New Series: Pyresouls Online

A brief foreword before we get into the first chapter!

This is going to be a lot different than Beastborne. Firstly, this was conceived and developed as a novel first and foremost. It’s much less slice-of-life and as a result, considerably shorter than Beastborne is.

However, the story is also much tighter. Not to mention different. Whereas I would list Beastborne as somewhere in the realm of hopeful adventure in a dark world, Pyresouls is decidedly Grimdark.

For anybody who hasn’t picked up on the pastiche, this is inspired by the Soulsborne games and features a similarly dark and melancholy world on the brink.

My goal with this is to post chapter(s) every Wednesday, though depending on timing this may not be possible. I’m really playing this by ear here and as per the new tier updates for July, it’ll work similarly to Beastborne’s advanced chapters.

With new chapters going to the higher tier and then moving down as new chapters are released. Unlike Beastborne, I’m not tethering myself to a concrete schedule here. 

That was one of the joys of writing Pyresouls, I could move at my own pace as my schedule allowed (still working as an EMT, despite how unexpectedly good Beastborne’s launch was! Thank you guys again!).

That being said, unless there’s a major issue, I expect to release Pyresouls in ebook and polished format (it should already be mostly there in these cleaner drafts) this month (July).

As always, Beastborne will continue uninterrupted. Depending on how well the kindle launch goes there may be some changes to the schedule, but we will see. If anything, however, it would be a faster release of Beastsborne not a slower one, for anybody worried out there.

Okay, that’s enough yammering for now. I’ll probably do a separate “update” style post later rambling about this stuff in greater detail to keep you all abreast.

As always, thanks for being awesome, and please let me know any errors you find or comments/concerns.

Onto the story!

Chapter 01

May 7th, 2045 – 10 Years Post-Collapse

The air rang with the sound of Jacob’s deflection. He raised his cracked lucidian brass shield just in time to fend off a second blow from the wheezing undead. As he did, he drew his notched and battered sword from its sheath. 

Jacob stepped forward and swept his sword beneath the angle of his raised shield using the Sword Form, Wind Parts the Grass, to strike into his opponent’s gaping ribcage.

His blade split the bone of the decaying creature and swept clear through its spine, blasting the brittle bone and desiccated flesh into the dry hot wind. Another lost soul took its place, providing only a moment for Jacob to recover his stamina.

The [Vacant Human] takes 47 damage from Wind Parts the Grass.

You consume 20 Stamina.

You defeat the [Vacant Human].

Awarded 50 Souls.

A wisp of white mist lifted from the fallen creature and into Jacob’s chest. A chill spread through his chest and his Souls went up by 50, bringing his total in the bottom right quadrant of his vision to 97,120.

The number didn’t matter. Without the Pyres, Souls were useless.

Jacob focused on the upper left quadrant of his vision, taking a step back up the dusty mountain trail as he did. Stamina management was one of the most important aspects of fighting the hellish creatures that all but destroyed the world.

His green stamina bar filled slowly as he kept his shield up, but he didn’t dare drop his guard. There were too many. And he had been fighting for too long. With less than a quarter of his health remaining, he couldn’t afford to take any risks.

Down below, Caleb, clad in tattered black robes hemmed in bright blue thread, held up a hand and called down fire into his palm. Jacob was less than fifty feet from the man but couldn’t get to him through the narrow switchback that descended into the clearing the sorcerer was in.

Even if he had more health, taking the fast route down would be suicide. The fall alone would take most of his health and the undead would be on him before he could recover from the impact.

Jacob, with only a passing understanding of sorcery, didn’t understand what Caleb was doing. Surrounded by the undead – called Vacants, due to their empty unseeing gaze – he couldn’t see how Caleb would be able to extricate himself.

But Alec understood.

“Caleb, no!” Alec cried, his voice raw with emotion. Like Jacob, he was situated up the side of the same sheer cliff face. The narrow stony paths prevented them from getting rushed, forcing the Vacant to come at them single-file. It also prevented them from reaching any allies caught in the clearing below.

That didn’t stop Alec. He didn’t understand the meaning of the word “can’t.”

Clad in full medieval plate mail stolen from the Smithsonian well over four years ago, Alec raised his shield and charged down the switchback trail. His heavy greaves crunched the long-dead sere grass beneath his rust-splotched boots.

It would have been comical, seeing all the Vacant thrown to their deaths, if Jacob didn’t know how close Alec was to joining them among the dead. All it took was one slip, one Vacant that got a lucky strike, and Alec would lose his footing. White wisps rose from their broken bodies and entered Alec’s charging form as he built up speed.

Each of them had once been a brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter to somebody. Now they were empty. Vacant. Stripped of all humanity, they were nothing more than vicious beasts.

Clapping his hands together, Caleb condensed the flame in his hand into three small beads. Jacob’s heart fell at the sight. He may not know much about sorcery but he knew that spell. Sorcerer’s Breath turned their body into one massive explosion of fire. 

In the game of Pyresouls Online, that wasn’t a big deal. It was a final spell that would kill you but also had an equally good chance to kill your opponents. You would simply respawn at the last Pyre you visited.

But there were no Pyres on Earth. Death was final.

“Get down!” Jacob cried out.

Caleb’s dark eyes looked up at him, then drifted to the still-charging form of his brother, Alec. Amid the deepening sadness in the sorcerer’s eyes, he clapped his hands together for one final time, triggering the spell.

Half a dozen heavily armored men and women in ancient hauberks, chainmail, and platemail fell to the hard, dead earth just as the wave of white-hot fire flashed across the clearing. Dozens of the Vacant were incinerated in an instant.

Jacob covered his head with his shield as he hit the rocky trail with a bone-rattling jolt. The wave of intense heat washed over him but he was high enough along the trail that it did little more than make him break out into an uncomfortable sweat.

He was on his feet in a moment, ready to meet the attack he feared was coming. Instead, he stared at nothing but the half-dozen blazes Caleb had set off down below at the forest’s edge.

There was nothing left of the man and nothing left of the raiding force of Vacants and other monstrosities. 

They were able to sniff out the last dregs of humanity no matter how far they ran or how deeply they hid in their holes. More monsters would pick up their trail.

Up in the once-green Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, it had been safe for a while. Then they found them. They always did.

Caleb was their best sorcerer and through his sacrifice, dozens of horrendous monsters were defeated. White wisps, Souls, flew in every direction, split evenly among the survivors. But other abominations would find them before long. And when that happened they would be one man down.

It was a war of attrition played out again and again in scattered pockets across the dying world. It was one war the human race couldn’t hope to win.

Miraculously, Alec had thrown himself down at the last moment and managed to avoid the brunt of the sorcerous explosion. His surcoat was turned to ash, bits of the ragged cloth still burning. And his armor was blackened in several spots.

“Form up, and fall back!” Alec called, rising to his feet. Jacob shook his head at his resiliency. Not for the first time, he wished he was as strong as him. Or that he at least stayed in the game long enough to level up some more.

Without the Pyres no matter how many Souls he got, he couldn’t level up on Earth. Still, he couldn’t complain too much. Skills could still be increased and upgraded through extensive use and intensive training.

Even the weakest of surviving Pyresouls players were better off than those who never played. They were perpetually stuck at Level 0 without any hope of increasing their stats beyond the average human’s.

Alec crossed the narrow ledge to Jacob’s position, lifting the visor to his helm as he did. His face was tight with barely-held grief. Caleb was his brother and the big man had a habit of putting the fate of the world on his shoulders. Jacob had known him for years now, there was no way Alec wouldn’t blame himself for his brother’s death. 

Jacob lifted the visor on his helm and looked into Alec’s bright blue eyes. He didn’t say anything. They had both seen death often enough to know that no words could suffice. He placed a hand on the bigger man’s pauldrons. 

Alec turned his gaze north and hurried off up the trail, his equipment making its customary racket.

A couple heavily armored – now blackened – forms didn’t get up. Jacob sighed. They would be down more than just a single man when the monsters returned. He turned to look up at Alec’s back.

He wasn’t about to ask him to clear the dead.

Jacob raised a gauntleted hand to the woman in a crimson surcoat and a beak-faced bascinet that was coming up the path. “Kat, you’re with me.” 

She was among the most gifted among them. Despite being stuck at Level 2, she took to the training well and showed great promise. Only her weak stats held her back. Like Jacob, Kat had quit Pyresouls early.

Many people had underestimated the psychological weight of a Full-Immersion Virtual Reality (FIVR for short) game with no pain dampeners, no memory inhibitors for death, and horrific fiends straight out of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Few stayed logged in past their first death.

While the others followed Alec up the trail to the caves that housed one of the last bastions of humanity, Jacob and Kat picked their way down the smoldering trails to their fallen comrades.

If they were dead, Jacob needed to be sure they stayed that way. And if they weren’t, they needed to be brought inside. 

Kat lifted her visor, her face was streaked with grime and sweat. Her blue eyes met Jacob’s green. “I’ll get Daniel and Melissa.”

With a nod, Jacob split off and went to the first lifeless form. Sal never did like being crammed into a suit of armor. Nothing they ever found fit the man’s rotund frame. And yet, when the enemy was at the gate he was the first one to squeeze into that uncomfortable armor.

Unlike modern, comfortable fabrics and bendable armor, medieval sets - ones used long ago, not the cheap replicas - offered the only protection against the horde of creatures that now dominated the world after the Collapse.

Without Guilt, a force imbued into equipment by its previous wearers over many long years, even the sturdiest steel plates were little better than tissue paper. It had been one of Jacob and Kim’s first real discoveries.

Raiding local museums and collectors was the only reason their group - diminished though it was - still survived. Guns were useless. Tactical armor a joke. But dress up like you were going to a jousting match and you could weather blows that would take down a tank.

Facedown in the smoldering dirt, Jacob nudged the man with the toe of his metal boot. When he didn’t respond he rolled him over and crouched at his side. Placing his sword to the side, he drew a thin-bladed dagger from his hip and carefully lifted the man’s visor.

His stomach churned at the sight of the grouchy, fatherly figure burned to a crisp. With a practiced motion, Jacob tilted back the man’s head and drove the thin tip of the dagger from the man’s chin into his brain.

The Vacant liked to come back wearing the faces of friends and loved ones. Damaging the brain prevented that from happening. Once they were Vacant, they were much harder to put down. 

It was hard work, emotionally and physically taxing. But it was a necessity after the Collapse changed all the rules.

After cleaning the dagger, Jacob picked up his sword and waited. A moment later a glowing fiery sphere of sapphire light drifted off the man’s chest and floated in the air. He reached his hand out and touched it, willing the wisp into himself.

[Stygian Iron Helm]

[Stygian Iron Breastplate]

[Stygian Iron Gauntlets]

[Stygian Iron Greaves]

[Ring of Bitter Dreams]

The words flashed across Jacob’s vision and vanished with a mental confirmation. All of Sal’s effects were contained in that wispy orb of blue fire.

It was one of the quirks of this new post-apocalyptic reality.

One of the very few benefits of the Collapse was the inventory system that provided everybody with a [Boundless Box] that seemed to hold an impossible number of items without weighing them down.

Any item you had on you – or within your [Boundless Box] – would be contained in your wisp. Unlike monsters, the wisps of people stayed at the site of their death. Long after a person’s body turned to ash, their wisp would remain in place waiting for somebody to collect it.

Simply touching a person’s wisp allowed you to gain all of their usable items and in rare cases, it might contain a fragment of the Souls they had collected in life.

Jacob turned to Caleb, or rather the blackened blasted stone where Caleb had once stood. All that remained of Caleb was a glowing azure wisp that hung in the air above the charred stone. 

Caleb had gone out on some secret mission almost two months ago. They all thought he was dead until the scouts saw him and the horde of Vacant on his heels an hour ago. 

Unsurprisingly, the man had little left. But aside from his equipment, which Jacob collected and would give to Alec, there was another item. One he had never seen before.

He summoned the [Ember of Probability] he collected from Caleb’s wisp. He watched as shimmering images played out like a kaleidoscope from within the tiny glowing mote in his leather-clad palm. Every so often it vanished, the only trace it was still there was the comforting warmth it spread even through his armor.

With a shrug, Jacob put the item back into his [Boundless Box]. He’d seen stranger things in the ten years since the Collapse. He made a mental note to see Doctor Jasieux, she was the one who sent Caleb out after all.

After the Collapse, a lot of strange things happened. The laws of the world faltered and were superseded by those of a new and obscenely popular game, Pyresouls Online.

Players who managed to survive the First Wave found they had stats outside of the game. Spells and abilities that were impossible just a few days prior were suddenly commonplace.

The bystanders were the first to die en masse. 

A world of stats, skills, and levels caught them by surprise. Without any frame of reference or instruction on how to utilize these new gifts, most people were helpless against the flood of undead abominations, hellspawn creatures, and horrors without name.

When they were finished with their grim deed, Kat and Jacob marched up the winding narrow trails to the caverns in relative silence. 

“Sent those monsters straight to Hell, did ya?” George asked, standing beside the heavy gates set deep into the walls of the cave on either side. He threw a heavy lever, the rattle of chains echoed deep within the stone.

Somewhere inside the half-foot thick blast doors, there was another lever being thrown that would open the way for them into the bunker.

Kat gave the younger man a tired look. “Can’t very well send them to Hell when we’re already there.”

Without a word more, the pair passed into the opened doors and the guardroom beyond. They passed through three more blast doors until they reached the heart of the bunker. The mess hall. The whole place had once belonged to some ludicrously wealthy family that was convinced the world would end.

It turned out they were right. 

Unfortunately for them, money was a poor shield against the creatures that flooded into the world during the Collapse. Whoever they were, they never survived long enough to make it to the bunker.

Just as well. They probably wouldn’t have been the sharing kind. And with so few humans left, it would have been a shame to kill them just to secure lodgings. They even had a FIVR pod. Too bad there were no games. 

That didn’t stop the few scientists they had in their group from setting up shop alongside the thing.

FIVR pods were all the rage back when reality was so predictable and mundane. Using them, people could escape - body and mind - into worlds full of violence, magic, and mayhem for fun.

That all ended the moment Pyresouls turned out to be more than a game.

The dull electric buzz of fluorescent lights gave Jacob a headache as he mentally dismissed his shield and sword. They vanished into a swirl of ash. He could recall them with another thought easily enough.

Kat gently punched his shoulder. The clink of metal reminded him that he still wore his armor. Jacob sent that away with a thought, that too broke apart into ash that vanished a second later, leaving Jacob in a sweat-soaked shirt and pants.

“Gonna grab some grub, you want me to snag you something?” she asked.

Jacob shook his head. “I gotta talk to the Doc. I’ll see you at eighteen-hundred for sparring though.”

“You got it, Jake. Think you’ll finally teach me Sun Crests the Horizon?”

“Maybe,” Jacob hedged, no longer paying much attention. He finally spotted Alec among the fifty or so people currently in the mess hall. With a wave of goodbye in Kat’s direction, he headed toward the only table filled to the brim. 

Alec never ate alone, though it wasn’t out of preference. He had a way about him that drew people to him. It should have gone to his head but it never seemed to. 

There was an empty spot on the bench at the long aluminum table his group was eating at.

Jacob wanted to leave him alone. He knew the man well enough to know he would prefer to grieve in peace. Alec placed the billions of people’s deaths squarely on his shoulders. He felt responsible for the Collapse that wiped out half of Earth’s population in the first week alone. 

The problem was, it was true.

After all, it was Alec who failed to defeat the monster he awoke within Pyresouls Online. That same monster managed to get out of the game and create a breach in reality that caused the Collapse. An apocalyptic event that changed the fundamental rules of reality forever.

Not only that, but he had just lost his brother. Caleb had left on some sort of errand that the Doc gave him. He left with seven others, the strongest and swiftest among them that didn’t rely on heavy armor.

When the scouts picked up Caleb’s return, he was alone and being chased by a horde of monsters. Alec and Jacob were summoned along with a few others not already on patrols to bring Caleb in.

They had failed. As they had so many times in the past. Failure was an old friend to the dwindling survivors of the human race.

Every week their numbers shrank. Even with food and shelter, every death made the next one that much more likely. Many other groups weren’t so lucky. Death came in the form of famine, disease, and even other humans.

Jacob wanted to give the ember to the Doc. But it somehow felt wrong not to include Alec. Caleb was his little brother after all. If he died to get the [Ember of Probability], shouldn’t Alec know?

Of all the people Jacob met since the Collapse, he was closest to Alec. He knew Caleb but only in passing. There was a deep wound between the brothers that even the Collapse hadn’t managed to heal.

“Got a sec?” Jacob asked, standing at the edge of Alec’s table.

Classically handsome, the blonde-haired blue-eyed man looked up at Jacob and pushed away from his meal without a word. Selfless to a fault, he put everybody else before himself.

Once they were out of earshot in an adjacent hallway, Jacob summoned the item he took off Caleb’s body, the [Ember of Probability]. “I found this on Caleb, with his effects. Did you…?”

Alec shook his head. “You keep them. He liked you better than me anyway,” he said with a dark chuckle. “May I?” He tilted his head to the ember.

Jacob handed it over, watching as Alec’s blue eyes danced with the shimmering light of the ember. “Do you know what that is?” 

He nodded, something shifted on his features. Fear? Jacob hadn’t ever seen it before. For a brief moment, his best friend seemed weary and tired. Aged dozens of years beyond his mid-twenties. “We need to see Alice.”