Broker
Side Story – Amos 4

“Hey, Amos, I have a favor to ask of you,” a bad imitation of Sonya said.

“What’s that, Sonya? Anything you need, I’m your guy!” Amos said delightedly.

“I need you to go through this magic portal into what I assume is some sort of ultra stable Mythic-tier dungeon, but is actually a fundamental underpinning anchor of the basic laws of reality, and figure out how it works so I can build a portal network!” his poor imitation barked out sarcastically.

“Oh, really? That sounds like a fun challenge! I can handle it, s’pecially with these new powers you got me!” he replied with all the enthusiasm in the world.

“Sure! You’ll have to use the local materials and convert it into resources to create highly sensitive and fragile equipment in order to do your work." His imitation went on.

“Whoop! A bit of a difficulty bump there, but no biggie, I’m a smart guy!” 

Amos’ vision split and shifted down on the right side just a little bit. He frowned at the sensor array he had just finished rebuilding as it split in two with him. His lips formed a line, and he closed his eyes, taking an unnecessary but soothing breath before rounding on the draugr that had cut his head in half. “Really? Really?” he demanded. “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”

His hand shot out before the withered husk of a human could react and speared right through its chest. It crumpled in on itself, its lifeless eyes bulging for a moment before thin lines of metal spread across its skin through its veins. Color left it, and it collapsed into dust before piling soundlessly on the ground. He rolled his eyes and reached up to shift the right side of his head back into place.

“You should have asked for more details, Amos,” he grumbled. “Really, a dungeon?”

He threw his head back. “Sonya! This is not a fucking dungeon!” he shouted.

He sighed and scratched his head. “Ah, well. No problem. I can do this. Just an army of undead viking warriors chasing me everywhere. No problem. Let’s not forget the nightmare beasts from beyond reality, though. They’re definitely not scary at all.”

A siren blared in his head, and he turned, a gun appearing in his hand with a flicker of particulate matter. The old-timey looking raygun’s rings glowed before a blast of radiant light shot out from it and collided with the twisted monstrosity that was slipping out of the wall to his right. The multi-limbed creature shrieked and retreated to nurse its wounds again. “Asshole. Same one too. Keeps bothering me.” He muttered a few curses before shouting at the wall. “I’m spoken for, dickhead!”

Sighing, he drove his fingers into the same wall he’d been working with for a while and began absorbing the strange material it was made of. It didn’t have a normal molecular structure by any stretch of imagination, but it served well enough to convert into pretty much anything, which was nice he guessed. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that the molecules reminded him of a supersized diagram of a Higgs boson. 

Yup, this place is definitely safe and meddling with it won’t have long reaching consequences somewhere out in the universe. It’s fine.

He converted the materials and recreated the sensor, turning it on before recreating the drones that were supposed to be watching his back. He’d long given up using dolls; they weren’t fast enough to deal with the draugrs.

Would have helped if she didn’t drop me right at the bridge where all the creepy crawlies were poking around, he chuckled. Okay, it was pretty funny.

His first reaction to stepping out of what she called the ‘Bifrost’ was to scream as a small army of undead wielding glowing axes charged at him. It took an hour or two to clear them out, which gave him a chance to explore his new powers a bit more. They were very handy. Though he also quickly learned that if he didn’t have high conversion rate materials nearby when he got cut with those magic axes, he was going to bite it pretty quick.

Hence why the platform at the edge of the bridge leading to the mysterious city in the distance was covered in small craters and divots from where he’d absorbed the floor beneath his feet to stay alive. He heard a shriek of metal on metal and looked up to see an axe carving through the wall he had built between the bridge and his workspace. He groaned. “Oh, come on, I just built that! Quit it already! That’s it, I’m setting up turrets.”

He stormed over and speared the latest Draugr before placing both hands on the wall it had cut. The walls dematerialized into a mass of nanites that rebuilt themselves into a pair of stationary rail cannons. They pivoted immediately and began firing down the bridge at the latest crowd of annoyances that were charging towards him. One was immediately knocked off and sent into the terrible void below.

He pursed his lips. “There. That should keep ‘em busy.”

He turned back and walked over to the device he’d set up. It had been placed within just a few feet of the massive ring of discolored stone that served as the ‘actual’ bifrost rather than the pretty rainbow bridge a few feet away. He rubbed his chin as he received a steady stream of data from it. That confirms it. This thing is an integral part of this place. It feels like a load bearing beam or something.

He pulled out his notebook and started scribbling. “...The dimension acts like a dungeon but is fundamentally different. The portal called the ‘Bifrost’ serves as one of several supports that keeps it from collapsing like other dungeons,” he muttered as he wrote. “Readings indicate that the other primary support is inside the city.” He let out a sigh. “Asgard. Because it's really a thing, and I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

He turned away from his sensor and let it keep working while Draugur screamed bloody murder in the background and approached the side of the platform again. He peered down into the darkness before writing more. “The void below is likely infinite. I’m still getting signals from the drone inside despite its descent acceleration reaching speeds comparable to a space probe. There is no drag here despite the atmosphere being breathable. Because that makes sense.”

A roar rose up from within the void, and he frowned. “Oh, yeah, and the squiddly things coming out of the walls are tiny in comparison to the big shit down there.”

He felt a chill wash over him and pulled back from the edge. There it is again, he thought and hustled back to stand near the portal. A sense of foreboding rose in the air, and even the Draugur still trying to mindlessly cross the bridge stopped in their tracks before fleeing back towards the city.

NNNIIIIIIIIDDDDOOHHHHH

The eerie groan rattled everything. It was less a sound and more a pulse of something that rattled the air so much it became sound. It was deep, near the very lowest reaches of what a human ear could process. Whatever it was, it was so big that the light cast by its eye was enough to raise the light level of the enormous chamber that both the platform and the distant city occupied by a few notches.

He closed his eyes and waited, taking deep breaths to steady his heart until the light level dropped and the feeling of foreboding moved on. He let out a sigh of relief and slumped against the wall, pulling his notebook out one more time. “And then there’s the big boss creep in the dark. Pretty sure it’s not actually the anchor monster given the readings I’m getting, which are none.”

He frowned. “Though I suppose it’s possible that it has so much mana churning in it that my designs can’t pick it up. Which would piss me off.”

He shook his head and turned back to the sensor and held his hand over it, letting the data feed back into him. He knew the information could just stream directly into his brain while he did other things, but the extra step made him feel productive. Alright, whatcha got for me? How does this thing wor-

He furrowed his brow. What the hell? Are those runes or something? You can’t be serious. He crossed his arms and stepped back from the portal, looking it over. They look a lot like the etchings on my err… soul. Way more complicated, though. Same kind of patterns but different. He rubbed his face. Alright, working theory: the etchings on my soul are my ability. The pattern makes up the structure of the ability. Each chunk is a function. It’s like its own language.

He rubbed his neck. “I really should not be messing with this thing.”

He shrugged. “Oh, well. Boss’ orders,” he quipped and got back to work.