more disasters on mankind.”

I had a class called ‘Shapeshifter’, along with a bunch of stats, skills and some perks—

“Eve. Can you please stop messing with your menus for just a second? This is important.”

I closed out of the menu.

[“Yes, ma’am.”]

“Some of what I’ve told you is a metaphor meant to make things easier to digest for you. But what I just said is entirely accurate. Your soul is real, it is eternal, and if you die before the seal is formed, that eternity is gone.”

I started asking what that meant for Mike, but deleted the question. Not the time. Not when the answer was obvious.

[“And if I die after making it through those eight hours?”]

“Your soul will be captured, but preserved. They can no longer destroy it. What happens after is a topic for another time.”

[“You said earlier you did this before. Am I in a time-loop?”]

“No, it happened to other realities. There are many out there and Hell wishes to conquer or destroy them all.”

[“How do I survive the next eight hours then?”]

“There is no fool-proof way, but some patterns we can rely on. Don’t trust anything digital. They brought an entity along with them, called the Wyrm. It is not a demon, it is powerful and it will use mankind’s technology to kill and deceive. It is who called you, impersonating Claire. It—”

[“Stop. How did it know her voice? How do you know her name?”]

“Too complicated for now. I’ll explain later. It’s targeting everyone it can, simultaneously.”

I made an unhappy noise, which sounded far too cute for the situation at hand.

“Besides the Wyrm there are three types of entities out there you have to worry about right now. Demons, like the one who murdered Mike. Very dangerous with unpredictable abilities. After manifesting in your reality they are bound by its laws, so their bodies rely on chemical and physical principles to operate, like any other denizen of this world.”

[“Meaning they’ll die when those principles get violently disrupted?”]

“Correct, but not your concern right now. Those howls you heard are Lesser Demons—Hell Hounds in this case—creatures summoned by demons, created out of thin air. Less powerful than demons, but still very dangerous.”

The memory of the howl sent another shiver through my spine.

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“And finally Created. They are created by the Blessing. There won’t be many right now while the Seal forms, but they will be more plentiful later. They’ll look like anything out of human fiction, myth or legend. Dangerous, but initially far less than the other two. You’ll notice when you see a dangerous one.”

This part made absolutely no sense. I read the transcription over and over again, but I didn’t understand.

[“Why does the Blessing create creatures who are dangerous to us? I thought it is meant to help us survive?”]

“The answer is again complicated, but the short version is that you need experience to grow powerful enough to actually fight back, and they are a source of it.”

[“Monsters we are meant to grind for fucking experience points? Like in some goddamn video game? Are you kidding me?”]

“Yes, exactly like that and not like that at all. I’ll explain later. There are cosmic forces at work beyond your comprehension and some of what I explain is simplified and filtered through metaphor so you can understand. You’ll have to trust me for now.”

The obviously correct and most likely explanation was that I just thought too hard about calling Claire and had given myself an aneurysm. This was all shit my mind was making up in a coma.