Exalted: An Isekai Harem Fantasy Adventure (Corrupted Gods Book 1), page 1
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Afterword
Also by Isaac Keyes
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1
Plonk.
I picked up another rock and threw it.
Two skips this time. Good enough.
I leaned back on the riverbank, my fingers sliding into the sandy soil. “This was more fun with someone else,” I said to no one else.
Recently and unexpectedly single, I was still trying to figure out what to do with the time I’d once spent having fun with my girlfriend. Not to mention learning how to manage all the negative thoughts and emotions that were plaguing my life. It was a nonstop roller coaster that went back and forth between “I’ll be fine,” and “everything’s ruined forever.”
I sighed heavily and tried to put it all out of my mind while I stood and continued down the path. This was a park I frequented, but it still had a lot of old trails I’d never been down. And not wanting to interact with people in the slightest fashion, I picked the least trail-like trail I could and wandered down it.
It went by a shallow river and wound into the forest. I could still hear the sounds of the interstate not all that far away, but that was life. There were still trees all around me and it was spring, so the air was filled with the smell of flowers and new life.
New life.
Yeah, that was for me, too.
“It’s not you, Ian, it’s me.” That’s what she’d said. At the time, it wasn’t obvious what in the world it meant, but after she moved in with another guy within the span of two weeks, it made a lot more sense.
So here I was in the woods, trying my best to think of it as my woods and not our woods anymore. Without much success, really.
I kept moving my feet because it was better than nothing, but as I got further and further down the old trail, something weird started to happen. I felt like I could sense something off in the trees. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but somehow I knew it was there. Whatever it was.
I was probably having a stress-induced break from reality. That was by far the most likely option. But hey, whatever. I was just gonna roll with it. Reality and I had never been on the best of terms anyway, so if I had a chance to live somewhere else, what was I going to do: say no?
That line of thought was insanely unhealthy and I knew it. I just couldn’t bring myself to care, though. I went off the trail and into the underbrush, pushing my way through a dense carpet of leaves and vines. There was probably a lot of poison ivy out here, I thought. I was wearing long pants, so it was fine, though, right? Totally fine.
The thing that was calling to me was getting closer; I could feel it.
I started to see something golden shining through the trees, and as I got closer, it was more and more apparent it was a massive crystal…something.
As I stepped out into a small clearing, my jaw dropped and my brain stopped working altogether. It was a…well, I had no idea what it was. It did indeed have sections of bright gold crystal, but other parts were made of metal and I swear some of the protrusions sticking out of it were carved from bone.
I walked towards it, completely free of fear. This thing obviously didn’t exist; it was a product of my tortured imagination and nothing more. I was going to see what it was, but I had no illusions that it was really there. The only thing I was even faintly worried about was falling off a real cliff that my eyes couldn’t see because I was looking at this weird amalgamation of junk. Not that there were cliffs in this park anyway, were there?
That thought quickly came and went as I crept closer to the thing, because when I was almost close enough to touch it, lights started emanating from various points on its surface, slowly bending in the air to form some sort of holograms. What they were trying to show me, if anything, was completely incomprehensible. There were letters or runes of some type, and the garbled pictures were no less discernible.
But since this was all my subconscious’s doing anyway, I’m not sure why I expected it to make a whole lot of sense in the first place. I circled the contraption a few times, and after giving it a thorough once-over, I reached out and touched it.
I had half expected my hand to slide right through it, but it didn’t; the thing was perfectly tangible. I poked and prodded it, and the crystals felt like crystals and the metal felt like metal. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t have the courage to touch the bones.
The holograms blinked off and on, and without warning, one of the crystals vibrated loudly, shooting out a light right at me, and I felt the weirdest sensation of my life as the light flowed through my entire body. It was as if it was traveling through me, gliding through every single cell I had, back and forth, until suddenly, it stopped.
The whole thing began making a low tone before part of it opened, revealing a mind-bogglingly intricate interior. It was a maze of tiny lines and a rainbow of colors, materials of all kinds lining the inside surfaces. The holograms resumed, showing mostly the alien letters and runes, and rings of light appeared on the ground around it and me.
I watched with interest as it glowed with golden light, little runes appearing and disappearing along the rings as I watched them spin and wobble. I started to feel a pulling sensation, like something was grabbing onto my soul and yanking it as hard as it could, a supremely unnerving feeling. The light shone brighter and brighter until I had to close my eyes against it, and with one loud boom, the pulling became unbearable, and it felt like my body was being ripped apart.
2
Apparently I’d only had a light fracture with reality before, because now things were truly broken. Every part of my body and soul were being pulled in every direction that existed and a couple more besides. I saw flashes of golden runes and rushing stars, multitudes of strange sights and a constant, roaring cacophony that sounded like the fabric of the universe being warped, as if I knew what that sounded like.
With a resounding thud, pain lanced through my body as I was rammed into a hard metal floor. My head was spinning and I was struggling to pull icy cold air into my lungs. After a few unpleasant breaths, the world stopped moving around me as much, and I laid my forehead down on the equally cold floor, which was very soothing.
After a few minutes, it became apparent that this was what was happening now, and waiting for things to change wasn’t going to work. I slowly stood, rubbing the various parts of my body that were going to have some wicked bruises soon.
I was in a ruined metal room, a gentle breeze blowing through from the gaping hole in one of the walls. I couldn’t see anything out of it but cloudless blue, so I must have been pretty high up, but I didn’t walk over to the edge to look down. I didn’t trust myself not to tip right over what edge might have been there.
I shivered against the cold, as my monochromatic black T-shirt didn’t provide much protection. At least I was wearing long pants, I thought for the second time that day. I wandered around from room to room, but whatever this place was, its glory days were long behind it. Some rooms looked like living quarters, some were filled with weird machines, but there was an ever present layer of dust over everything, combined with a subtle smell of lingering decay.
I kept expecting to trip over a corpse or have a zombie jump out from behind a corner, but there was nothing here, alive or once living. I would have called it sepulchral, but sepulchers have bodies in them. On some of the walls and in small puddles, there was a blackened sludge that only slightly moved when I scraped at it with a piece of bent metal shrapnel.
The whole time, I was still moving on autopilot, not the least bit convinced any of this was real, and only one question stuck in my head: how long had it been? That strange trip through hyperspace was the most disconcerting thing I’d ever experienced, so it was possible I was in a straight jacket in a padded room somewhere already.
Anyway.
At last, I came to a large, central room that featured a huge artifact like the one that had brought me here. With nothing to lose, I boldly walked right up to it and started poking at it. Shockingly, this actually worked.
Lights appeared all over it, and in a moment, they merged to form a distorted woman’s face. She had long hair, but it and all her features were made of bright, floating lights, and it was difficult to get a real sense of what she looked like. She looked at me, and while her mouth opened and seemed to be forming words, all I could hear was that weird, reality-bending sound.
I shrugged at her, but she didn’t seem to notice. I moved, and her eyes stayed focused where they were, not moving with me. In lieu of anything better to do, I let her finish her speech or whatever, thinking maybe something else interesting would happen.
Once she was done, which took some time, she disappeared and dim lights came to life on the floor, blinking in a pattern that led out of the room. I shrugged again and said, “Might as well follow it,” to myself, which I did.
It led me into a room I hadn’t wandered into yet, which looked for all the world like a decrepit medical suite, complete with surgical table and various instruments. The worst part, however, was a humanoid…manikin…thing standing T-posed in the corner. It was completely wrapped in brightly colored cloth, a total mishmash of primary colors in no real order, even over its head. The cloth was interspersed with the same letters or runes I’d been seeing everywhere else, and they spiraled into a tiny point in the middle of its non-face. I immediately did not like it, and a chill ran hard up my spine. The lights on the floor turned and ran under the surgical table, and I got the distinct feeling this dream was rapidly turning into a nightmare.
I turned on my heel to leave, having for the first time real opinions about this fever dream. The door to the room slid shut, and I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see the manikin walking slowly towards me, its arms still held out to the side. It moved fluidly, like a real person, which was somehow even more horrifying than the jerky movements I would have expected out of this situation. It walked over to the table and gestured one hand towards it, like it expected me to lie down or something.
“Uh, nope. I’m not doing that,” I said to it, as calmly as I could.
It didn’t look at me, or at least it didn’t turn its eyeless face at me, but the same reality-warping noise came out of it that the woman had used earlier.
“Nope.” I didn’t know why I was talking to it.
It gestured again.
I didn’t move.
It was on me in an instant. I barely had time to see it move before its arms were clamped around me, effortlessly picking me up and carrying me to the table. I briefly noticed the cloth was very soft, much like silk. That information, however, was not relevant.
It laid me down on the table very gently, really, but even though I struggled, I wasn’t able to get free from its grasp. Once I was on the table, bright white lights exploded around me, blinding me and sending another wave of strange sensations throughout my body.
I felt my fear ebb, the anxiety and panic in my chest melting away. Logically, I knew this shouldn’t be the case; I was still right in the middle of a nightmare, but those thoughts were like they were happening to someone else, someone watching this all taking place but who had no vested interest in any of it. In no time at all, I felt sleep coming for me, and I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to resist.
Some indeterminable time later, I woke up. I expected to find myself in the middle of the park at night, dewy grass lodged in my mouth, or in a padded room, the maddened wails of the other inmates wafting through the bars.
But neither of those things happened, and I was still in the weird metal surgical room. I sat up and blinked.
Wow.
My eyes hurt. A lot. A real lot.
I groaned and rubbed at them, trying to blink away the pain, but nothing helped. I sat there shaking my head, my eyes closed tight, for some time. When it became apparent the pain wasn’t going away anytime soon, I tried opening them again and really looking around.
I was in the same place, but it was…different.
Everything was alive in a way it hadn’t been before. I could see runes everywhere, floating above almost every surface, and the whole place had a vibrancy that I couldn’t quite explain. Everything seemed…more. More alive, somehow.
The manikin was still there, and it glowed brighter than anything else in the room. All the runes I’d seen on its wrappings had a ghostly image floating an inch above the cloth, and I could see paths of energy pulsing inside it like veins and arteries. It still didn’t have any semblance of a face, though. Super freaky.
I shuffled towards the door, not wanting to turn my back to the thing, and to my immense surprise and relief, it opened. I rushed out of the room and slammed the door behind me. Turning away from even the door was frightening, but I did, and made my way back to the central room, not needing the lights to guide me back. The whole place was just as…alive…as the surgical suite.
For some reason, I went back to the artifact and poked it again. I’m not sure why. While I was doing so, I noticed something new on the back of my hand. No, on both of them.
There was a weird pattern on both, an iridescent design that shimmered in the light. Three runes in a triangular shape were set into my skin, with a mess of wavy lines connecting them and radiating outward. Weird.
The face appeared in front of the artifact again, in the same position, still looking in my direction but not at me. She opened her mouth and I…understood her. What she was saying, though, was obviously incomplete.
“...-ologies. I know this mu…………cover a primal core…………se the portal t………ing me back to li…………”
She faded away. I poked the artifact again, and she came back, but she had exactly the same thing to say.
Damn, my eyes still hurt.
I sat down hard on the cold floor, cradling my face. I was getting really, really tired of all this. Couldn’t I just wake up already? Could you wake up from something like this? I laughed loudly to myself, the sound echoing off the walls, as a hilarious thought occurred to me. What if this was all real?
I shook my head. Stupid.
Still, though, what was I going to do? I could sit here, staring at the walls, or I could go on whatever quest this hologram was sending me on. Find a primal core, was it? Bring her back to life? It was, at least, a more inventive quest than killing five wolves or picking eight bunches of berries.
I thought I heard something about being teleported? Was this quest on easy mode or something? I stood up and looked around, finding that the floor had lit up again, leading me out through another hallway. Well, yes, it looked like this was easy mode. There was a hand-holding guide and everything.
The room I ended up in was circular and had even more runic circles drawn into the floor, although these were glowing blue instead of gold. It also had a gigantic hole in the wall, and this time, I wandered over and took a look out.
I instantly jumped back and fell to the floor, scrambling away as quickly as I could. There was a drop outside that window. I crawled back over, keeping myself as low as I could, and I peered out again. Yep, same thing. Either the whole place was sitting on top of a stupidly tall mountain with a perfectly sheer cliff that I couldn’t see, or it was just straight up floating in the air.
After the adrenaline started to work its way out of my system, I had to laugh at myself again. Why had I thought anything would make sense here? Sure this place was just drifting through the sky? Why wouldn’t it be?
