Icarus Awakens

“Mom’s doing well, or, basically the same. Alex and Ami too,” Earth-Daniel hesitantly said as the copy of his consciousness he’d sent across worlds stared at him from the black void of Bridge Space. “I texted them, just a quick check-in. They invited me to Thanksgiving in a few weeks but I don’t think I’ll make it. Chris also said he hasn’t gotten any other documents sent for me.”

Octyrrum-Daniel, or just Daniel as he liked to think of himself, continued to glare across the divide. He’d really trained his ability to intimidate through exposure to Tlara, at least against normal people. None of his class magic worked here, but parts of his bonds did as well as the improvements from his attributes. While this was only the third time he’d been here, he’d been able to pick up on the differences. Also on his tell, which neither Thomas nor Earth-Daniel would be happy about.

“I’ve been here for two months, maybe a bit more. It was June last I remember, so Thanksgiving should be more than ‘a few weeks’ away.” Daniel walked up and put a hand on the divider. “I didn’t think about the difference in season because, you know, different world, but it’s starting to sound like it’s linked up. We’re halfway through fall, so I’m missing at least a month from my memories. What happened?”

He kept his voice hard and steady. It was the only thing he could use against the other version of him, and while he could leave here at any moment, Earth-Daniel had a lot more control over his view back home. If he was honest he couldn’t truly hate himself for what he’d done, but they were far from friends. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why does it matter!?” Daniel exclaimed, hitting the invisible wall with his fist. “Fuck, haven't you thought this through? How could Dad have set all this up? How is there even magic on Earth?”

The questions made Earth-Daniel deeply uncomfortable as he looked away and then sat on his cot. “I don’t know. Chris said Dad had put a lot of money into this but we never heard from Mom about him draining accounts or anything like that. We’d have thought someone had kidnapped and forced him to make a withdrawal or something instead of just going missing.”

“So, ignoring the fact that you’re just trusting this Chris guy,” Daniel said, “You’re telling me you think Dad spent however long he’d need to build that place, only to then get trapped in another world? He got lost hiking in the mountains, not setting up some kind of interstellar radio beacon.”

“I don’t know, ok? People clearly travel between worlds and most people don’t know about it. I never said he set this up when he went missing, it could have happened later. Maybe he found someone who couldn’t take him back, but could come here and make this. His letter never mentioned when he wrote it. The money could have come from something they brought from that world.”

Daniel sighed as he didn’t have a way to directly contest that, mostly because Earth-Daniel was hiding information from him. It was all on that damned list. Pulling things out of his other self was possible, like the missing time Earth-Daniel had let slip, but once he was conscious of the mistake he’d lock down on that topic. If he could say anything about his other self, it was that he was incredibly determined to see this through. “Tell me how you sent me across, at least. If I’m supposed to get Dad back, there’s no way you couldn’t tell me that.”

Earth-Daniel picked up the hated clipboard and read whatever he couldn’t see from this side closely. “Ok, ok. It just says I can’t tell you about the missing time and what you can’t remember, but since most of that is just me sitting here?” His conflicted look met Daniel’s hard gaze before he quickly averted his eyes. “There was this piece of, of something.” A note of wonder entered his copy’s voice, his eyes growing distant. “It was like smooth glass but touching it… it was magic. I think if I looked into some of the stuff here I’d find more of it, but that could also break whatever’s linking us. I had to hold onto it until it ‘activated’. I ended up duct-taping it to my arm when nothing happened after twenty hours. It took a week before it vanished, and then I just waited again until you arrived.”

“You put duct tape on the mystical artifact that probably ferried a copy of our soul to another world?” Daniel asked incredulously.

“It was practical! I’d have let go once I’d fallen asleep otherwise.” The T-shirt clad watcher shrugged and leaned against the wall. “I’d say the time after that sucked, but at least I didn’t have to work. We lost our job, by the way.”

Daniel laughed briefly. Of everything, that got to him a little. “Guess you had to be complete when you decided to ruin my life.”

“I didn’t-“ Earth-Daniel looked down. “I didn’t think it’d be that bad. All I was told was that you’d be sent to where Dad was and I’d get more information when I needed it. I thought you’d end up in some city somewhere. The island, everything with the Thormundz, I didn’t know it would be like that.”

“Sounds like whoever’s sending you those letters fucked off. Maybe that duct tape did ruin everything.”

“I hope not. I can’t just leave now that you know I’m here either, not that I would. Without me you wouldn’t know stuff like active effects on you.” He nodded to the monitors which Daniel was still blocked from seeing. “Sending you info makes me feel useful, at least. I was trying to figure out something for that wyrm but you beat me to it. And then you wrestled something the size of a gas truck. You know what I was doing?” He gestured to a mug. “Coffee. I had Chris triple what he was bringing me ever since you started hanging around with Khiat. I was about to go to bed when you started that fight.”

Daniel didn’t reply to that, just shrugging. He wasn’t at all responsible for his copy’s insomnia and it was hard to sympathize. Still… “The fire affix I got from the wyrm, it seems really good. I’m going to make more arrows and bolts and try it out with other stuff too.” Earth-Daniel’s eyes lit up and he dragged a whiteboard over to where he could see.

“Yeah! From what I can tell on my side, those affixes add secondary damage after the initial hit, like Scatter Shot. That might mean they won’t combo with that power, but it’s still a straight damage boost. It’s just too bad you already made all of your armor, I bet that would give you fire damage resistance if you’d added it.”

“I don’t know if I could.” Daniel grimaced, and his stance became less hostile. “Enchanting’s not as easy as I thought it was. Small bolts and arrowheads with two affixes I can manage, but the armor’s size makes things difficult. I have to maintain that state for longer and it was getting close to failure while I was making Tak’s armor. That was with high level material.” He shook his head. “It’s like when I first got to level 2. A lot of new power, but a lot of areas to improve. I’ll have to wait until we get whatever bounty we’re owed for all these kills too so I can afford better enchanting material.”

“And the ornithopters?”

“And the ornithopters,” Daniel confirmed. “I’ll make the first pair for Evalyn. Khare or Khiat might benefit from them more, but I can’t see the prototype working for them. And it’s not like Tak or Hunter need them.”

“You might.” Earth-Daniel shrugged as Daniel raised an eyebrow at how he’d said it. “It’s just, it’s weird.”

“What part of this isn’t weird?”

“Fair.” They both were lost for words for a few moments. Daniel was aware of how vulnerable he was currently, but Hunter was watching him and Earth-Daniel was occasionally glancing at the screens to make sure he didn’t have to go back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, you didn’t, but you should have guessed.” Daniel tried to think back to his last memories of Earth, giving an honest attempt at playing out what he’d been told to give Earth-Daniel a chance. The memories of falling still blocked out anything close to when Chris had made the initial call, kicking off, well, his existence. He’d attempted this before, but every time, he kept seeing Hunter broken after the devil root core or the bodies of the people that the lightning dragon and lake monster had killed.

He had to yield on one point, however. “If Dad is here, and there’s a way back, I’ll do what I can to help. It just doesn’t sound like I have a good way to, especially if you don’t tell me anything.”

“I don’t have anything to help you here,” Earth-Daniel said, less defensively than normal. “I didn’t get any information about the world I was going to, not really. The stuff I had to block out gave me some idea, but there’s no directions saying ‘find Dad here’. I’d tell you about that, believe me.”

“Why even hide information from me? If there was anything you’d hide, I’d think it’d be that I couldn’t go back.”

“I’m not that much of a dick.” Earth-Daniel thought for a moment, bobbing his head as he did so. “Yeah, that’s fair. Dad’s note was clear on how important it was. If he somehow set this all up, even if it was through someone else on this side, then this plan has to be well thought out. There’s a god on your side censoring things, so maybe if you had this knowledge you’d be in danger from them? At this point, they’re able to block it out before it gets to you anywhere else.”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that. Damned gods can scrub my inbox but not defend their world?” The scraps of ancient history he’d gotten from the Accounts of Artruz about the first Collapse being from the squabbling of the gods seemed more and more accurate as time went on. Frankly, an apocalypse was enough to deal with without also having to search the world for his dad amidst everything else. That made him think of something. “Hey, I can’t go across, but Dad can, right?”

“Yeah. My guess is however he ended up there was different than what I did, considering that accidentally fused you with the dragon guy.”

Daniel shook his head, his other self not understanding where he was going. It’d only been a few months of separation, but at this point they were different people. “Hunter. If we find a way to safety, and it really looks like this world’s about to end, I’m sending Hunter across. Him, and any of my friends who want to go.”

“I, I don’t think that’s…” Earth-Daniel hesitated to finish the sentence and instead asked, “Do you think he’d even like it over here? I guess if the alternative is death sure, but that would be me bringing aliens here. What if their powers still worked?”

“Then Thomas comes over and cures cancer in his downtime, Evalyn wins an election or something after only doing one debate, and…” He trailed off as he thought. Tak and Hunter go on some kind of safari spree. Lograve absorbs the internet, we get Khiat one of those bigass sniper rifles. Khare might have it rough. “I want your word that you’ll do it if there’s no other option.”

Earth-Daniel frowned. “I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

“Say that it is, would you do it?”

“Yeah,” he answered, eventually and reluctantly.

…

Soft music filled the desert as Daniel watched the setting sun with Hunter. They’d traveled a short distance from the village for the solitude they now enjoyed. The track wasn’t from Evalyn but Daniel’s phone, taken from a game featuring rainy streets filled with aliens with assault rifles. It was more calming than it sounded.

“We’re going to have to go back there soon,” Daniel said, leaning against Hunter while sitting down. “Not right now, but in a week or two.”

“Why?”

“There are things we need there. Thomas and Lograve too. Everything we’ve been hunting, people are going to pay us for. I don’t know how much but it should be a lot. Someone also needs to tell people dangerous monsters are starting to get at the villages. Everyone here would have died if we hadn’t stopped that wyrm.” There were plenty of good reasons, more he wasn’t mentioning, but it did little to settle Hunter’s unease. He could feel it through their bond, though they still kept the Empathic Link suppressed at all times. That wasn’t a door Daniel was willing to open yet, even if it might make them hunt better together.

“They hurt you and hate me. It is not a city, it is a trap.”

“It’s not so bad, some of the people just suck. There are people like that here too.” Daniel looked pointedly up as if there was a camera watching him. “We don’t have to stay here either. Khiat, well, she’s on the team now, maybe she’ll be up for an adventure. There are other regions, and it might be good to get some distance between us and that thing in the mountains. Just in case.”

Hunter grumbled and didn’t answer. The directness of his friend could be touching at times, though he had a troubling tendency to hide something if it would cause the kind of trouble he couldn’t fight his way out of. That was part of why it’d taken Hunter so long to speak up about how Daniel had initially treated him. “You. The other you.”

There it is, Daniel thought, smiling internally. He knew Hunter wanted to talk about it but wanted to wait until he was ready. He had to know it was ok to. “It’s ok, you can say what you want.”

Hunter clenched his jaw, causing his already fangs to poke out more. “It hurts me to think about. He hurt you, but without him, what would I be?”

“You’re not saying you feel guilty about what I’ve been through, are you?” Daniel ruffled the fur of Hunter’s neck. “I’m only alive because of you, not him.”

“Still it is… it is like I am stalked. Knowing he is always there, that I can’t do anything.”

“The dynamic’s changed,” Daniel said, Hunter nodding. He almost held back what he was going to say, but it felt like he should get his own demons off his chest. “I felt the same way after you got a bond with Tak.” He laughed softly under his breath as Hunter looked at him. “It’s not that I didn’t like it, things just changed. It wasn’t just the two of us anymore.”

“There were always others.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t constantly in my head or pulling off combo attacks with you.”

“You bonded with Khare,” Hunter pointed out, easily pushing him over with a paw. “Maybe I should be angry?”

“I was never angry!” Daniel protested, coming back up sandy. “I was just dealing with it being different. But it is harder for you, I get it. Tak was a pure positive, while Earth-Daniel… Seeing someone that’s basically me without all the time spent here? I don’t like who that person is.”

“Neither do I,” Hunter affirmed, unease in his voice. “But he is you.”

“Is he? My mind’s been changed by my attributes at the very least. Our bond’s had an effect on us too. I wonder if I’d ever have kept up with hunting back then if you hadn’t been there with me.” That was another reason Daniel was hesitant to open the floodgates of Empathic Link. “The worst part is he’s doing this all for my dad. We, I, he’s important to both of us. If he is here and there’s a way to bring him back, this would be worth it.”

“Would you go back with him?” The question stung Daniel.

“I can’t, at least according to him. But if I could, I’d only do it if you could come to.”

“Who said I would go?” Hunter asked in mock offense, wrinkling his nose. “I heard what you’ve said about it. Too many people, no monsters.”

Well yes, and no. “Heh. Hunter, I think it’s time I told you about Australia.”