Chương 1: Malachi’s Last Normal Day

Fourteen hours before the magical portals started opening up all over Earth, Malachi Ward woke up to his alarm blaring. Groggily, he reached out to silence his phone, but instead knocked it off his nightstand. Cursing, he groaned and got down, reaching behind the bedpost where the phone had bounced to. As he got up, he smacked his head against the edge of the nightstand. Malachi turned his alarm off, then sat there, bleary-eyed. Yeah, it's going to be one of those days, he thought.

He took the usual bus through the city, glaring at an annoying man who was playing his music on a speaker. Naturally, the man didn't take a hint. He got off and entered his building. The security guy was intensely occupied by something on his phone. Malachi swiped his badge and headed to his shared office where the only coworker he could tolerate was waiting.

"Hey Adam," he said. Adam gave him a wicked grin. He made a come-hither motion. Malachi's eyes widened.

"No way. No fuckin' way."

"Yes fuckin' way, my dude. The new record is mine. Jessica had, count 'em, two hundred and thirty three icons on her desktop." He spun around his laptop dramatically to show Malachi the screenshot.

"Dammit!" Malachi said, then sighed and took a shitty old bowling trophy off his desk and handed it over to Adam. Adam grinned as he set it reverently on top of his own desk.

"So what do we have?" Malachi asked, putting his phone in his locker and throwing his coat over his chair.

"The usual fare. About thirty tickets for you."

"Great." Malachi sat down. The first ticket involved a man complaining he'd been locked out of his computer. He'd clearly clicked on a phishing email and then sent his password to someone who, based on the IP address of the person who'd tried to log in next, lived in India. His account had been automatically locked. Malachi forwarded that issue over to his boss, who would have the guy watch a bunch of dumb training videos on how not to send your password to someone. Then he reset his password.

Next up was a woman who said her computer wouldn't start. However, she'd sent the ticket request in from her assigned computer. Malachi sighed and picked up the phone. It was going to be another day of this shit.

Four hours before the portals opened, Malachi walked back into his apartment feeling like warmed over garbage. As he took off his shoes, he looked at his gym bag that was strategically placed in the hall to remind himself to go more often, thought really hard about going, then decided to skip. He was annoyed, tired, and just wanted to zone out to video games. He booted up his computer, cracked open a cold one, then turned on Reydee's Twitch stream and leaned back in his chair.

Reydee was leading a raid on Uriel Sunbreaker, the newest raid boss to drop in Malachi's current MMO obsession. Each account got limited attempts each week, so no one had actually made it through all three phases. Based on what the DPS meters were showing, he didn't think Reydee's group was going to make it. She was smart. She knew her mechanics, and knew her builds, but as the team healer, she couldn't do much about the shit damage her guild was putting out.

As he half paid attention to the stream on one screen, Malachi booted up Heralds of the Demon War on the other. The title of the game only sort of made sense based on the lore. He then checked his Discord. FeMuir: Yo FeMuir: Yoooooo FeMuir: Bro where r u?? raid tonite!! Malachi sighed. That was Rob, the guild leader, who clearly hadn't listened to a word he said last time. MalFeSense: Just got off work. I told you my schedule. Not much I can do about it. Did you already start? No response.

He checked the guild Discord. Sure enough, there were eight people in voice chat.

"They have FeSible on tank? That's gonna be a wipe in the first stage," he said to his empty apartment. Rob was probably also streaming the Iron Gods guild's attempt, but he didn't want to watch. He was pissed at Rob. He'd told the idiot his schedule five times now. They couldn't wait one hour for him to be off work? He went into the guild menu and hovered over the 'Leave Guild' button, toying with the idea. Then he exited the menu.

He had so few friends from college, and leaving the guild would mean screwing up two more of them. The guild was mostly full of cool people. He'd also miss FeNyx and FeAr if he quit. That, and his gimmick username wouldn't make sense anymore. Malachi zoned out, his eyes roaming around his apartment. It was small, but it wasn't bad. He looked up at his desk shelf. It was crammed full of books he'd been meaning to read for ages now. There was a picture of his sister, Malia. He'd been meaning to call her.

They lived on opposite sides of the city, but they hardly saw each other. There was a picture of his high school soccer team. Rob hadn't made the cut. Hanging off it was a bronze medal for some middle school track and field. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't just get rid of it. One less thing to carry around when he inevitably moved because the rent had gotten jacked up. Deliberately missing was a picture of his parents. There was a notification ping. FeMuir: Bro we wiped!

FeMuir: Fuckin FeSible still doesn't know the stage 1 mechanics MalFeSense: Reydee's guild just made it to stage 3. Should tell people to watch so they can prepare for it. FeMuir: Bro r u seriously watching that thot? the only reason she gets more views is her tits and skimpy outfits Malachi sneered at his screen. However, Rob was the last person he wanted to talk to about the role of sexuality in online streaming media. He typed out, 'Her guild is making it to stage 3. How'd you do again?'

, stared at the message, then deleted it. He glanced over at the other screen. Reydee's team was dead. She was valiantly trying to DPS as a healer, but Heralds of the Demon War didn't really have healing classes that could manage that. It was possible to use the i-frame of a dodge to avoid the wipe mechanics, but you had to get the dodge down to a tenth of a second. The trickier part was even having dodges left. Most people used them all just trying to avoid the lava attacks. Her attempt at that failed.

MalFeSense: Doesn't matter, stream's over MalFeSense: I'm gonna do a solo run since you're all out of attempts FeMuir: lmao good luck He started looking over his builds. He'd made a hybrid tank/DPS build that he thought might stand a chance. It used a lightning-dash for an extra dodge, which would allow him to rapidly reposition during different mechanics. Judicious use of blocks would both absorb a bunch of damage and up his own. As he was checking over his character's items and skills, FeNyx logged on.

FeNyx: u all did ur uriel attempt? MalFeSense: Yeah, FeMuir went already. I missed it too, so was just gonna try my solo build. FeNyx: ur crazy. no one's beat uriel yet as a group Malachi started typing out another message, one about how he was sick to death of relying on other people, how his life was shit, he had a dead-end job, rent kept going up, his sister was still dealing with insurance bullshit, and he wanted just one fucking win, and now on top of that his oldest friend was being a sexist dick.

How he couldn't rely on anyone but himself anyways, so fuck everyone else. Then he deleted it. Instead he typed out a different message: MalFeSense: I've been practicing my rotations. I think I can at least beat stage 2. The lead designer said the raids are all technically possible solo. Might as well try. FeNyx: mind if i watch? Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

MalFeSense: Sure, I'll stream in the 2nd voice channel He finalized the upgrades on his skills, then hopped on voice. FeNyx immediately joined, though their mic was muted. FeNyx never talked, which annoyed the pants off of Rob. However, they were too competent to kick from the guild. Malachi adjusted his headphones and loaded into the Uriel Sunbreaker raid.

When he'd played soccer in high school, his favorite part was when all the noises of the crowd faded, and the only thing he could hear was his teammates and his coach. The world narrowed into a single thing. He did that now, falling into the zone. It was just him, Uriel, and Uriel's 125 HP bars. His fingers flew across the keyboard. Uriel's first stage was just a big dude wearing black armor tinged with red runes. There were two types of spells, fire and shadow.

The latter were a bitch to see, but Malachi had always had great reflexes. He repositioned himself between every skill, making sure he was avoiding or blocking every attack. Fifteen minutes later, Rob joined in voice chat.

"Damn, Mal. You have him to half health solo?" Malachi ignored him. He lightning dashed through the beam attack wipe mechanic, then dodged the follow-up screen-wide meteor. Tenth-of-a-second timing on the dodge? No problem.

"Bro, shit, how is your DPS that high on a tank? Holy shit dude, I'm gonna turn the stream back on."

"Sure," Malachi said absently. His entire focus was on the boss. The only thing he paid attention to was his cooldowns. The world was just him and the computer. His fingers didn't slow.

"Five percent. Holy fuck! He's actually doing it!" Rob was saying. He'd been talking to his stream, but Malachi had tuned out most of it. Then, Uriel fell back, black armor smoldering. Fire burst from him, unveiling his demonic form. Now, he had red flesh beneath the black armor, and had grown twice as large. A second set of arms burst from his torso. Black skeletal wings burst from his back. Malachi cracked his knuckles as the music swelled, then kept going. Rob was losing his shit.

In the left corner, he could see guild chat was going berserk. Stage two began, and Malachi hunched over in his chair. In a matter of seconds, Uriel had filled the screen with mixes of slow and fast moving projectiles; rifts of fire swam across the map. Bolts of red lightning rained down. Infernal shadows burst out of the boss. Malachi evaded them all, using perfect positioning to save his dodges for the wipe mechanics. The first mechanic was signaled by a column of shadow descending.

Malachi held his breath, then dodged, then twice more as it was followed quickly by screen-filling attacks. He reveled in that sense of immense satisfaction as he nailed each one perfectly. Rob was still yammering away.

"A thousand viewers! Holy shit!" Malachi went back to tuning him out. Uriel's health ticked down. Every mechanic, he reacted to instantly. Every animation, he knew what attack was coming seconds before it did. His fingers never slowed. Time blurred. The only reason he knew an hour had passed was that Uriel's enrage timer was ticking down to zero.

"Three thousand views!" Rob shouted into his mic. Uriel's health hit zero.

"Easy," Malachi said, leaning back in his chair and grinning. The music changed, and suddenly there was a choir chanting. Uriel Sunbreaker's wings grew larger, filling with burning eyes that blinked. The boss's armor shattered entirely, revealing ember scales, pierced by arms and claws as if little demons were trying to break free of his flesh. A third set of arms emerged from the body, burning with shadowy flames.

The platform they'd been fighting on ascended into the sky, and the music he'd thought had reached a crescendo kept growing in intensity. Stage three. Some sort of achievement flashed on his screen, but he didn't have time to read it. By now, the entire guild had joined his channel and Rob was chattering nonstop. Malachi tuned them out. He'd never done stage three before, but he'd studied the mechanics. Malachi locked in. He could do this. By now, his fingers were tired, but his adrenaline had hit.

The animations for the boss were a combination of the previous two stages, meaning he had to pay attention to both so he could predict both attacks. As he continued, the platform they were on breached the atmosphere, and the lighting changed as the backdrop filled with a field of stars and the artificial sun of the world. In the background, that sun was filling with dark cracks.

"Five thousand!" Rob said, getting shrill. Malachi wasn't sure how people were finding out about his ridiculous attempt, but somehow it had gone viral. In the bottom corner, the game chat was scrolling with dozens of whispers. He ignored it all, focusing on the fight. A burning shadow beam spiraled around the map. Malachi dodged it, but it meant his character ran smack into one of the fire AOEs. Within seconds, his character's health had plummeted to a quarter. One more bad dodge and he was done. He refocused.

In the background, the sun continued to fill with black lines. Another hour went by, though Malachi barely felt it.

"Ten thousand! Bro!" Rob shouted out, more concerned with the viewer numbers than anything. The sun in the background of the map was covered in so many dark cracks it was nearly black, and the lighting on the platform had changed. It was getting harder to see the shadow spells. Malachi blinked. The enrage timer was almost up. Five percent. He redoubled his effort. There wasn't time to do a full skill rotation anymore, so he started doubling up on skills. Either he won now, or he was done. Two percent.

Another wipe attack. Malachi burned his last dodge. His palms were sweating. All his defensive skills were on cooldown. One percent. Uriel Sunbreaker wound up, six arms conjuring a burning orb. Five second until that wipe attack. Malachi went all in, moving his character right up to the boss so he could maximize damage. His character took another hit, bringing his life down to a sliver. Two. One… Zero. Malachi took off his headphones and leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

He blinked, staring at the screen. He'd done it. Beams of light split the Sunbreaker apart, and the artificial sun in the background reignited. Glowing legendary-mythic items erupted from the boss's corpse, leaving their own crimson beams. Achievements flashed across his screen, filling the right-hand column.

"Malachi! Malachi! Holy shit dude! You're a legend! You're a fucking legend!" he heard Rob saying, though at least ten other people were all trying to talk at once. Then, there was a loud crackling noise, a flash of light, and the power went out. Malachi blinked, disoriented as much by the sudden stillness as the sudden silence. He looked at his phone. Eight o'clock. It had been almost four hours since he'd started the raid. He sat back in the chair, exhausted for just how much focus he'd had to pour into the game.

He smiled. Probably, he'd just lost all the items that had dropped, which was total bullshit, but that could be fixed with a support ticket. More importantly, he'd done it. And in the end, he hadn't needed his guild. He hadn't needed anyone. Malachi took a deep breath, then blinked some more, slightly dazed. There were a bunch of strange sounds outside. It was supposed to be dark out, but instead of the faint glow of the streetlights, there was a flickering red light.

He hadn't closed his blinds yet, so it was now illuminating his apartment in eerie scarlet. He stood, shaking out his legs, then stretching. Someone having fun with LED lights outside? The power outage wasn't just his building, it'd hit the whole neighborhood; he could see how the building across the street was dark, and so were the street lights. Then he heard someone shouting. What the hell is going on? he thought, wandering over to the window to get a better view. Malachi's jaw dropped.

High up in the sky, there was a crimson glow. It looked like giant glyphs from The Matrix were being scrawled across the dome of the night sky, except they were red and had to be enormous. Malachi gaped at it. It was like a computer command lines, but in some strange, alien language. Then, the sky lit up with bursts of light, and he saw auroras trickling down the sky in bursts of red and violet. There was a pulse of something, and Malachi felt it a moment later, like a static charge had just moved through him.

For a moment, he was just frozen, staring. Then, he grabbed his phone out of his pocket and hit record. The glyphs in the sky vanished a moment later. What the fuck? Malachi stopped recording, then flipped back to the video to rewatch what he'd just seen. He looked at his screen, the bafflement growing. He'd recorded it, alright. He could hear his breathing in the audio. Only, it was pitch black. No glowing red sky. No weird glyphs.

He was just about to text FeNyx when another glow erupted, this time, in the street in front of him. The only way he could describe it was a rift. It was exactly like some sort of fucked-up tear in space, the edges of it glowing bright red, crackling with some sort of strange energy. The tear was growing wider. Red lightning flashed, and the rift began to morph into a circle. Red-skinned creatures started coming out of the rift.

They were a cross between a fantasy goblin and a lizard, with beady little red eyes and large fangs. They were carrying primitive-looking weapons: clubs, axes, and spears. Two of the demon-like creatures—imps, Malachi decided—broke a storefront window and started heading inside. Another group saw movement on a balcony. They pointed, then one of them leapt up, all the way to the third floor. The man they'd seen let out a scream as the imp smashed him with a club, then threw him off the balcony.

Two of the imps below started dragging his body back towards the portal. Malachi stared. Was he hallucinating? More creatures came through the gate. He saw a creature that looked like something between a mastiff and a porcupine, except the quills were jagged and red, like hot pokers that had just been taken out of the fire. The imps were leading them around with gestures. A car, unaware of what it was driving into, screeched to a halt as it saw the red portal.

One of the dog-porcupines unleashed a volley of its quills. Malachi's eyes widened as he watched the things embed themselves into the front of the car like nails being driven into styrofoam. One of them went straight through the front window. A taller figure by the portal Malachi hadn't seen at first waved a hand, and the hand glowed with red and brown light. The engine block of the car erupted, a spike of lava piercing straight through it.

Liquid red stone splattered about in globules, then the stone began to rapidly cool. The imps ran up to the car and dragged out the driver, who started screaming. Malachi had been coming down from an adrenaline high. Now, it surged right back up. A few things hit him all at once: one, holy shit, there were a bunch of demons and wizards in the street coming out of a magic portal. Two, they were killing people. Three, he was in no way safe from them. They could jump three stories high. He was on the third floor.

And they were doing that, he realized. More glass shattered as the imps spread out, smashing into rooms. He clicked the screen of his phone and dialed 911. The operator said something to him, but his brain was too jumbled to make sense of it. He knew if he reported what he was seeing, they'd think it was a prank or he was crazy.

"Uh, hi, Malachi, on 5th and East Smith street. I just saw someone get dragged out of their car and kidnapped in the middle of the intersection. Several people are dead. You need… oh fuck, I think one of them sees me. Send a lot of cops with guns!" he said, then hung up and turned his phone on silent. No way he was going to have that thing start ringing while he was trying to hide in a closet or something.

He backed away from the window, slowly so that the sudden movement didn't alert the imp who'd looked up at him. There was the sound of glass shattering. Fuck, that was right next to me. He heard screaming from through the wall. He looked around. All his weapons were video game loot. Malachi's window shattered. Staring him down was one of those porcupine-demons. It flexed its spines. Oh shit. ===== This story is only available on RoyalRoad and Patreon. If you find it anywhere else, it's stolen.