Amazon Apocalypse 7: Chapter 19

Adrian dreamed.

It was as strange and vivid as his memories, but these couldn't be his memories. In the dream, he'd battled monsters the size of planets, forged treaties between enormous empires, and led a broken band of war-torn refugees to a world where they could wait out the war in safety.

He even remembered dying, though he hadn't gone quietly. He'd kept his body together for years even as his soul fell to pieces. He used what time he had left to make arrangements for himself, though only time would tell if they'd pay off.

Eventually, the dream came to an end and Adrian awoke with a start. He lay face-first in the dirt with blood on his lips and sand in his eyes.

"Good, you're awake," a voice said. The voice was unfamiliar. It was confident and carried a heroic edge to it, but also seemed exhausted. It was like a champion brought low by grievous wounds and using the last of his strength to carry out his final wishes.

Adrian rubbed at his eyes and found himself deep in some forest and all alone. He would have panicked, but he remembered that time his father took him through a forest much like this one to look for a pet beetle. He clung to what he learned then, and though he was nervous he kept a lid on his fear while he looked around to find the voice of whoever was talking to him.

He grew increasingly alarmed when he saw no one. Just trees, shrubs, and the faint hissing of insects.

"There's no one else here with you. I'm a voice in your head. Now, you need to listen to me very carefully. I won't be able to help you for long."

"Who are you? Where are you?" Adrian asked. It seemed the obvious question.

"I'm you, or rather, the part of you that you inherited from. And I'm not anywhere at all. I don't exist. I'm a schizophrenic delusion created by one of my passive abilities. The effect is temporary, but it's the only thing standing between us and certain death," the voice said.

"Skits-o-friendic?" Adrian repeated, sounding out the words.

"Think of me as a ghost. I'm long dead, and no one else can hear me. I can help you, but doing so shortens an already limited duration I can be active for before this spell wears off. You need to be somewhere safe before that happens. At your level, even the weakest of my enemies could kill you. Or worse."

"Where am I?" Adrian asked.

"A fringe planet on what used to be a frontier System. It's far more populated than I remember, and I sense several extremely powerful presences. If we run into an A-Grade as it is, we're finished, so we need to get out of here. I've already used the best anti-scrying and anti-divination wards I can muster. They should hold unless you're unlucky enough that a peak A-Grade that's an expert in divination devotes days of work to finding you. We should move fast though, since mundane tracking still works fine," said the voice in Adrian's head.

"I need to find my Mom and Dad," Adrian said.

"Forget it, kid. Whoever your Mom and Dad are, these are A-Grade problems. Dragging them into this will only get them killed."

Adrian's blood went cold at those words. If that was true, he really couldn't go home. He loved his Mom, his Dad, and all his Mommas. He didn't want to get them killed. As terrifying as it might be, he might have to get himself out of this situation alone.

"Will I ever be able to go home?" Adrian asked.

"Only if you're willing to be strong first. I have a way to throw the Pale Moonlight school off our trail. You're lucky I planned for a scenario like this. Being dead and with a destroyed soul, any creativity I have needs to be borrowed from you. But I did put together a safe house. The tools there will greatly extend the time I'm conscious and ensure a much more perfect inheritance of my memories and abilities for you. Reincarnation is usually a lossy process, but we can change that."

"My mom said not to trust strangers," Adrian said.

"But I'm not a stranger. I've been part of you your whole life," the voice replied.

Adrian thought about the words and sensed they were truthful. In a way, it was like he'd spoken them himself.

"Okay. What do we do?" Adrian looked around the forest as he wiped mud off his clothes and tried to dab his bleeding lip.

"Back in my day, people were lazy about securing their teleportation arrays, especially minor ones to frontier settlements. I'm betting it's the same today. If you draw a circle on the ground exactly as I say, we should be able to hijack a teleportation attempt."

Adrian cleared some leaves and drew a circle on the ground.

"Like this?"

"Impressive work, kid. How'd you learn to draw spell circles that smoothly?"

"Dad showed me how to summon Sharky, his monster friend." Adrian dropped the stick and stepped into the circle.

"My lack of access to your memories is showing. It's a shame our connection is one way. You can read my memories but I can't read yours, since I'm only a facsimile of consciousness copied from long before you were born. Anyway, hold still while I get us out of here." The voice seemed to concentrate for several minutes. Adrian fidgeted in the dirt, but he was better at sitting still than most kids his age.

Eventually, teleportation energy swirled around him. This was the second time Adrian had teleported without his mother holding his hand, and it was the first time he'd done so completely alone. The mysterious and powerful energies seemed all the more dangerous now.

Thankfully, he didn't need to do anything but wait. The light eventually grew to shroud the outside world, and he sat cross-legged and rubbing at the cuts on his legs.

What was going to happen now? Though Adrian looked and felt a bit older and was always told he was very mature for his age, he hadn't even lived three full years yet. He wasn't ready to go off on his own. His first adventure should have been exploring the woods near his house on his own, not fleeing from terrifying eyeless women and their hordes of monsters.

The voice left him to his thoughts as Adrian's mood spiraled downward. He rubbed at his tear-filled eyes and only stopped when he realized the energy barrier around him was starting to thin. But instead of another forest or other terrestrial landscape, Adrian saw only an endless sea of stars rushing by.

"V-voice? I think something's wrong..." Adrian said.

"Hmm... Huh? What's happening?" the voice returned, groggy and confused, like it was waking up from drifting off to sleep. Then he cursed and the teleportation light was restored to full power.

"So I see I've reincarnated. Not bad. This body is a bit small, but it's well built with a good innate bloodline. How old are we, kid? Eight? Nine? We're a bit small for our age..." the voice trailed off.

"Almost three." Adrian frowned. "Did you forget where we are?"

"Was I awake before? It must have been another copy of this passive ability. I'm dead and can't form new memories. You're going to have to wake me up every now and again and tell me what we're doing and where we're going," the voice said.

So Adrian filled him in on what happened as best as he could recall.

"You told me you're a Skits-o-friendic ghost and we're going to a safe place you left before you died. Bad people are coming called the Pale Moonlight school. I think they teach evil magic there. They had a lot of monsters and tried to attack my class on a field trip," Adrian explained.

"I see what's going on now. Well, if it's the safehouse I'm thinking of, it's a good plan. I remember I put some potions there that will help us out quite a bit. Hopefully the mining golems will still listen to me. After so many reproductive cycles their programming might have drifted..."

The voice rambled on a while, and Adrian occasionally interjected to keep him going. From his earlier explanation and the sudden silence, Adrian realized the voice would fall asleep and forget everything if he didn't keep him awake. Adrian didn't want to be left alone again, so he kept asking questions.

The voice knew what he was doing, but humored him. He told him stories of ancient scientists, innovators, generals, and politicians. Clearer than any of the words were the images that flashed through his mind. He could see every face and hear them speak to him as though the memories were his own.

Brave generals fought and died alongside him in a war that seemed like it would last forever. Mortal generations were born and turned to dust time and time again, and all of it for a dream that was starting to seem like it wasn't worth the cost.

"Anyway, we're here. I hijacked several teleportation arrays in a row, and we should arrive shortly. I'll have to dump us into space mid-teleport. With no space ship and no space suit, this might get a bit tricky. But you're D-Grade. A few minutes in space won't kill you."

Before Adrian could ask for clarification, the light around him suddenly vanished, and he found himself flying through the empty void. His eyes were wide as his arms and legs flailed out in all directions and found no purchase anywhere.

A gentle force pushed him forward, though as he approached an asteroid he realized the force wasn't so gentle after all. The lack of anything nearby had given him nothing to judge his speed by until now. Either he was moving very fast or that asteroid was moving very fast toward him.

But before he could land, something even more terrifying happened. Part of the asteroid turned to look at him. He realized he was staring down a giant space beetle the size of his father's truck.

Adrian let out a short scream, which cost him some of the precious lungful of air he was holding onto. But he felt a guiding hand from the voice within him. Suddenly, his hand felt as sturdy as a sword. The beetle tried to catch him in its metal pincers that moments ago had been tearing through spatial debris. His body sidestepped the attack and hammered his empowered fist straight through the beetle's head.

Then, he twisted off one of the horns and wielded it like a sword. The golden glow outlining his hands moved toward the broken horn. A second beetle rushed him, but he was ready.

This time, Adrian reacted before the voice did. His body moved through reflex as a huge horn slid past him. The momentum of the space beetle's charge knocked him backward with its momentum, but the force let Adrian deal a deadly blow. His lip started bleeding again, but now with his heart pounding fast Adrian fought with life and death on the line.

Killing the second beetle wasn't nearly as quick or clean, but eventually he found the same weak spot the voice had before and rammed the improvised sword through what passed for the space beetle's head. Adrian's chest would have been heaving if there was air to breathe.

"I see I haven't completely lost my touch in this new life. The safehouse is this way. Throw pieces of that mining drone behind you to guide yourself back to the asteroid. And try to be quick about it. After that fight, you won't last more than a minute without another lungful of air," the voice said.

Adrian suddenly realized how hard his lungs were burning and scrambled to do as the voice said. He drifted toward a crater on an asteroid, pushed several buttons as instructed, and then finally stepped into an airlock on the other side. Finally being able to breathe again was a big relief, and Adrian panted there a while before climbing back to his feet. Beyond the airlock, the small living space slowly came to life. Vents blew in fresh air.

"There's a room around the corner with a chest. The supplies we desperately need are there. There's a medical kit here for your wounds."

With a heave, Adrian got moving again. He circled around the back room and eventually found the chest the voice described. The handle was a bit high up for him, but after jumping a few times he finally reached it.

"I should have considered how short we'd be when making this place. I could have chosen smaller furniture. Anyway, crack the lid. We're looking for potions."

Adrian opened the chest to find a dozen compartments. He looked at one near the top and found it full with glowing potions. He reached his arm in to the elbow and pulled out one of them.

"This what you're looking for?" Adrian asked.

"That's it. Pretty impressive spatial compression here, huh? That chest has most of my surviving worldly possessions, not counting what I left in the colony ship." the voice sounded proud of the box.

It didn't seem like anything special to Adrian though. Most of the drawers at home worked the same way.

"Unimpressed? I guess you've seen bags of holding before. Drink the first of the potions so I can get to work while you go through the rest of the stuff," the voice said.

Adrian held one of the vials up to the light. "I want to know what this thing does first."

"What, do you trust the strange voice in your head?" the voice asked.

Adrian crossed his arms. "If you don't tell me, I'll stop talking to you. You'll lose your memories and I'll get an answer out of the next version of you."

The voice sighed. "Now I see why the System decided you were a match to inherit my soul. I was stubborn too when I was your age. That vial is called a Soul Mending Potion. It softens the soul and provides a dose of inanimate soul stuff that can be used like stitches. The idea is you drink the potion, then try to stitch your soul back together again before it comes apart."

"Are you trying to come back to life? Are you going to fix yourself then possess me?" Adrian asked suspiciously.

The voice chuckled. "If it were that easy, I wouldn't have allowed myself to die in the first place. Trust me, kid. I'm well and truly dead. At this point, all the important parts of me were either completely destroyed or are already part of you. There's nothing left to possess you. All that's left is the memories and the power. But there's a good chance those won't merge with you properly before they decay, and if you'd activated this parallel mind ability any later, it might not function at all given the state of my ruined soul.

"My plan is to use these potions to chop up my old soul and preserve some parts abilities for your use. I can simplify some of my A-Grade Signature Skills into discrete abilities you can use. They'll scale with your level until you reach A-Grade and can claim the real thing for yourself. I'll also package my memories, unique titles, and other skills so you can more cleanly inherit the proficiency points and other abilities as your soul's growth allows."

Once again, Adrian had a feeling that the words were the truth. Though it could still be an elaborate trick, he had a feeling it wasn't. He drank the potion. It had a pungent taste to it, like rusty steel mixed with lemon juice. Adrian drank it anyway.

"Now what?" Adrian asked.

"Eat and go through the rest of your new toys. Let me work a bit. If I fade away, just think of me and the fact that this is an emergency. That should activate a new iteration of my parallel mind ability."

Adrian went through the rest of the chest. He was excited by the sword collection. Some of them looked as nice as Momma Myrina's favorites. There were also several sets of armor in there, though all of them were far too large for him.

There was a small library of skill books. He remembered his father showing him a few and telling him he'd get to pick some from his collection when he was older. Now Adrian could pick today. He held off though. He suspected the abilities the voice was going to give him would be much better.

There were a whole bunch of strange coins, artifacts he couldn't identify, and a tiny space shuttle. It would be barely large enough for a single adult man, but for Adrian it would be roomy and be a much more pleasant way to get out of here than how he'd arrived.

Adrian also found piles and piles of ancient mementos. The old letters and keepsakes seemed like junk at first, but every time he held one and stared at it a while, he felt memories that weren't his own coming to mind. He'd barely even gone through a dozen of them, but by the time he had, being alone and far from home didn't seem so scary anymore. Though he still knew who he was, he had the feeling he'd been through worse than this before.

Eventually, Adrian took a break from going through the chest and went to the kitchen. He recognized the food fabricator there, since it looked similar to the one in their kitchen back home. He dialed in the number for emergency chocolate pudding. It wasn't very good compared to what his mom made, but it was better than nothing, and it would wash down the flavor of those yucky golden vials.

The voice wasn't finished with just one of them. It took a dozen before it was satisfied. By then, Adrian had eaten so much chocolate pudding he started throwing up.

"So that's why mom and dad only let me eat one bowl..." Adrian said as he wiped his mouth. He'd try again when his stomach stopped hurting. Chocolate pudding was worth a little pain.

Eventually, the voice in Adrian's head finished. It spoke to him again.

"I've done all I can for now. The drawers of the chest should be removable and collapse into a top-quality bag of holding. Fabricate some food and water, then take everything. You won't be returning here."

"Now we find your sword, then throw these Pale Moonlight school people off our trail," Adrian asked. Since the voice had a poor memory, Adrian had to be the one to keep track of the plan.

But now there was something else besides fear in him. He was ready for this.

***

Adrian's adventure had been a scary one, but before long he found himself using a shuttle to fly to the nearest inhabited planet, and from there hijacking another teleportation array all the way to Crownhill. The voice used the same teleportation array trick to byapass the System's barrier and target a newly integrated world.

The last bit of the journey would have to be made by shuttle again, but the voice had ways to track down his stuff even when the System was hiding Adrian's world thanks to what Adrian knew was the integration.

It was a bit surreal to be back home. If this had been before experiencing all those old memories, he probably would have run straight to the castle to find his parents and cried about the monster attack while promising never to sneak out again.

But that was days ago, which was a long time for someone not even three years old. He'd grown far stronger since then, and he remembered the voice's words. Dragging his parents into this would probably just get them killed. He needed to stand on his own.

He arrived through one of the teleportation arrays the adventurers in the forest used. Luckily the space shuttle he'd gotten worked in normal space too, so he wouldn't need to walk through miles of forest. He just flew. Picking up the controls had come easily to him, like relearning a melody he'd known but forgotten.

Adrian looked out the window from the shuttle and saw the colony of Camlaan. He'd left them his sword for safekeeping. It was about time he picked it back up.

"The Grand Sage should be around here somewhere. She should have administrative access to the colony ship. We'll need that to get to the sword, and eventually to bait the Pale Moonlight school's people," the voice said.

"The Grand Sage? I think I know where she is," Adrian said.

"You do?" the voice asked, suddenly surprised.

"Dad was complaining about her at dinner. He said she was in prison." Adrian fidgeted in his seat uncomfortably.

"Then we'll have to break her out. We need her," the voice replied.

"But dad said she's a bad woman." Adrian was suddenly uncertain. Flying across the galaxy and fighting space monsters was one thing, but not listening to his mom had already gotten him in enough trouble as it was.

But in the end, Adrian knew that if he didn't do what he needed to do, the evil Pale Moonlight school people would come here looking for him, and he couldn't bring that kind of danger home.

So Adrian flew to Crownhill County Prison, which was a place his mother warned him to never go. While he was only D-Grade, the abilities of someone who had formerly been an A-Grade were incredibly powerful.

He was spotted twice by the guards, but two attempts was all it took to get the hang of using the stealth ability the voice had given him. Pretty soon, he was standing outside the cell of Grand Sage Balencia.

"You're the Grand Sage?" Adrian asked.

"What kind of trick is the Emperor of Crownhill pulling on me now? Sending a child to interrogate me?" Grand Sage Balencia scoffed.

"I can get you out, but you have to help me." Adrian jingled the keys to her cell in front of her.

Balencia instantly sat up. "You know, I've always liked children. I've accidentally locked myself in this room. Help me out and I'll buy you some candy. How does that sound?"

Adrian turned the key and opened the door.

Balencia was instantly on her feet and walking out the door.

"Ha! Free at last." Balencia chuckled to herself. She looked warily up and down the hall.

"Ahem." Adrian cleared his throat.

"Scram, kid. The free candy was a lie." Balencia waved her hand to conjure a spell, but before she could do so she felt something pointy poking into the small of her back.

"I'm more interested in a sword, Grand Sage." Adrian said.

Grand Sage Balencia went stiff for a moment. She realized now that she wasn't being freed, she was going from one captor to another.

"You're him, aren't you? The star child?" Balencia bit her lip.

"We're going to pick up my sword. Then you're going to help with my colony ship," Adrian replied.

Adrian barely managed to sneak Grand Sage Balencia out of prison and to his shuttle. What had been roomy for him was now cramped with an adult in the cockpit. Two adults wouldn't have fit, but he and the Grand Sage managed it

***

"This is humiliating..." Grand Sage Balencia muttered. "It was one thing to be taken prisoner by the Lord of Crownhill. But this..." She shook her head.

"Stay still," Adrian ordered at knife point. The Grand Sage had tried a few tricks already. She was technically a B-Grade, and if she went all out Adrian would have a tough time handling her. But his new abilities had disarmed her quite handily the last time she tried something, and between that and the ancient legends she seemed too scared to do more than vent her frustrations.

Adrian landed the shuttle at the top of the stairs to the palace. The sword was just up ahead. He could feel it twitch and tremble at his approach. It had been a long time since it had seen its master.

Adrian approached the pedestal and read from the plaque. Though the carved characters were ancient and he'd only just learned to read his own language, he could read the prophecy written there just fine.

"The son of the dragon shall return as king, and we shall know him by his sword," Adrian said. The weathered words were those of an ancient prophecy. He turned to look at Balencia. "Who's the dragon?"

Grand Sage Balencia shrugged. "Who knows? If you're who those cultivators think you are, then you'd know better than me."

Adrian reached for the sword. It was big enough for a giant, but when he wrapped his hands around the blade, ancient magical mechanisms unlocked, and the entire blade was enveloped in golden light. The stone and steel shifted and twisted, and then Adrian held a golden blade in his hands.

Now this was a weapon. It was even nicer than the ones in Momma Myrina's collection. And best of all, it felt familiar to him.

Adrian went to ask the voice what to do, but he already knew the answer without being told. In fact, he realized that the voice had been silent for some time. He didn't need it anymore.

<Note>

The funny thing is that while Carter and Bridget were desperately searching across the stars for Adrian, multiple people they knew back home probably spotted him wandering around.

Anyway, whew. Another pretty hefty chapter, but I think it's important to wrap up Adrian's stuff here so we can get back to Carter's PoV. Hopefully you could sense Adrian maturing through this chapter. This marks the end of his childhood. It's a bit earlier than I thought, but I couldn't justify a longer timeskip.

But yes, the person meant to draw the sword was Adrian, not Carter. It's what makes the "Son of the Dragon" reference to Arthurian mythos make a bit more sense. Carter isn't the son of the dragon, he is the dragon.

The goal for me is to wrap up the outlined content in ideally one final chapter. I may have to just do a Saturday chapter, since these last few at the end of this arc are coming out longer than normal. Sorry, but I sacrificed some sleep Sunday and yesterday to get these out on time. I need at least 7.5 hours or the amount I can write in a day drops in half.

I think I should finish up the outlined content, so timing will work well to lead into my planned break for getting book 6 ready to publish and outlining the rest of book 7.