Thresholder

The first thing that Perry noticed about the new world was just how green it was. Teaguewater had been a dingy place, with even the trees seeming weighed down and discolored by the air pollution, hanging on for dear life. Everything had been in shades of browns and grays. In this new world, there were trees all around him, tall grasses beneath them, moss growing in the cracks between glistening black rocks, and the sounds of birdsong coming in strong through the helmet’s speakers.

“March, scan for radio signals,” said Perry.

“Sir, the long range radio receiver has unfortunately been damaged,” replied Marchand.

“Connection with the drone still works?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“Isn’t that radio?” asked Perry. He was feeling somewhat puzzled, like he was forgetting something.

“It is, sir, but the drone uses the short range receiver,” replied Marchand. “The short range receiver isn’t configured for scanning.”

“Can you configure it for scanning?” asked Perry.

“Oh, that’s an excellent idea, sir,” replied Marchand. The AI sounded genuinely pleased. “I’ll do that right away, sir, it won’t take but a moment. When I’ve finished the reconfiguration, you’ll want me to do a scan? I cannot promise that the results will impress.”

“Yes,” said Perry. “We’re keeping radio silent, nothing goes out, only in.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Marchand. “Should I ready the drone?”

Perry looked up at the canopy above him, which was thick and green. “I guess, but we’re going to wait to launch until I’m above the leaves.”

So far, nothing had attacked. Perry was simply in a forest of some kind, surrounded by coniferous trees with relatively thin trunks. He’d been hoping that he’d land somewhere that would allow him to repair Marchand and the suit, which would almost certainly have required technology that was far beyond Richter’s world, mostly to deal with the discrepancies in their standards. And if he ended up in a world like that, then it seemed like he could just get a whole new suit … but of course he knew Marchand, and the suit had been a gift from Richter. If at all possible, he was going to retrofit.

“I’m afraid I can’t find any signal,” Marchand said after a while.

“I’m going up then,” said Perry. “I want a better view.”

The power armor was working, which Perry was trying to be thankful for, but it was sluggish in almost every way that it could be, barely better than walking around like a normal person except that this was the best way to transport it. The days of using the suit to leap huge distances or land punches that could cave in a rib cage were gone, or at least gone until repairs could be made. It wasn’t useless, but its capabilities had been severely reduced. It was still functional as armor, the metal still offering protection from hits, and the audio processing powers were still amazing, but it was much diminished.

Thankfully, the sword still didn’t have so much as a scratch on it, and Perry’s other newly-acquired power —

He paused, two feet off the ground.

“I’m a werewolf,” he said.

“I’ve been told that, yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“The tower worked,” said Perry. “The memories were suppressed.”

“I suppose that must be true, sir,” said Marchand.

“I did bite Cosme,” said Perry.

“I don’t believe I was there for that,” said Marchand.

“Huh,” said Perry. It was all settling in his head now, the connections that couldn’t be made before now locking into place. He’d had no proper context for the final battle, not after it had started, he’d just been running on instinct or trusting whatever Flora said, the impossible scenes refusing to gel into their proper shape.

“You were rising to get a better look at our surroundings?” asked Marchand.

“I — yes,” said Perry.

This world would have a new Adversary, and if it was like the last one, that Adversary might have been here for a month, getting the lay of the land, gathering allies, accruing power. There would be time to reflect on the last world, but it wasn’t now, not when Perry had no idea what sort of world this was.

He let the sword lift him, floating after it as they glided past branches and leaves that gently brushed the cobalt blue armor. The trees were tall, and the woodlands looked untouched. It was green as far as the eye could see, mixed with the brown of the tree trunks, until Perry crossed up past where the leaves and needles ended.

The most obvious thing was that the horizon wasn’t the same in all directions. Toward the east and west, it was more or less normal, with steep mountains and shimmering lakes, but to the north and south, the horizon tilted up, exposing the land as though Perry was looking at it from a great height.

“Are we … in a Halo?” asked Perry.

“A halo, sir?” asked Marchand.

Perry stared at the curved land. It was hard to get a sense of scale, but he felt as though he was seeing entire continents, full oceans, as if seen from space. The edges could be seen only far away, where the arc was high, showing that the world was probably a ribbon of some kind. The sun was offset, to the east, beyond the ribbon. Perry looked up for a moment, and March helpfully adjusted the perceptual lighting of the image so that the sun was dimmed. There was nothing much to see though.

“How did you determine the compass?” asked Perry. “How did you figure out north, south, east, and west?”

“I checked the movement of the sun,” Marchand replied. “I believe I lost some time when we left the city and needed to recalibrate.”

Perry frowned, trying to work it out. Marchand was a very capable AI, but he wasn’t at peak processing power, and wasn’t connected to any version of the internet where he was normally supposed to borrow processing power, which meant that he was underpowered. He also simply wasn’t equipped for the variety of worlds that seemed to be available, and even with explicit instructions wouldn’t accept certain things. It seemed as though the sun simply couldn’t work the same way if the world was shaped like this.

“Run an analysis,” said Perry. “Tell me, um, how far away that curved bit of land is, and the total expected land area, assuming that the land curves around to make a full circle and the width of the ribbon stays constant.” He looked straight up, but couldn’t tell if there was any land there. The sun was off to one side, which meant … what, that the ring wasn’t as wide around as the orbit of Earth? He’d played a bit of Halo, and couldn’t remember how that ring had been configured there. Marchand, of course, came from an Earth where that videogame had never been made.

“I have difficulty understanding the question, sir,” said Marchand.

“Pretend we’re in a cylinder,” said Perry. “We can’t see the other side of the cylinder, it’s too far away, but we can get a gauge of the width, and figure out the total circumference.”

“Ah, a hypothetical, sir,” said Marchand. “Calculating.”

Perry frowned and looked out at the land around them, rising higher to get a better sense of his immediate surroundings.

From high above the forest, he could see plenty of rolling green hills, with steep cliffs occasionally rising from them, thick spars of rock that were devoid of the greenery that was everywhere else. He seemed to be in a wide valley, one that was many miles across, verdant and settled, with yellow fields that stretched across the flat lowlands. In the distance, there were villages with thin trails of smoke rising from them, which was good, because it meant that there were at least people. That would make it easier to eat, to sleep, to have a base of operations. He didn’t have much that he could trade away, but there had to be some way he could integrate. He had a single gold coin left from Seraphinus, along with a few things in the pack he’d taken. He didn’t feel like that would be enough.

The odds that he’d find some way to fix the armor had shot down dramatically though. There were roads, but no highways, villages, but no skyscrapers. Even the faraway continents he could see had none of the signs of major cities, nothing like Tokyo or London making its gray mark on the landscape.

“Based on the measurements I’ve taken, and from what I understand of your hypothetical, the surface area of the cylinder would be seventy billion square miles,” said Marchand.

“And … what’s the surface area of the Earth?” asked Perry.

“Two hundred million square miles, sir,” replied Marchand.

Perry frowned. “Sorry, so that’s … three hundred times more than Earth?”

“Three hundred fifty, yes sir,” replied Marchand.

“Big world,” said Perry. He was looking in both directions at the long stretch of land, trying to work out what any of this meant. The upshot was ‘nothing’, he thought, since the distances involved were so great, and there was no way that he could make it to the far point he could see, let alone the further points he couldn’t see. There didn’t seem to be any trains or planes, nothing marking the sky. In fact …

“There’s a moon,” said Perry. It was larger than on Earth, or at least closer. He frowned at it. Werewolves were dependent on moonlight to transform, or even to get a piece of their power when not under a full moon. He didn’t know whether that would work here, if they were in some kind of scifi setting. There was a forerunner to Halo, he recalled. Ringworld? It was the kind of thing that only alien tech could build.

“There are three moons,” said Marchand. These were immediately highlighted on the HUD with arrows and red circles. The other two moons were smaller, and close to the horizon.

“Oh,” said Perry. “Well how is that going to work?”

“I’m not clear on the orbital paths of these satellites,” said Marchand. “I’m calculating now.” Perry felt grateful that Marchand hadn’t simply chalked it up to being a visual artifact.

“I’m going to follow a road and see where it takes me,” said Perry. “Keep your ears open. Let me know if you hear anyone. We want to stay in stealth for as long as possible, keeping a low profile.”

He said this while wearing heavy blue armor, floating above the treetops, holding a magical sword. He tried to recalibrate what he meant by ‘low profile’.

Perry flew to the west, in the direction of a far-off settlement of some kind, the details of which were still too hard to make out even with maximum zoom. Once he’d found a road, he dropped down and floated along after the sword, not wanting to be highly visible in the sky, and not wanting to walk, which even at a sedate pace might start to drain the batteries.

“Sir, I believe there are men in the woods,” said Marchand.

“Men?” asked Perry.

March put them up on the HUD, outlined in red through a huge number of trees. They were more than a hundred yards away. “Would you like to hear their conversation?” asked Marchand.

“Yes,” said Perry.

Perry was ready to focus on what they were saying, to pick up some context clues of the world, but —

“They’re not speaking English,” said Perry.

“Very perceptive, sir,” said Marchand.

“What language is that?” asked Perry.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Marchand. “My linguistic abilities will remain somewhat limited until I have a network connection to download new language libraries.”

“What languages do you have?” asked Perry.

It was a bad question that resulted in a long list from March, given in alphabetical order. Richter had known that Perry would be traveling to new worlds, and had loaded up everything she could, which gave Perry a pang of longing for her. Some of the languages were listed as ‘corrupted’, likely a result of some of the memory damage that March had suffered, but Perry didn’t think that mattered all that much. From what Cosme had said, Perry was supposed to arrive in a world that spoke English. If they didn’t, then it didn’t seem likely that they spoke another language from Earth.

“Alright, what does it sound like?” asked Perry. “You have lots of text and audio in your memory banks. Sounds eastern to me, but I don’t know.”

“I do not believe it shares common roots,” said Marchand. “I’m afraid that deciphering a new language from only scattered samples is somewhat beyond me.”

“Record it all, we’ll work on the problem later if we have to,” said Perry.

There were a dozen men, moving, though most of the conversation was between just two of them. As Perry approached through the woods, March added more information, like the cudgels that the men had at their hips and some guesses about their outfits, which included a fair amount of furs.

It was seeming much less likely that Perry would be able to repair March in this world.

When the men came to a clearing, Perry made himself known. Cosme had said that he’d always come across English in his travels, and Perry was hoping that would hold here, but it was a risk, especially with the suit in such a sorry state.

“Hello!” called Perry, waving his hand. He had the sword at his hip, sheathed, and was holding his arms wide in what he hoped was a universal sign that he wasn’t a threat. “I’m a traveler from a distant land, do any of you speak English?”

They were a motley crew, with no uniforms to speak of, just cheap textiles that had been patched and repaired a hundred times over, or failing that, furs. They had weapons, which didn’t bode well, but the weapons were staffs, cudgels, and in one case, a short dagger. There was, overall, very little in the way of metal, and the men — all men — had a caked-on dirtiness to them. It was hard to tell, but he thought that they might be ethnically Asian, though he couldn’t narrow it down further than that. He’d have to ask March for analysis later.

But there was one who was different from the others, a man who wore fine blue silk robes that flowed down to the forest floor. His hair was immaculate, black and straight, hanging halfway down his chest, and on top of his head it was tied back with ornate clips in place. He had a sword, a proper sword, long and thin, hanging from his hip without a sheath.

“A traveler, from a distant land,” said the man with a nod. “I am a traveler too.”

“Er, okay,” said Perry. His hand itched to go to his sword. “I have very little in the way of goods, but I’m seeking shelter, food, a place that I can stay for a week or two. Do you know of such a place?”

“How did you come to Green Snake Valley?” asked the man, ignoring Perry’s question entirely. He stepped forward slightly, and the other men moved away, spreading out. They weren’t quite forming a circle around Perry, but they were giving their leader some space. It hadn’t escaped Perry that they were all armed, which meant military, police, or more likely, criminals.

“I walked through a portal, as I’ve done many times before,” said Perry. He paused. It seemed like the time to stop feigning harmlessness. “If you go against me, you will meet the same fate as those who’ve gone against me before.”

The stranger’s hand went to his sword. “I would suppose that these others were not rewarded for their daring?” The stranger spoke with measured calm. His footwork as he moved forward was likewise very deliberate. The only thing that wasn’t deliberate was the way his hair moved in the wind.

“And you?” asked Perry. “You’re a recent arrival to Green Snake Valley?” He hadn’t drawn his sword yet, wouldn’t draw it until he had to.

It would be odd, with such a large world, to stumble across the other thresholder within minutes of arrival. Perry had thought he’d have to work for it. He was determined not to jump to conclusions, but it was seeming pretty obvious. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in a proper fighting state, not with the gun broken, not with the power armor unable to provide much power, not with his power from the last world unavailable.

“I hail from the Grouse Kingdom,” said the man. He drew his blade slowly, delicately, somehow not cutting the loop of cloth it had been slipped through. “We are here only for the necessities the Green Snake Valley offers. Our bid for amnesty denied, we move west, as many others do. That it should come to violence is regrettable.”

Perry frowned. “I’m not of the opinion that violence is needed here.”

“Your sword and armor will fetch us a good price,” said the man. “That is the necessity.”

“Ah,” said Perry. “And once I’ve dispatched you, and your men, should I watch out for other bands like this? It’s a common thing, walking through the woods and stealing what you can, attacking people you think you can kill?”

“There are others that find themselves in the same regrettable situation, yes,” said the man. He had started moving forward. “Yourself included?”

“What gives you that idea?” asked Perry.

“Only a warrior who had fallen on hard times would wear armor so damaged as that,” the man replied. He’d come as close as he was going to come, sword out in front of him. Perry still hadn’t drawn his own sword. “Armor is, of course, the tool of the coward, a limitation to technique and artistry, and a disruptor of the internal alchemy. That you would coat yourself in damaged armor does not speak well to your skills.”

Perry was looking at this HUD, trying to gauge the battery levels of the power armor. The armor felt sluggish, and he hadn’t had a chance to move around much in it, not with the batteries as they were, but he thought he could handle a battle against a single swordsman, at least unless that sword was supernaturally sharp. Given how nice the stranger’s clothes were and how immaculate his silky black hair was, Perry strongly suspected that magic was at work.

The smart thing to do was probably to fly away, but as Perry was considering that option, the swordsman closed the distance.

Perry brought his sword up to block, and his opponent’s last second change in posture made a mockery of the attempt at parrying. The sword gouged a line across the chestplate of the armor, relatively thin but more than metal on metal should have allowed for, and the swordsman took a half step back, analyzing.

“Your armor makes you sluggish,” he said. There was no indecision in his movements, no waver in his grip on the sword, but he didn’t immediately go in for a second attack.

“Problem?” asked Perry. If it came to a swordfight, he was going to lose, even with the armor, which meant that he couldn’t allow there to be a swordfight.

“Your spirit root,” the stranger said. He had narrowed his eyes at Perry. “You are of the first sphere.”

“Okay,” said Perry. “Does that mean that we don’t need to fight? Because I can’t see what I would get out of that.” He looked down at his armor, briefly, examining the damage. The sword had left a scar on armor that had accumulated plenty of scars, and a sign that a well-positioned sword strike could get at the suit’s more vulnerable points, like the armpits, neck, or groin. It was supernaturally sharp, to be able to get through the alloy.

The swordsman didn’t answer, and instead spoke to the other men around him in the same unfamiliar language. They’d circled Perry, giving no option but to go up, but Perry was somewhat less concerned with them.

The conversation took some time. Perry waited on it, unmoving, holding his sword steady in front of him. There was a temptation to strike out at the swordsman while he was distracted, but there was a huge difference in the speeds they were capable of. Perry hadn’t been able to get his sword up in time, and didn’t think that he’d be able to fare any better a second time. Even with the suit at the height of its power, it was still limited by his human — or superhuman, now — reaction times.

Finally, the conversation seemed to conclude with a few growling words spat out by the swordsman. The dirty men with their staffs and cudgels moved in around Perry, tightening their circle.

They at least, seemed to be bog-standard humans, maybe even having literally crawled out of a bog. They seemed hesitant to attack, and Perry didn’t blame them, given the state of their clothes and weapons, especially in comparison to his own sword and armor. He’d gone against unarmored men before, and it had always been a slaughter.

Perry waited until they attacked. He let a cudgel strike him before he started moving at all, and then he was pushing the armor to its limits, putting its diminished power into every sword strike. He’d been hoping for the element of surprise, and got it in spades as the first whirling slash cut through three of the men, slicing through wood and bone with an ease that he’d been missing during his time in Teaguewater.

From there, Perry went on the attack, leaping from man to man, cleaving through the skull of one man down to the eyeball, then wrenching his sword free and slashing straight through an upraised arm.

Their morale broke quickly, and the survivors scrambled back. Perry let them, standing with his bloody sword. He turned back to the swordsman, who was standing away from the scene, sword positioned behind his back. Not every attack had been a killing blow, and one of the bandits was screaming, clutching his forearm, whose hand was now laying on the ground. A different bandit was gasping on the ground, a slash across his chest that had gone straight through the ribs. He wasn’t going to survive that, Perry didn’t think.

“Enough,” said the swordsman. He stepped forward again. “You fight like a wild animal, for one of the first sphere.” He pointed his sword at Perry’s chest, which would have been more threatening if he’d been closer. “You know that no warrior of the first sphere can stand against a warrior of the second. I could strike you down without a bead of sweat upon my brow.”

Perry stared at him. There was, clearly, something that he was missing here. There were probably many things. This man might be able to beat him, but was electing not to. It wasn’t just fear that was holding him back.

“The sword cuts as material of the second sphere,” he said. “The armor stymies my blade. I must assume they are stolen, a debt to the cosmic order.”

“Both were gifts,” replied Perry.

“Hmph,” said the swordsman. “Then the cosmic debt lies with another.” His sword was still held out in front of him, still pointed at Perry’s chest like an accusation. He hadn’t moved from that position at all, and showed no sign of strain from holding it up. “Three men lie dead by your hand, with a fourth on the way, from the gifts you were bequeathed with.” He said this like a declaration. “In recompense, I will take the sword, but spare your life and allow you the armor.”

Perry paused for a moment. “No,” he said. “If you want the sword, you’ll have to kill me for it. It was a gift, but one earned in service to a king and rightfully mine, no matter the sphere.” He hoped he was using the word right.

The swordsman considered this. “Very well. Then in this matter, the cosmic debt must settle on my shoulders.”

He came in again, as though they’d never had a break in their battle for Perry to slaughter the mooks, and again, Perry was far too slow to block the strike. The sword seemed to weave through his defenses, slicing upward at his left armpit, and he could hear the blade go through the metal there.

Perry clamped down rather than pulling away, and with the suit’s strength, was able to trap the sword through tension alone. With his other hand, he dropped his own sword and reached out, grabbing the swordsman by his robes and pulling him closer. Soon they were grappling, and while the swordsman showed no fear and tried to escape the hold, Perry seemed to have the advantage, maybe because of the bulk the suit offered, the fact that he was taller, or just that his opponent wasn’t well-practiced in wrestling.

It was more or less over once Perry got a grip on the other man’s forearm. The suit’s grip strength was incredibly high, and there, at least, there wasn’t much question of not having enough flow of power. It should have been enough to shatter bones, but the arm itself didn’t give way, and they were stuck, locked together, the swordsman’s left arm held in place, his sword pinned. This was where the suit still excelled, a slow, crushing victory, and Perry didn’t see how he could lose from that point.

The swordsman had tricks. He released his sword and made quick motions with his fingers, which caused a blast of air that did nothing to extricate him. When that failed, he thrust his free hand down, toward the earth, and to Perry’s surprise, they both rose into the air, breaking branches as they flew high above the trees. Maybe the swordsman had been hoping that this bit of magic would make Perry falter in his grip, or panic, but Perry only held him closer, so they were pressed up against each other. As they began to fall, the swordsman began striking at the armor with his free fist, but while these hits were far harder than they should have been, causing warnings to pop up on the HUD, they weren’t enough to cause serious, lasting damage.

They crashed into the ground together, and Perry finally heard the snap of bone from the arm he’d been steadily holding onto. The swordsman had been stoic until that moment, concealing any anger or pain, but the breaking of bone made him cry out, and so Perry held tight and pressed the advantage, punching at the other man’s head. Unbelievably, he dodged the first few strikes, ducking beneath a fist even with his broken arm held in place, but eventually Perry clocked him with a strike to the neck that would have killed a lesser man outright.

Instead, the swordsman fought with one hand, trying to get his fingers into any gaps in the armor, but the armor had no gaps, no places to get leverage, with even the joints properly armored and airtight.

Perry went for a headbutt, and when it landed, the swordsman’s face was bloodied, more bone broken. After a second headbutt, the swordsman’s head was lolling, and after a third, he was slumped, unmoving. Perry didn’t drop the body until the fifth headbutt, and once he’d gotten to his feet, the first thing he did was to call his sword to his hand and make a quick decapitating strike.

The other men had long since fled.

“Damage assessment,” said Perry.

“Excessive, sir,” replied Marchand. “The left arm is seriously injured, battery capacity and charge rates are far below par, numerous cameras and microphones are no longer functional, the microfusion —”

“No,” said Perry. “I mean — how much damage did we take in that engagement?”

“The damage is largely cosmetic, sir,” replied Marchand. “I wouldn’t wager that we could weather too many more of those though. The gunfire to the chest in particular was of a higher caliber than this suit is rated for.”

“Gunfire?” asked Perry. “Oh, no, he was punching me.”

“Hmm, striking, sir, as the hits were with the tip of the hand,” said Marchand. “I believe something has gone wrong with either my memory banks or image processing, one moment, I’m rebooting some systems.”

“Don’t bother,” said Perry. It was magic of some kind, magical martial arts, it must have been if a simple gesture had launched them into the air and a strike from a hand was enough to dent armor. That was the kind of thing that March had always had difficulty understanding.

Perry looked down at the corpse, then began to pat it down, eventually stripping the man of his clothes. The other three bodies beside it looked like they probably had nothing, but this man had been well-dressed, in silks that were now ruined.

Beneath the robe, there was a pouch of coins, the language unreadable, along with a jade carving of a badger. Perry took that, adding it to his own pack, then picked up the sword, inspecting that as well. It was light and agile, with a thin, flat blade, the center of which was black with an engraving of stylized glyphs which probably belonged to the language he couldn’t speak. He swished the sword back and forth for a moment, then chopped at a tree to test it. He was mildly surprised when it showed none of the same sharpness it had in its previous owner’s hand.

Perry sheathed his sword and decided to carry the other, hoping that he could sell it for something later on, as the bandits seemed to have planned on doing.

He was worried though. If this was the caliber of a random wandering bandit, then he thought there was a good chance he was in serious trouble.