“What now?” Everlyn asked him.
Tom shrugged and sat down in the dirt. “I figured I’d sit here and any wasps that want can sacrifice themselves on me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Everlyn flopped next to him. “I never thought this was how my first two days in the competition proper would go. Sitting around being as good as useless, the entire group being in the same boat — apart from the person our esteemed leader actually nicknamed as ‘Useless’.”
They both laughed.
“Fuck Jeffery,” Everlyn finished. She patted his leg and then almost recoiled when she realised it was his bare skin. “You need to buy some pants.”
“Don’t like a man in shorts?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t mind, but isn’t it cold?”
“Yep. But it’s convenient to kill the wasps.” Even as he said it, his leg flashed, a small body curled up dead and dropped away.
Her hand patted him on the leg again. “I’ll talk to the crafters to see if we can get you something made up.”
“If we had appeared somewhere more normal — you know, with the monsters I expected, wolf equivalent and the like —then getting clothes would have been a lot easier. Can’t imagine them creating anything decent out of insect exoskeletons.”
There was a non-committal grunt from beside him.
“Do you want to tell me about your trial?” Tom asked finally. “I understand they were all different.”
“That’s what the text said.” She grinned. “And everyone I’ve spoken to experienced something unique. Some even had flesh and blood guides.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The theory,” she used her thumb to point behind her back to the shelter, “is that DEUS customised each of them based on long-term potential. If you had a crafter’s personality, you inevitability ended up with someone real to teach you.” She laughed sadly. “Not human, but who cares. Someone to talk to. Some of the lucky ones had multiple merchants to sell to and buy stuff from. There were plenty of times I would have killed for that. Instead, I had my shitty inhuman Alexander.”
“Your DEUS representative?”
Everlyn nodded.
“I would’ve loved to have had people to talk to.”
She chuckled lightly. “Me too.”
“It was so lonely. Inhumane.”
Everlyn swallowed heavily. “It was. But I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“To make us tough psychopaths,” Tom said darkly.
“I disagree. I think it’s like why you don’t have pants. Those solitary tutorials were deliberate. Alexander, I mean having a DEUS representative, the hardship of being by ourselves, the deprivation of food and company, the scenarios that stretched you to your fullest. I believe all of it was to eke out the slightest advantage. I choose to trust in her intentions. And if I accept that, and given who she is, then the only conclusion is that her selection method was necessary. Even if it was basically torture.”
“I spent years wondering whether a group tutorial might have been better. Wondering whether, when we got to Existentia, a collection of loners would ever function harmoniously. Surely small groups who knew each other would outperform individual, battle-hardened vets who couldn’t work together.” Tom shrugged. “I could see why, at face value, structuring the trials like that made sense. The argument seemed to be that solitary tutorials would provide the maximum advantage because you’d get people willing to push through no matter what, self-sufficient demons who would prosper in any environment, but all of it would come at the cost of teamwork. I always wondered if that trade-off was worthwhile.”
“We’re working together.”
Tom looked back at the camp. The structures they had put in place were functioning. The limited wasp-proof clothes had been handed out to the guards and gatherers, and they worked out here. Inside the shelter, everyone was processing the bee corpses. On the surface, it was an impressive display of solidarity. “Yep.” Tom agreed. “We’re working well now, but we didn’t have a choice. We’ll see what happens when stuff goes to shit.”
“You’re so negative.”
He bit down on the curse word that almost slipped out. “I’ve spent a long time with only myself for company.”
“So did I.”
“I know.” Tom put a single arm around her and gave her a one-handed cuddle. “You were the fourth to arrive.”
“That’s very stalkerish.”
“What was that, twenty-five years in solitude?”
The playfulness vanished. “Yeah, about that.” She shook her head. “Too long. Especially by the end.”
“Yep, loneliness got me too.”
They sat in silence.
“I was in a rainforest,” Tom eventually broke the quiet. “Started in a cave that was a safe zone. It exited out midway up a cliff, and none of the local monsters could reach it.”
“I was on a peninsula.” She laughed. “I thought it was a tropical island for over a year with a nasty mountain on one side. Turns out I was wrong. About a year and a half in, I found a way up the base of the mountain and discovered the land bridge to the mainland. By that stage I had three very poor attempts at canoes and Alexander telling me that if I used them, I would die. Apparently, horrible stuff filled the sea.”
“What else?”
She leant back into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I went through a period of sun baking.”
“Really?”
“Yep. If it wasn’t deserted, it would have been scandalous.”
“Oh.”
She gave a throaty laugh. “God, I missed people.” There was a pause. “Then I get here and had to deal with Jeffrey, and I’m like, ready to ask Alexander to take me back to the trial. I didn’t mean it.”
“You know, on the first day, when I fell over.”
“Yeah, that was cruel.”
“Jeffrey emptied his fate pool to do that.”
There was a dangerous silence. He could feel her tension. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I can sense the amount of fate things have. And he definitely used it. I think Michael can as well. We should ask him sometime. Do you remember everyone turning to look at me? That was fate doing that, and it was all of his pool — every single bit.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“What an idiot. That was an hour before a fight against unknown enemies.” Everlyn said angrily. “Did it affect you because your fate was lower than his, or did you not resist it for some strange reason?”
“I had used all mine already.”
She looked astonished.
“I guessed the insect swarm was going to be problematic. I used fate to get the best for the group, then for me. My whole build is fate-based, and I emptied all of it. It was supposed to give the group a favourable starting location, and then eight died on the first day.”
“I’m surprised you even attempted it,” Everlyn admitted after a thoughtful silence. “I thought fate was expected to be used as a crutch to improve luck in combat, publicly manipulate your enemies, and cheat at dice, or that sort of stuff.”
“And to enhance the loot you get from DEUS’s gifts.”
“Drat,” she lightly hit her leg. “I can’t believe I forgot that, especially since it was like the only thing I actively used Fate for in the trial.”
“Fate’s more than that.”
“This is when you tell me something mind-blowing and I reassess my entire existence in the tutorial.”
“Pretty much.”
She laughed. Grabbed his hand and clutched it tightly like you would in a scary movie. “Okay. Ready. Hit me with it.”
“With this lead up–”
“Spit it out,” Everlyn interrupted.
“As I said, Fate is powerful. I’m sure you used it on DEUS’s loot portals.” She nodded. “And noticed how much better the rewards were.”
“Yes. I hated when I got to the end of a titanic battle with my fate pool empty and instead of getting a magical quiver, I would end up with a legendary sewing needle.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“It made me take up tailoring. Which I guess became a relaxing way to spend the time when I wasn’t hunting.”
“How high did you get?”
“That’s very personal, Mister.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
She thought about it. “Fine. You first.”
“I…” he put his hand on his chest. “Got the tier 2 Wood Whittling skill to level five.”
She burst into laughter. “Is that seriously your best crafting skill?”
Tom nodded, smirking.
“Well, an agreement is an agreement. I raised my Tailoring to 25. It’s a tier three skill,” she clarified hurriedly reacting to his unimpressed look.
“Wow, that’s damn impressive. It must have hurt to lose that.”
“I’m sure I’ll buy it again at some stage, but yeah it was upsetting, but only a little. The other options I took were superior. Now, back to important stuff.” She squeezed his hand. “You were about to shock and awe me.”
“Yeah, so the reason Fate is so incredible with loot portals is because they are random. There are literally millions of different options that might emerge, and fate is very good at changing arbitrary outcomes. It thrives when there’s lots of unknowns.”
“I know that.”
Tom chuckled. “I’m getting there. If you think about it, lots of things are not certain. In battle, whether the unihorn-rabbit is going to spring left or right. In dice, whether it’s going to tip over to end up as a six instead of a two, but even in those situations, fate needs to do a bit of work. The rabbit’s not balanced perfectly, or terrain will make the left jump more likely, or other people watched that die roll. They’ll see when it balances on the edge and falls unnaturally in your favour. Of course, if they can’t see the die at all because they’re looking elsewhere, then it doesn’t matter how unnatural that last motion is, and you’ll need less fate to get the same result.”
“I guess that could be right,” Everlyn conceded. “Wrong on Earth but here.” She shrugged.
“Anyway, Fate can have the greatest impact against something that is unknown. For example, if you’re the first person to find a dungeon, then who’s to know what’s in there?”
“The GODs.”
“Stop interrupting.” He nudged her shoulder playfully. “A few facts about fate. Providing a mortal sapient does not know about what’s in question, then as far as fate is concerned, nothing knows, and so you don’t have the resistance to change fighting you. You will still have to pay fate to get what you want; it’s just there won’t be an extra loading.”
Tom stopped talking for a moment and was briefly lost in her eyes. She was following his words with rapt attention. He coughed self-consciously. “Just say you see a mushroom from the distance that can either be incredibly valuable or worthless. You’re the first person to see it, and you can therefore use fate to bias the odds in your favour that it will be the precious variety. When you do so, the non-sapient bear that just sniffed it does not change your odds, and nor do the GODs.”
“I don’t believe the bear would have no effect. It makes no sense. If it has just smelled it, then there’s going to be no confusion. If it was the one we want, the bear would have eaten it, and therefore it must be the worthless variety.”
“Good.” He grinned. “You’re partially right. If a sapient knew the bear was in the area, then that shifts the odds against you, and you will have to use lots of fate to get the result you’re after, because that sapient would have expected the bear to have eaten the mushroom; and therefore, you have to pay the extra loading to combat that expectation.”
“That’s stupid.”
Tom massaged the bridge of his nose. “It’s how it works.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I asked so many questions about this.” Hastily he suppressed the memories that rose, Dux’s amused expression and her patient yes and nos. “I’m certain about this.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
“Good. Basically, fate is acting against other sapients’ expectations. If there’s a new trial, or something like a skill trial, that can be anything, then Fate has the same out-of-proportion impact it has against the loot chests.”
“Unless you use it too often in front of other sapients.”
Tom laughed. “Maybe. If someone has the expectation that you’ve been getting too much luck, then you’ll need more fate to sway the next trial. Likewise, if you’re exploring a wild area and you’re desperate to find a cave and you see a likely hole. Does it have an enemy in it?”
“Always,” Everlyn said knowingly.
“Is it defensible?” he continued, ignoring her interruption.
“Absolutely not.”
“Deep enough?”
“It’s barely a depression.”
Tom stopped and looked at her in annoyance.
“Keep going.”
He refused to say anything.
She bit her bottom lip. “I’ll be good. Pinky promise, no more interruptions.” Everlyn offered the finger, but he ignored it.
“Does it contain a natural treasure?” Tom shrugged. “Who can say?”
“No, it’s always going to have a nasty monster in it.”
“No other sapient has been there recently, so it can be any outcome. Fate can tip it to the result you want. Basically, the less knowledge that is available to you and others, then the further each point of fate goes.” Tom continued his lecture.
“Yesterday,” he resumed, “we were in the middle of nowhere. Weeks deep inside the wildlands. Potentially completely new land that the GODs have just created. It’s possible that no one even knew this plain exists, let alone that it had insects on it and definitely not what type of bugs are here. In fact, the only information any sapients had on the plains was probably ours, and all we got was what we could see looking out of the dome. That only told us that there were these regular spaced mounds of dirt. What’s contained within them was a complete mystery. From a fate perspective, every point was about as powerful as they could get.”
“So you gambled?”
“Yes, I gambled my fate. To get something that could help my aims and help the community survive; and despite that, eight people died.”
She winced.
“I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t done that. Would we be better off if they were vulnerable to fire instead of lightning? More people could hurt the wasps then.”
She squeezed his hand. “I don’t think so. The only reason we survived at the start was that you got thousands of them to attack you, built up enmity to protect the rest of us, and then, somehow, you miraculously managed to survive. Almost all of them were trying to kill you, and eight of us still died. If they were vulnerable to fire, we would have definitely killed more initially, but would we have the numbers to hold off all that was coming.” Everlyn shook her head. “When a couple got through, then what? You can’t use fire near other people.”
“You can if you have sufficient control.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure anyone in the camp has that level of skill. You wouldn’t need many wasps past the fire mages to do a lot of damage if they went around the camp stinging, and that would stretch our healers.” She shook her head. “We only have a chance because you picked up so much enmity and could survive the consequences of it. And I believe no one else could have done what you did to protect your organs.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest otherwise. I was more thinking collective effort could have held them.”
Everlyn shook her head in denial. “No. No.” There was a long silence, then she laughed. “I understand.”
“What?”
“I spent most of yesterday puzzling over our luck. Everything was balanced so precariously, but somehow we got through. You were just strong enough to stay alive. We had just the amount of material to put up a shelter.”
“What? No. There was more than enough material. If push came to shove, we could have packed ourselves in tighter.”
“Irrelevant, and you know it. It all seemed too unlikely.” She exhaled heavily. “I thought SUPREME did something.”
“Nope. He wouldn’t do anything. Everything is balanced on a macro-level. There is no need for them to protect an isolated group of eighty.”
She let go and put her head in her hands. “Shit.”
He could see that she was trembling.
“Shit.” She repeated.
Tom wanted to hug her to comfort her, but was that the right thing to do? Was it being too strong? Socially acceptable. He kept his hands to himself. “We survived. It’s okay.”
“Only because… Fuck!” She smacked the ground and furiously wiped tears away. “I know how strong the wasps are, and I can’t think of any factor of these wasps other than this precise weakness to lightning which would have given us a chance.” She hit the dirt again. “It could have been over like that.” She burst into tears. “You don’t know what I went through to be here. And if you hadn’t… It would have been for nothing.”
Tom realised he was hugging her. He hadn’t even felt his arms moved, and he held her helplessly held her while she sobbed.
“It was almost for nothing.” She sniffled and buried her face into his chest. “We nearly died, and if we had… Then… I would never have seen my babies again.”