CHAPTER TEN

First Summoning

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The ‘ping!’ of the elevator doors woke him up from his daze.

“Ha~~ah,” he groaned.

He’d been staring listlessly at them throughout the ride, but now those doors opened to a pristine white space that had become the setting for his worst nightmares. The sight of this lobby filled the tan-skinned man with the kind of dread that left him feeling paralyzed.

“You alright, Hajime?” asked the woman leaning on the wall beside him.

Hajime glanced tiredly to his right.

“Bridget-San…I don’t think I can do this anymore,” Hajime admitted in an exhausted tone.

The pretty blonde with a wide brow and almond-shaped hazel eyes offered him a sympathetic smile. “You say that every morning.”

“I mean it this time.” Hajime pulled out the crumpled white envelope he’d been keeping in his jacket’s breast pocket for months now. “I’m going to turn in my resignation today. Right now!”

Bridget laughed.

“You say that every morning too,” she reminded him just before patting him gingerly on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s clock in before the next crisis hits.”

As she walked past the open elevator doors, Bridget glanced over her shoulder and offered Hajime a sarcastic grin.

“I can’t wait to see what other unreasonable demands Corporate’s come up with in the last…” She checked her smartwatch. “…Four hours since we clocked out.”

“H-how are you not feeling as dead as I feel?” Hajime complained.

“I got to shower earlier!” Bridget yelled as she left him behind.

Hajime sniffed at his armpit, his nose cringing at the strong odor wafting out of him that was barely concealed by his deodorant. “I wish I had time to shower…or have breakfast…”

A nap and a change of clothes were all Hajime could manage in the short time he had before coming back to work after another all-nighter. There had been a lot of those recently. Weeks of crunch time and rushed work all because their corporate overlords insisted the studio keep to its highly unrealistic release date plans for their next triple-A game.

“I’m going to die of overwork…”

As the Lead Game Designer for the latest installment of the company’s blockbuster franchise, Space Age: the Dread Fool, Hajime oversaw nearly every aspect of game design. From concepts, characters, settings, storyline, and gameplay—he led the development team in ensuring the group’s overall vision came to life in another groundbreaking virtual masterpiece. At least that’s what his job looked like on paper. In reality, Hajime, one of the last of the O.G. staff who had helped turn his gaming company into a triple-A studio, had also been put in charge of ‘Project Management for Development’ since the guy who had the job before him quit due to the high-stress environment of today’s gaming industry. Corporate promised it was a temporary gig, but three months had passed since then, and Hajime was still grinding it.

With a defeated sigh, Hajime stepped out of the elevator.

The first thing he saw once he exited into the expansive white space of the studio’s lobby was the logo that flashed on the white wall to greet arrivals.

WELCOME TO BIOSOFT

“Bakayarô …” He flipped his once beloved studio logo with the middle finger before it vanished back into the wall. “I’m going to resign today.”

Hajime didn’t resign though. He couldn’t. It wasn’t in his nature to quit no matter how grueling the challenge was because Hajime had been raised with the honorable samurai spirit of his motherland which he continued to uphold even in this gloomy, smog-filled New York weather.

So, while mentally and physically exhausted, Hajime Hideo Miyamoto, a Japanese-born thirty-six-year-old man once lauded as a game-developing prodigy who’d renewed the public’s interest in the possibilities of virtual reality games, spent his last day as a free soul slaving for the studio he’d once loved. Still, a morning of grueling meetings with the corporate overlords over discussions of cutting content for the sake of hitting Space Age’s unrealistic release date was the worst start for another taxing day.

“Can’t we just cut out the third act of the story and repackage it as downloadable content later?” one of the faceless suits suggested. “A DLC will make us more money, won’t it?”

“C-cut out the third a-act?!” Hajime sputtered.

He was so frustrated by this suggestion of blatant greed that his samurai spirit seemed ready to burst out of him so that it might cut down the offensive speakerphone from which the greedy devil’s voice exuded.

“Without a third act there’s no ending, you—”

In the nick of time, Bridget reached over to the speakerphone and pressed the mute button.

“—bakayarô!” Hajime howled.

“What was that, Hajime?” asked another faceless suit. A female one this time. “We didn’t catch the last part?”

Bridget mouthed ‘Calm down,’ while the other leads around the table repressed their giggles.

“Anyone there?” asked the faceless male suit.

“Did we get cut off…?” added the faceless female suit.

At the head of the conference table, Chris—the game’s gaunt-faced, sandy-haired, mustachioed Executive Producer—sighed heavily. He shrugged in a defeated manner and whispered, “Unmute it so we can get this horseshit over with.”

With a wink at Hajime, Bridget unmuted the call. “Sorry, guys. Technical difficulties on our end…”

Frankly, by the time the meeting from hell was over, Hajime’s soul looked to be ready to flee his body. He would’ve remained crestfallen for the rest of the day too were it not for the cup of instant ramen noodles that he’d found waiting for him at his desk afterward. A post-it note accompanied this veritable potion of healing.

‘Here’s a reward for pushing back against those bloodsucking bastards — B.’

A wan smile flitted across Hajime’s face. “Arigatou, Bridget-San…”

In his mind, Hajime recalled his compatriot’s appearance; the shoulder-length blonde hair framing Bridget’s oval yet square-jawed face and the wide cheekbones that made her smile seem more prominent—yes, Bridget Fowling was indeed Hajime’s guardian angel.

Thoughts of Bridget, and his one-sided crush on her, filled Hajime’s brain, reinforcing him for another day of managing underpaid programmers and designers, who, like Hajime, were sacrificing their mental health and family time in the name of honor—and not disappointing the legions of fans who loved their studio in a way they’ve forgotten. Typically, this led to another all-nighter that ended with Hajime crashing onto his bed without the strength to even brush his teeth.

“I’ll resign in…” He just had enough left in him to check the clock on his bedside table. “…two and a half hours…”

Hajime yawned.

“I’ll do it this time. Hontoudesu…”

As these words spilled from his mouth, Hajime, with tears pooling beneath his closed eyelids, fell into a deep sleep. He wasn’t waking up in two and a half hours either.

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Earlier, when Rowan had asked Bram to think of a mortal who could aid them in their great undertaking, the seventh prince had drawn a blank. His knowledge of the other world wasn’t omnipotent. Neither did Bram know the inner workings of the ‘virtual reality’ that he deemed was the perfect tool for fooling the humans of the other world. However, there was one phrase from his visions that Bram recalled with strange clarity…

“Game designer,” he whispered.

Bram couldn’t say how he knew that phrase, which vision had taught him these words, or why ‘Game Designer’ evoked such passionate and wistful reflections in him. The one thing he was certain of was that they needed someone who could design the narrative they wished to push forward.

“A single phrase isn’t much to go on,” there was the barest hint of a furrowed brow on Rowan’s face, “but perhaps if we combine it with your ideas…we may find the missing pieces of this puzzle.”

With her eyes closed, Rowan’s head swiveled to the right, then to the left, and then back to the right. These same motions repeated continuously and quickly—so quickly that afterimages were formed, making it seem like the trickster had many heads instead of one.

Bram could only watch as this bizarre sight continued for long seconds…

Then, without warning, Rowan’s eyes flew open. She gasped, fingers tightening around the seventh prince’s hands. She might have stumbled out of the air if Bram hadn’t been supporting her.

“What happened?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

“I looked into the lives of twenty million mortals,” she whispered.

Rowan paused, Bram waited on bated breath, and time seemed to extend into hours before the trickster raised a finger.

“I’ve found him,” she revealed. “One person in twenty million lives. The only mortal with the talent to aid us in beginning our grand undertaking.”

“Only one?” Bram asked doubtfully.

Rowan nodded. “For the role that you desire—just the one, My Prince.”

The sincerity in Rowan’s gaze washed away the doubt from Bram’s mind, leaving a space in his brain quickly filled with the spark of anticipation.

“Then we must bring them here this very moment,” he insisted.

The trickster smiled impishly. “Tis already begun.”

At her words, the line of blood spiraling around the chamber's heart began to glow an eerie crimson hue.

“We need only wait while the ritual harkens to the one beyond the veil between worlds, and like a siren in heat, drag this poor mortal’s soul into the depths of Aarde,” she explained.

A long while passed while they waited yet the summoning remained unfulfilled, causing a frown to grow on Bram’s face.

“Could the ritual have failed?” he asked.

“Patience,” Rowan chided. “It takes longer than ten minutes to steal a mortal’s soul from another world.”

“Will all our future summoning rituals be this…challenging?” Bram pressed.

“The first time is always hardest,” Rowan explained. “Though once a soul is summoned, the need for the ritual disappears so long as a contract is established between the summoner and the one who was summoned.”

“A contract…”

A memory flashed in Bram’s mind, one of Rowan pressing her lips against his neck and drinking his blood.

The trickster noticed his paling pallor and giggled.

“Tis nothing like the bargain you and I have struck,” she promised Bram. “The method will be less intimate.”

Relief filled Bram’s mind, although he wasn’t certain if the thought of having to drink the blood of legions or the idea that Rowan might have to fulfill this task herself was what caused his stomach to churn.

“Will I have to establish contracts with a thousand souls?” Bram wondered aloud.

In his mind, the seventh prince knew that one thousand otherworlders was a very conservative estimate. Millions would have to be called into service for the great undertaking's success.

“Binding thousands of souls to yourself would be inadvisable.” Rowan’s reply indicated that she thought the same as him. “Though such dark sorcery might give you great power, it would drive any mortal mad, turning you into a destroyer rather than the benevolent ruler you hope to become.”

A dark look flashed on the trickster’s face.

“Only a god would consider such depravity,” she hissed. “And to attempt it yourself would mean a challenge that their pantheon cannot ignore…”

“…And we’re not ready for a confrontation with a god,” Bram agreed.

“Not yet,” Rowan sighed heavily. “Not while I remain in this weakened state.”

With all that she’s shown him, Bram couldn’t imagine ever calling Rowan weak. It made him wonder just how powerful the rebel trickster of legend truly was during her prime.

“In the future, we shall set up a more competent method of summoning the otherworlders to Aarde,” Rowan reiterated. “It shall require a proper summoning circle in Lotharin with a similar totem on the other side to ensure a stable connection between our two worlds.”

Once more, the vision of the black box and visor flitted across Bram’s mind. He thought such a device would suffice as a totem, though he would have to discuss it with the mortal who was taking their time arriving on Aarde.

Bram let out an exasperated sigh.

“Patience,” Rowan reminded him.

More time passed, and with his impatience growing further, Bram’s eyes drifted down to the glowing lines of blood. His gaze followed them to their source—the red grizzly’s corpse.

“Why is a blood sacrifice necessary?” he asked.

“Apart from empowering the ritual, the blood offered shall be the matter that forges the body the otherworlder’s soul can reside in,” Rowan answered. “We will need a constant supply for every first summoning. Not just blood—”

“—But the way the sacrifice is slain matters too,” Bram guessed.

“A violent ending strengthens the ritual,” Rowan admitted.

“Then we shall need to train soldiers for the hunting and slaying of beasts to sacrifice,” Bram’s brow creased at the thought of tainting those who were loyal to him with his sins. “We’ll also require sorcerers who can perform the first summoning rituals… I cannot have you stuck here and focused on just this one task…”

“And I would never agree to such a boring assignment,” Rowan replied with a giggle. Her hand brushed against his. “My place is by your side, though my focus will be on maintaining the Loom’s operation. So, I hope you don’t expect me to fight as well.”

Bram shook his head. “I’ll swing my sword enough for the both of us.”

It was a promise he meant to keep even if the numerous lives he would take as a result turned him into a demon of the blade, one consumed by the thought of murder. Such damnation would be a small price for the great undertaking’s success.

Bram’s brooding didn’t last long though, for their wait was finally at an end. The seventh prince and the trickster were enveloped in a flash of brilliant crimson. When the light had gone seconds later, they became witnesses to an incredible sight.

The lines of blood by the central crevice rose into the air to weave an intricate pattern of roots that were the veins at the core of man’s form. From these veins grew sturdy bone and pulsing organs that muscle and sinew would wrap around. Skin and hair spread over flesh, and soon enough, Bram and Rowan were no longer alone.

A naked, tan-skinned man with dark hair was standing close by, his slanted eyes widening as he looked upon his kidnappers.

 

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