A hand was gripping his body half-shaking him as Claude sucked in deep mouths of air. He was suffocating, his body began to scream for air to be drawn in, his limbs ached and the act of breathing in hurt.

  ‘No. The spread was too fast. The virus can’t force adaptation under these conditions. I assumed a cheapened copy would work but this isn’t working. You’re dying. Worthless Deep Water Purification Facility. Never should have made a deal with Oannes.’ said the familiar feminine voice.

  Claude was barely able to pay attention outside of his own body as it began to shut down. There was something being taken from him and absorbed at a rate faster than he could heal.

  The book. Or the fungus. Or the…..tired. I’m so tired. I want to sleep. Just...sleep. Sleep. Too much. I...too much. No more.

  His body was heavily oxygen deprived and his lungs were painful. Blurry vision in front of his eyes stopped him from immediately recognising the figure in front of him. Despite the light from the torches in bone brackets on the walls Claude struggled to see in the light. His enhanced vision failed him as his energy reserves were depleted.

  ….I’m sleep. Time...sleep….no...no...I...I..need...

  Darkness was filling his immediate vision as Claude experienced his body slowing down, his limbs refused to respond as his heartbeat slowed down. His body gave him a final burst of energy trying to preserve him as his brain began to shut down all functions.

  Claude accepted that this was another factor out of his control. A good part of him was relieved that the horrors of this place would end, his physical transformation into something other than human and his own adaptability were what had scared him the most.

  He welcomed an ending as an order came into existence and bound his soul, mind and body. In his weakened state he was unable to resist longer than a few seconds.

  ...I….sleep….so...no...

  No. You will not die. Breath. Pause all physical decay. Breath. Suspend time. Loop enabled. Delay death of a character.

  A voice spoke and his body responded as reality around him shifted. The lack of oxygen was replaced as his mouth breathed in air so fresh and pure it could have come from a mountain range but with a hint of fresh mint and lavender.

  He breathed in the salty air of the oceans, he was on his long distance operation boat then. Working and reporting in, he had a few months left before his work at the Acqua Foundation would end.

  He might renew the contract but he had an entirely uneventful time aside from one storm and a near miss collision with the boat with an unidentified object in the water.

  Overall it had been a fairly boring experience. He had enjoyed having time to himself for the first two months but the research recording had become mundane, the oceans of Belphus held no sea monsters or strange environmental effects. All was calm. All was relatively the same.

  He had been in direct contact with the Acqua Foundation during his time on the oceans of Belphus and his performance while not outstanding was satisfactory and he was offered a chance to re-sign a contract with a three month interval period.

  Claude was looking forward to going back to the coastal city he had started out from. He was a better person for choosing to take the extended contract and his feelings of the relationship which had ended badly had settled.

  The Acqua Foundation had even provided him with temporary accommodation and free healthcare and monitoring of his physical and mental health.

  I needed that. Six months by myself with an AI, daily reports, a work schedule to follow and the occasional ship in the distance. Life is good. A little boring, but a little boring is healthy.

  Reset timeline. Breath. In. Breath Out. Breath In. Continue breathing. Please. Remove excess fungus growth. Awaken. Live.

  Reality reset. Claude had never stayed on his long distance operation boat. He had never finished his work and moved to the coastal city to begin a new life, finding new relationships and friendships.

  His transponder signal was located by the Acqua Foundation which had classified him as having experienced an anomalous event. He lived again.

  The effect on him was weakened as he began to fully regain consciousness but the effect was enough as his body slowly began to absorb oxygen into his bloodstream and distribute it to his brain, organs and limbs.

  ‘Claude! Did Sally do this? Did she tell you to kill yourself? Stupid, luckily for her any interference on her part is matched by my own ability to counter it. I’m just fixing and not making massive reality alterations. Claude? You can speak right? You’re a mess. The virus tried to fight back against the fungal infection and...you got lost somewhere along the way. I need you, we need you so we can leave this place. I applied for a different posting but the Founder wants an end and...you’re awake. Good.’

  His fingers were aching, the edges of them were sore. Claude opened his eyes to find himself hanging up in the air a metre off the ground, hoisted up by the figure of Kamryn once more.

  This time she looked entirely normal and filled out in her own grey suit. She wasn’t extremely thin, a little tired with bags under her eyes but not thin. Her body had curves this time around the edges of the suit and her hair was shinier and longer, running down the length of her back. She appeared more refreshed than before and her face glowed lightly.

  End scenario. Engage dialogue.

  Claude spoke as he recognised the torches on the walls held in bone brackets and the same spot which he had crashed out in the compacted dirt corridor.

  He had obviously lost track of time, looking down as his right hand his fingers had remained so tightly dug into the same leathery book as before. His left wrist was no longer painful but his limbs were aching as though he had gone through a rigorous amount of exercise.

  ‘Yeah, nice to see you as well Kamryn. I have a question for you. You are female right? I was a little lost there. You look good, healthier and with more weight on your bones. Are you here to help me out or take me to a worse place then this one?’ said Claude.

  He was dropped immediately on the dirt flooring and smelt the familiar mildew and damp. It had been a long time since he had imbibed any form of liquid and he grabbed the skull which he’d yet to turn into a skull cup and held it out to Kamyrn who was floating in the air above him.

  ‘Pity a poor Inheritor-Candidate for a drink?’ said Claude as he bowed his head and partially grovelled on the floor.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He wasn’t in a condition to fight against a being with sufficient levels of power who had taken him here or rescued him. Either way, he wasn’t prepared and needed to move forward.

  Claude was half-expecting the voice of the Grand Chamberlin to further explain to him the decent of madness in what had caused the nobility of a culture to consume prisoners of war. He’d either been talking to a ghost or a memory brought to life.

  He’d hadn’t experienced being under threat though and disgusting as it was to see the banquet of flesh being set up, he’d learnt more of the history of this island.

  And the Grand Chamberlin Linze had shown awareness of him as a separate presence. He had shown him relative kindness and understanding but the most value was in the lost history and culture of this island.

  He could learn secrets, hidden tricks and how to escape this place. Answers and horrors both awaited Claude when he could talk with the Grand Chamberlin again and enter a place of memory.

  The Eternal Empress was something else. She was powerful and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she was also interconnected as a living memory as the Grand Chamberlin Linze was.

  There was a possibility that a fungus had the properties to retain the memories of the dead and enable a type of artificial organic storage construct. Claude knew little enough but was eager to learn more, just for the sake of knowing.

  I almost died though. Something about fungus and power. The book. I touched the book and...fell asleep. And it nearly killed me. A small present was so dangerous. Ah. I made her angry. Or them.

  The compacted dirt corridor was broken apart as Kamryn dropped to the ground leaving an indent in the floor. A small plume of dirt and dust rose into the air as a small wind carried it further down the corridor away from them.

  With an outstretched hand the oversized skull, which Claude had offered floated in the air and landed in her hand. She admired it for a moment before she caressed it gently.

  ‘Thirsty. Hungry. Imagine if none of that existed. To never desire it again...to experience it. A possibility. But in this place? No. There is a place…..a paradise of sorts where The Founder of the Tourism Board promotes food and drink. Normal food and drink. And gods and avatars compete for popularity, there is no horror there. No blood like here. That is a unique place amongst all the Seed and Variant worlds. The only one. Are you thirsty? Do you need to quench your thirst? I fed you bone. But drink. Drink is another matter.’ said Kamryn.

  She smiled at the skull as her fingers dug into it, despite the pressure she put into her hand and how the bone squeezed inwards there was no noise of it cracking.

  ‘Tricks. Smokes and mirrors and tricks. We are more than gods, more than anything here. We can reshape reality but we are cast in his words, ordered at his whim to build worlds which destroy themselves. All for Tourists. Sally offered you an escape. Do you still thirst?’ said Kamryn as circles appeared around her eyes and the torches dimmed.

  The space around them grew darker as Claude experienced a shift in his body, the familiar heat rose within him. His body rose up of its own accord and his hands stretched outwards as his nails elongated and his jaw broke apart and extended before healing.

  ‘You need more than I could give you. At this rate, even the drones guarding this place will take you apart a bite at a time. Sally was right. I was overly protective. But there is value here, the virus will build your strength and provide a degree of resistance from the fungal spread from fully taking you over. And all you need to do is fight for it. No, I have a better idea. The surface would be too much, here. You need to learn to hunt. To kill and survive. Yes, a bone drone. Your first taste of real death.’ said Kamryn as she stretched out the skull and moulded it between her hands before fixing on the face of Claude.

  On his face and head the skull formed a mask with the teeth extended down to cover his own mouth. He could breath but the smell of the bone was maddening. The same sweetness which he had eaten previously when Kamryn had fed him.

  The eye sockets of the skull shifted back to allow him vision and part of it shifted and pushed down on his tongue, keeping it firmly down inside his mouth.

  Claude recalled the black clothed servants he had seen inside the memory dream at the banquet of flesh in the palace ruled over by the Eternal Empress.

  All of them had helmets similar to cages over their faces to stop them eating the food. He wondered if that was to actually protect the food from being eaten or the prisoners they had been going to bring in as fresh meat.

  A hunger began to build up deep inside him and a heat responded within. The skin on his bare hand was sliced open as the bone tooth club which had been stretched around his waist as a belt extended thorn like teeth and cut deep into his palm digging in.

  Claude grabbed the skull mask and tried to rip it off with two hands as blood flowed from his hand, the leathery ancient book had been dropped to the compacted dirt floor of the tunnel.

  The face of Kamryrn appeared directly in front of his as she sliced a hand directly into his body without cutting the skin or drawing blood. She squeezed inside his abdomen and gripped something lodged within. In one smooth motion she pulled out a compressed white ball with small tendrils on which were flaying around.

  She held it up by a single tendril watching him as he tried to rip the bone mask off his face. His body had begun to shift, his jaw tried to unlock but was forced against the mask as extra teeth began to grow inside his mouth.

  ‘Claude. In all your pain you asked me a question. If I was female. When humans experience extreme starvation the body changes. Energy is a commodity to be conserved. I will be who I choose to be. For now I’m a woman, but you….you will become a beast. There. You see this? Facinating stuff. An endoparasitoid developed by the science, culture and belief of an Empire and then encouraged to infect almost every single living thing. I took two weak copies of a single virus and an adaptable weapon as a support for you. This….this isn’t needed. You can always find more.’ said Kamryn as she flicked the compressed white ball into the air and it became dust before vanishing into fine particles.

  A part of Claude which had been driving him was gone, an ache came over his entire body as the bone tooth club withdrew from his hand as grey liquid dripped the open wound and began to spread.

  There was hunger inside him but it wasn’t the same as before. There was a desire to become more, to achieve his aims. He let go of the skull mask and dropped his arms to his side before he crouched down low and dug with his nails on the compacted dirt floor.

  An instinct took hold of him as his body demanded proteins and fats to be replenished and converted into biomass and muscle. He clenched the wounded hand as the grey liquid stopped running out and the cut healed over leaving a scar.

  In front of him Kamryn waved a hand as Claude was paralysed as she pressed one hand on the skull mask and used one of her own fingernails to slice her own palm open. She squeezed the hand as blood began to run out and drip onto the bone gaps in the mask. The flow of blood increased and poured into Claude’s throat as a presence within him began to alter his form, bones cracked and broke apart before healing in seconds. He was heavier, stronger.

  Then the flow of blood stopped as Kamryn shattered apart the bone mask with a snap of her fingers.

  ‘My mistake, was treating you like a human in a biological nightmare. We needed a monster. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not as bad as Sally, she literally scours the surface for food. There we go. One strengthened stolen virus from the Deep Water Purification Facility and a weapon taken from the remains of a Drowned World and insane Ocean Gods. Go Claude. Go and kill and escape this place. You have a long way to go until you reach the remains of the capital city. Go.’ said Kamyrn as she vanished from Claude’s immediate field of vision as the bone mounted torches on the walls went entirely dark.

  ‘Welcome to the . Please confirm your destination to your chosen Seed world or Variant of the planet Belphus.

  All Visitors please register with your nearest available Tour Guide. The Tourism Board is Above All.’

  [This has been a sponsored message from . Choose yours today!]

  Nicholas A. Ostheimer [Original Founder of the Tourism Board and Creator of Fictional Realities.]