Wasteland Warlords Episode 5: Chapter 9 - Soul Overload

Clay stopped outside the unmarked door the squidhorse guard had taken him to just hours ago. Switching over to his Reptilian Infrared Detection, he scanned the interior. Two hostiles inside—the standard red body temp of a human and the green-yellow of an Inconceivable Cosmic Security Officer. This door was locked, too, and this time Clay didn’t have a passive-aggressive anemone to convince the staffers inside to open it.

While he took a second to think about his next move, Clay used his Fateslinger passive Infinite Ammo to materialize reloads for his confiscated M4. The ability allowed him to generate as much ammo as he had Magicka, and now that the magic-nullifying ward was down, the only limit was how much he could carry.

Unfortunately, prison jumpsuits apparently weren’t designed with convenient pocket space in mind. He summoned a pair of magazines and jammed them into the tiny pockets, hoping he’d get a chance to upgrade to something more practical along the way, then generated a handful of 40mm grenades to reload the M203 attached beneath the rifle barrel.

With that done, he turned his attention to actually getting through the door. He’d only come up with one plan while he worked. It was childishly simple, but sometimes those worked better than the more complicated strategies. At the very least, it meant there wouldn’t be as many moving pieces to go sideways on him.

He checked his Magicka—already nearly full again—then cast Control Lights, which he’d managed to bump up to level 7 through sheer repetition of use. Thanks to the increase in both the duration and range of the spell, he was able to target the entirety of the lab instead of just a single light or two. He shut off every light source on the other side of the door all at once, plunging the lab into utter darkness.

From inside came a muffled yelp of surprise.

Clay waited a beat, then cast Beguiling Call. He’d never been great at impressions, but he gave it his best shot, lowering his voice in the closest approximation he could manage of the Warden’s deep rumble.

“The raiders have taken over the dungeon. Every staff member who wishes to survive, abandon your post and flee while you can. Repeat: the dungeon is lost. Flee for your life.”

Through the wall, he watched as the greenish ICSO scrambled for the door. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at impressions after all.

“Don’t you dare!” The red-tinted human form grabbed at the running ICSO and missed. Clay recognized the voice of the Conglomerated Industries scientist. “Get back here! This research is worth more than your life—more than any of you disgusting wasteland creatures!” Obviously, her persuasive argument wasn’t having the desired effect. The guard didn’t even slow down. “Coward!” she screamed at his back.

The ICSO slammed into the door at top speed.

Clay backpedaled, putting himself at an angle to the direct line of sight, and raised his rifle, tucking the buttstock into his shoulder pocket.

The door rocketed open. Spotting Clay, the squidhorse guard from earlier gave a startled whinny. The ICSO reached for his sidearm, but Clay squeezed the trigger before his finlike hand ever got close to the pistol grip. Fire vomited from the end of the barrel and the squidhorse went down, dead before it hit the floor.

Inside the lab, the scientist darted for the door.

Clay hurdled the body of the guard and threw himself forward. The door bounced off his shoulder, but he managed to wedge his way in before the scientist could shut him out again.

A startled scream strangled in her throat as she backed away, bumping into a rolling cart covered in potions. A rack of vials tipped over the edge and shattered on the concrete floor. Brightly colored smoke puffed and liquid splattered, sending out fingers of frost and waves of fire that ate into whatever they touched.

“You wouldn’t dare.” The scientist gulped, staring down the barrel of the M4. Despite the terror in her eyes, her voice only wavered a little. When Clay didn’t immediately open fire, she lifted her chin, clearly encouraged. “You can’t,” she said, relaxing a fraction. “You’re human, like me. We’re civilized—not like these disgusting monsters infesting the wasteland.”

Clay’s mouth twisted into a scowl. “Lady, if you’re civilization, I’m glad I left.”

Mentally switching to Tether Shot, he pulled the trigger. A round slammed into the scientist, staggering her, then Clay put a second round directly in the metal casing of the examination pod farthest from her. A glowing green tether appeared, yanking the scientist across the room like a yoyo. She slammed into the side of the pod with a hollow thud and landed on her ass, looking thoroughly dazed. She didn’t stay down for long, though. She shook her head, quickly gained her feet, and tried to make a break for the door once again.

It was a fruitless effort. The tether held her as surely as a naval anchor.

Growling in frustration, she pulled a vial from behind her back and hucked it at Clay.

With a flick of one hand, he threw up a Shield of Minor Warding. The glass shattered against the translucent blue barrier. A Fury Storm raged on the opposite side.

Clay didn’t stick around waiting for it to eat through the shield’s low-damage absorption, beelining instead for the Soul Overload potion at the far end of the lab’s workspace.

At the end of the tether, the scientist stiffened. “That’s what you’re after? Who sent you? Remedium? Panacea Industries? Or is it another country?”

“I wouldn’t work for you Big Pharma assholes for all the gold in the wasteland,” Clay muttered.

He picked up the beaker of glowing green Soul Overload. The potion swirled inside, not quite a liquid and not quite a gas. Text flashed before his eyes.

[Warning: Soul Overload requires a base Intelligence of 40 to avoid potentially harmful side effects, including but not limited to Madness, Disorientation, and Unreasoning Panic.]

As Clay read the warning, a chill seeped through the glass and into his fingers. He was currently sitting at 58.22 Intelligence, thanks to his recent level-up and the bonus from the Wyrd West Quickdraw Weapon Set, so he should be fine. Although should be was the operative verb phrase there.

Still, he couldn’t help but brace himself as he raised the potion toward his mouth.

“It’s never been tested,” the scientist said before he could chug it. “If you were to agree to be our test subject for the potion, you would be heavily compensated. Set for life. You could even have a spot among the Dellafide Crimefighters Unit. We made them unstoppable, and we can do the same for you. For someone so high on his ideals, that would be the opportunity of a lifetime. Imagine the good you could do as a superhero.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to pass on that devil’s bargain. I’ve seen the kind of good those guys do,” Clay said. “Or did you forget that they’re outside right now, kicking my wife’s and my brother’s asses?”

“Don’t you mean ‘your wife and your brother’s ass?’” she sneered in a superior tone.

Clay smirked. “The day I take grammar advice from an evil scientist who can’t even tell the difference between a dual ownership of the same item and singular ownership of multiple items is the day I hang it up for good.”

He threw back the Soul Overload. The cool, not-quite-liquid potion half slid, half glided down his throat, forming a frosty pit in his stomach.

The world seemed to tilt on its edge, and in a blink, the lab disappeared.

Suddenly, Clay was racing across an open grassland turned battlefield on wolfback with an army of huge green monsters called Rogs, his wooden menpōclanking as he leveled an obsidian glass bow and flaming arrow at the oncoming army.

Flash…

The scene shifted, and he circled high above a set of striated ocher and limestone cliffs with his flock, his leathery rock wyvern wings catching the hot desert updrafts. What was over that wall in the distance? He was going to find out.

Flash…

Another shift. He threw fistfuls of deadly storm magic at Triple S contractors in body armor as they cinched a net tighter around him, more mercenaries closing in on every side like a noose.

Flash…

He raged through the streets of a busy city, his huge body crashing into unfamiliar wheeled contraptions, ripping through their steel skins with his trio of massive horns, while humans screamed and ran or stood by transfixed and following his motion with strange rectangles of plastic and glass.

Flash…

He was too old for this shit and just wanted to sell wastelanders garage-sale-tier magical items at reasonable prices, but also he wasn’t going quietly just because these three upstart Incants wanted him to. He shifted into smoke and danced through their line of half-mech half-animal attack dogs, daggers flashing.

Flash… Flash… Flash… Endless disconnected scenes whirled through Clay’s mind; it was like he’d been sucked into a tornado of memories. In some, he recognized the dry and dusty world of the IZ. In others, the landscapes were unfamiliar, rendered in the shiny style of pre-Merge computer graphics.

Wide open plains sparkling with dew. Hardpan lava fields covered with spiderwebs of molten magma. Ghostly forests filled with looming trees, their pale branches reaching up like skeletal fingers toward a plum-colored sky overhead. The mighty waves of an icy black sea crashing against the jagged gray cliffs of some distant land guarded by crystalline golems.

Abruptly, the phantasmagoria ended, spitting him out back in the lab at the center of the Supermax. It felt as if he’d been gone for lifetimes, but barely a second of real time had passed.

Even though he’d flashed through the memories of dozens of creatures, human and inhuman alike, miraculously, he didn’t lose track of the different species or their signature powers—their Essences. It was as if a new section of his brain had been created specifically to store the information, carefully organized and ready to be called up at a moment’s notice. Weirdly, it reminded him of staring down an index in a tool manual.

Spidery thin text scrolled before his eyes.

[You have consumed Soul Overload, and your base Intelligence has protected you from the potentially harmful side effects.

While this potion is still in the experimental stage, meaning the long-term effects are currently unknown, in the short term, it grants the caster access to the distilled Essence of any souls who went before.

Simply select the desired Essence from the Soul Index to gain access to that soul’s signature power for one minute. A rotation of up to fifteen Essences may be selected, for a total duration of fifteen minutes.]

Across the room, the scientist sniffed. “Well, you seem to have avoided the initial screaming insanity, so you must have some minor amount of Intelligence. Could you describe its effects in a few words?”

“I could,” Clay said, heading for the door, “but I won’t.” In the corner of his vision, a fifteen-minute timer had begun ticking down the seconds. “I’ve got to go save my family from the superpowered monsters you assholes created.”