by Rae Nantes
Like why John didn't just capture her. Maybe he knew that Rika was one of them, the dreamers, who simply could never be contained, imprisoned, or even killed. Maybe he was too busy, maybe he wanted to spare Ediha the trauma. Maybe—
A portal cracked open beside her.
Garrock landed his feet on the ledge, trying to swim his balance back to keep from falling. Rika only stared as he finally found his stance. "Oh? There was a fight here, yes?"
"...Yes."
He tilted his head, and with his wide eyes, he looked like an owl. "Did you win?"
"No."
He sent her an exaggerated frown that mimicked the one painted on his face. She ignored it. "I bring good tidings - yes, yes. You will have a second chance to win, a second chance borne by the agreement of Mondego and the sultan."
"Agreement."
He clapped his hands once and grinned. "Templar Magi will provide them with Belgrade, a coveted territory, yes." His eyes were widening as he spoke. "In return, the sultan will provide Mondego the island of Rhodes. The home of your divine enemy."
"When?"
"Three months."
She groaned. Two months felt like it would take forever, and there was no telling what would become of Ediha during that time. Still, she thought Mondego had at least been marginally helpful. Perhaps she could've thanked him.
"Sulky, sulky," Garrock frowned. He started to climb back down the pyramid.
"Wait," she said.
He paused.
"Tell Mondego that I'm going on ahead."
"And what, pray tell, will this fair lady do?"
"I have my own business to attend to," she said. "Just as Mondego has his. I'll meet him again before the Ottomans move."
He looked back down at the cultists. "France," he said without looking. "We will meet again there."
Rika's portal cracked open. "France."
She stepped through and fell into a desert.
Mondego was too slow for her. Ediha was gone. John was controlling him, bending his will, tainting his development. She was too weak to save him. John was too powerful. The gulf between them seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon.
She stepped through another and fell onto a coast. Waves crashed.
Why couldn't she just quit? Why couldn't she just kill Mondego for herself and be done with it? She could return to solo play, forget about Stef and Nick's bitching, and do the things she enjoyed again.
She landed again on an island. Gulls squawked.
After all, it was just a game, right? Everything here was inconsequential - the quests, the interactions, the people. Nothing carried over.
Now a chilly beach. There was frost on the grass.
No, not anymore. She realized it now. Ediha was important to her. She saw him happy, she saw him sad. She saw him enraged, confused, curious, laughing, yelling, joking. He was alive, just as she was.
A snowy landscape. A babbling river.
Ediha needed to succeed. Where she lacked strength, she would use her wits. Where she lacked patience, she would use cunning.
A familiar cold forest.
This entire time she had been reacting to Mondego, solely reacting to the world throwing its shit at her.
No longer.
She stepped out of the tree line, and out to the shores of the lake. Before her, the reconstruction of a century.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of tan-skinned people hauling material to worksites, feather-clad warriors marching, lines of rolling fire from professional marksmen drilling.
The dead city of Tenochtitlan breathed life again. The Aztecs were far from over.
Ediha will kill Mondego, she told herself, and I will make it happen.
4: The Fox
4:1
"Are you retarded?" Stef squinted his eyes at the sight of her. She was still missing an arm.
"No. Well, maybe a little."
Nick smiled. Saito and Valgus laughed.
There were sitting out in the temple square, or what was left of it. The noise of construction was still around, pounding of hammers and grinding of saws, but everyone seemed in high spirits.
"Then why come back? You lost Ediha, keep gettin' your ass kicked — I just don't know what the hell you're doin' anymore."
"Fuck off."
Stef shrugged and looked at the others. "Not my fault you suck."
She slammed her fist on the table. Empty plates rattled. "Nobody said I was giving up."
Saito set his teacup down like a little lady would and said, "Lady Rika, you need but only say the word, and I will join you again."
"We're still a bit behind," Valgus said. "But while you were off with the cult, Saito and I already visited the European temples."
"How nice," Rika said. "It must've been a nice trip for you."
Saito smiled. "It was."
She slammed her fist on the table again. Cups rattled.
"Could you stop?" Stef snapped. "This is a good table."
Nick waved out his hands to calm her. He was still wearing his human leather cowboy outfit. "I know it's been rough for you, you've been given the hardest job out of all of us, but rest assured that we know Ediha is fine, and to be fair," he gestured to the world around, "we're still far from ready."
Stef picked up his teacup, glanced in it, then set it back down. "Our informant already told us everything. Ediha seems to be perfectly happy with workin' under some other dude, and—"
Rika stood up politely, gripped her dinky wooden chair by the leg, then smashed it against the ground. It erupted into splinters. "I'll fuckin' kill him."
"That was a good chair..."
"No it wasn't," Valgus said.
"It doesn't matter," Rika yelled.
"Look," Nick said, trying his best to soothe her with his voice, "I know he's like a younger brother to you, but you have to let him do what he wants."
Rika brought her tired eyes away from them.
Saito said, "Lady Rika, perhaps this is just destiny. The same destiny that brought you two together, separated you, and perhaps it will lead you back together again. Worry not," he said, "for fate always wins, and regardless, I believe in you."
His words calmed her if only for a moment.
"How about this," Stef said. "We'll hook you up with the informant - a real churchy buckeroo - and he can help you work something out."
Flashes of ideas and plots and schemes were already racing in her head. What she really needed was power, an immense amount of power that only raiding could—
"Hello? Mars to Rika," Stef said. "Just go ahead and fuck off wherever. It'll take a few days to get the informant ready anyway."
She took a deep breath. "Thanks."
Stef grinned and leaned back in his chair. "Don't worry. Once everything is ready, we'll have the most advanced army in the world marchin' through Europe, with a hero to lead it."
4:2
Rika was refreshed.
A good night's rest, a good day at university, a good lashing out at Stef and Nick at lunch, and she was almost a brand-new person - with both arms this time.
With nine weeks before the Ottoman invasion of Rhodes, she knew she had to gain as much strength as possible. Once she met the informant, they could start raiding, but until then, she decided to go ahead to France to handle some important business - the Dark Temple.
She knew the general location of it - it was by no means secret. Somewhere beneath the fabled city of Paris lied the catacombs, or whatever the ancient equivalent was, and within it the temple. She had originally planned to save the easiest for last, but since there was time to kill, she figured she could knock it out quick and easy.
And so she stood like a hero just outside Paris. She was actually quite excited to see what all the hype was about, hearing only tales and passing mentions of the place in old movies and shows about how great or dreamy or romantic the city was, yet the only thing that stood before her was... just another medieval city.
Stone and wood and
brick buildings and homes, thick city walls, a river that ran nearby. It was almost a copy-paste job from any place all over Europe, except this place was definitely larger, the buildings a bit taller, the people busier, and more than enough players to count.
She walked down the street like a tourist, her eyes dancing around at whatever happened to ease into view. Through her trek, numerous groups of players would pass. They seemed to be lower level, lower geared, here only for the fashion or the drama or the economy or whatever else it was they got off to - but no sight of player knights or wizards or heretic spellcasters.
Storefronts of coffee shops and dress salons, barbershops and fancy restaurants, bakeries of delicious warm bread smells that wafted out from their open doors. Rika could tell that the ideas and the culture of Stella Vallis were being imported here - a good business move, probably - but some of the haircuts weren't really fitting in with the old style.
After asking around as discreetly as she could manage, she was pointed to the other side of the city - across the river. And so she went. She walked alongside the busy road, passing merchant wagons and drilling soldiers, mounted police and wide-eyed tourists, aristocrats in carriages and impoverished peasants in dirty clothes.
When passing directions led her to what first looked like an abandoned block, she found one of the openings into the stone quarry. It looked more like the entrance to a subway metro station, with long stone steps that were laid down into the darkness. Around it, chunks and slabs of pale stone were stacked, some half-chiseled into neat squares or sheets, other shattered into brittle rocks - limestone, she figured.
Rika stepped down and into the labyrinth.
It was a long underground hall, with lit torches dotting the length of it. Various rooms had been carved out, with dusty dirt floors and structurally questionable ceilings. At the first intersection, she realized what the danger was.
This was not the only entrance to the underground mines, and at this intersection alone, more halls and paths further branched out and interconnected to yet more and more and beyond. A normal person could easily get lost down here, panic with a dying lantern, and starve to death or thrash against the uncut limestone in madness.
But she was not a normal person, not in this world.
Among the three corridors that stared back at her, each had their own burning torches, but one was a shade darker. Perhaps from the color of the nearby earth, or perhaps from the dark temple emanating from within.
She continued toward the dark.
Each branch led to more options. More lit torches, more hallways, more faint echoes from the city above, and yet more options to go darker and darker, until the next three choices were found in a room almost pitch black.
Her torch struggled to maintain its flame, its little warm glow only enough to shine her face. Not even the floor could be seen, as the creeping black seemed to devour the light. When the darkness smothered even the torch, she knew she was close.
After stumbling around, tracing her hand along the dusty stone walls, she found it. She really just bumped into it, but by this time she knew what the pillars felt like, and there was no other explanation to the terrible chills that ran up her spine.
It felt like she was standing on the edge of the abyss, right off the event horizon of a black hole. A darkness so pure, it seemed to pull her in. A silence so aggressive, that she could hear her own blood coursing through her body.
She stuck her hand in, then felt it.
As if an empty soul was reaching from the darkness and into her, she felt the cold hands rip through her arms and grasp her heart. Her innards felt like ice, the warmth was sapped from her, her legs froze, her mouth fell open for a shout of terror, but no sound escaped her lips.
The black hand that reached into her was freezing her heart solid, squeezing it hard, crushing it until it shattered. She dropped into the dirt and fell on her back, dazed.
She felt a notification ding into her vision, but it was too faint to see. Her tingling arms struggled to lift as she swiped open her player screen, but that too was not bright enough to fend off the dark.
Oh shit.
Rika realized that she needed to use the map to handle teleportation, but without being able to see what she was selecting, she was going to be stuck here. Her heart raced as she tried to remember where the tab was to open the map. She squinted against the dark, but no matter how hard she tried, she could see nothing.
She tried casting a few fire spells - nothing. A lightning strike - nothing. It was as though she was completely blind.
She panicked. She started to sprint, but she soon face-planted against a stone wall. She ran with one arm out and the other gliding across the rough edges of the walls, turning right, then left, then right, then right again - the dark still consumed all.
Krggch.
A shuffling sound echoed across the darkness, like something grinding against the floor, dragging in the dirt, crawling towards her. No, no, no-no-no-no. She needed to get out, she needed to get out now, she needed to be so very, very far away, but she didn't know how other than to try.
Rika swung out the screen.
Krggch. Krggch.
She focused on where the map should've been.
Krggch, krggch.
She tapped once for the portal, again for the destination.
Krggch-krggch-krggch!
It was getting closer! Rika was slapping at the screen now, anything to get her the hell out of there. Then, she felt the hum, the lifegiving hum of a portal spawning nearby, the wispy breeze of dust slipping around it - but where was it?
She flailed her arms out to find it.
KRGGCH! KRGGCH! KRGGCH!
It was almost upon her! Her body betrayed her with a wild, angry scream of pure terror. She was punching the air in a desperate rage to find the portal before it vanished, and then—
She felt the static pull of the door on her fingertips, right as she felt long, human fingers grip around her ankle. With her heart no longer beating, she pulled her leg against the zombie's grip and toppled in.
The hand didn't let go.
4:3
Blinding light. Soft grass. Blue skies.
Rika was in a field, crawling on her back, away from this lumpy mass of clothes and flesh and hair that has latched onto her ankle, groaning and growling with guttural cries of desperation.
She slammed her foot into the zombie's side, tossing it a few good meters. Her long knives sang in the sunlight as she ripped them from their sheaths, but she stood frozen, staring, unwanting to get any closer to that thing.
"Water," it groaned with a cough.
She stopped breathing.
It rolled over on its side, presenting its face. A young man, a teenager even, with scratches and cuts and dried blood caked beneath the dirt and grime. The entirety of him was dusty. Was it really a zombie?
Rika stepped forward. "What are you?"
The zombie squinted its eyes at her, its mud-caked hair dangling over its face. Its voice was like gravel and sand. "Need. Water."
That wasn't a zombie. That was a kid, a teenager.
She sheathed her weapons and hurried over, hesitant to touch the young man, but she knelt at his side. He looked terrible. Abandoned. Starving and dehydrated. The poor kid probably got lost down there for who knows what reason and for how long.
There was a road nearby on the other side of the hedgerows, probably well-traveled. She cast Lightweight on him, then scooped him into her arms and struggled over.
He was still too heavy.
They toppled, and he grunted in a half-cry, half-yelp of pain. Rika panicked, because she was, after all, terrible at helping. Instead, she loosened his shirt and dragged him along by the collar.
Hooves pounded up the road. She needed to hurry. When she made it to the line of thick bushes, she jumped in, and they poured out the other side. The hooves stopped.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “You alright?”
Rika struggled to h
er feet. “I need your help! I found this kid… in the field. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
The rider was an ordinary middle-aged male. His eyes were worried, but he was studying the lumpy mass beside her. The boy was covered in white dust, and Rika realized white dust was not something you’d find in a dirty field.
“Pierre?” the man asked.
Rika didn’t understand him, but then she saw the boy shift his head toward him. “You know him?”
The rider hopped off his horse and hurried over. “I do.” He did a quick look over the boy and his health, then turned to Rika. “I’m good friends with his father, I’ll take care of him from here.”
“Small world,” she said. “He's lucky.”
The man gazed into her eyes, almost as if his soul itself were reaching into hers. She stepped back. “He was lucky that you found him.”
The rider laid the boy over the back of the horse, and they trotted off.
Rika stood alone on the side of the road, covered in limestone dust with twigs in her hair. Not only had she been incredibly suspicious during the whole event, but she just entrusted a teenager’s life to a guy who claimed to be a family friend. Her blood was turning cold at the thought of all the things that could go wrong.
But there was little she could do now. When she looked back down the road, they had vanished.
4:4
Vic was sitting at his outside table, face lowered in thought as he folded dead leaves to feel them snap and crunch. His wife had taken the horse after another argument and hurried back into the city. She had her own friends who could ask around.
He couldn’t blame her; she was desperate, just as he was.
The sun would be setting soon, and as beautiful the sky was to him, he couldn’t relax. Then, he heard hooves clacking back up the path. He turned, and what he saw made all his worries melt away.