Battle For The Nine Realms

by Ramy Vance

  “It’s a lead.”

  “It’s a dead end.”

  “No, I think that—”

  Stew turned to walk away from them, but Suzuki grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. Stew’s avatar lost his footing and stumbled.

  “Hey, what the hell is your problem?” The barbarian raised his voice in anger, drawing his sword. “Do you really feel like PVPing this shit right now? Because I will fucking wipe the floor with your character.”

  Suzuki pulled out his sword and raised his shield. He was hot with anger. Things had been getting like this a lot recently, and he didn’t know how to stop it. Every couple of skirmishes, Stew would say something stupid, and Suzuki would get angry and want to do something about it.

  “Hey, come on.” Sandy stepped between the two of them. “Why don’t we put our dicks away for just a moment?”

  Suzuki and Stew glared at each other. Neither of them moved.

  “Seriously, guys,” Sandy shouted. “Stop it!”

  Suzuki sighed and sheathed his sword and, putting out his hand, said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m just frustrated. We’ve been trying for weeks and nothing.”

  Stew nodded, taking Suzuki’s hand. “Me, too. I’ve been looking around. But all I’ve found are lots of rumors, and nothing else.”

  Stew crouched down on a rock. He pulled up his inventory and built a fire.

  “Nothing beats the real thing, I guess.” He took a seat on the log Suzuki and Sandy were already sitting on.

  Sandy leaned her head on Stew and slipped her arm around his waist, but Stew didn’t seem to notice. He only stared at the flames as they flickered.

  There was a ding on Suzuki’s HUD. He looked at his notification. It read one new message. From Beth.

  “Hey, guys,” Suzuki started.

  “Already got it, bro,” Stew said. “Looks like Beth’s still alive.”

  All of the Mundanes opened their group message from Beth.

  Hey, douchenozzles the message read. Finally got a chance to get a message out to you guys. You have no idea how hard it is to find time for that kind of shit. My parents didn’t even know where I was for the first month. And even then, all I had time to do was tell them that I wasn’t dead yet.

  I miss you guys tons. Can’t say that enough. You guys would love it out here though. It’s fucking wild. What we saw before was nothing. Like nothing. You can’t even begin to imagine. It’s a whole other world. It’s so weird cause it’s kind of like home but also so different. I mean, there are so many orcs.

  Like SO many orcs.

  It’s missions all day, every fucking day. It’s exciting as hell but so tiring. Trust me, running raids all day in VR is nothing like actually having to run a raid. It’s crazy how much I learned playing the game though. I owe it all to you guys. There’s a couple of kids in my troop who only scratched the surface of Middang3ard when they were playing (don’t ask me how they made it this far), and they’ve been having a real hard time.

  We’ve been cleaning up orc camps. Mostly red and gray orcs. Some of the shit is gnarly. I don’t want to get into all the shitty details, but it’s war out here. The Dark One is up to some crazy shit. Still, haven’t quite figured out what’s going on but they keep a lot of that information away from grunts like me. But you don’t need clearance to know something big is going on.

  What Myrddin said was true. This shit is real, and we do need troops. Seems that Canada, the UK, and the Congo – of all places – have started training their military for Middang3ard. They’ve committed troops, but it’s still not enough. We’re going to need everyone… and I mean everyone to join. Total bullshit you guys got rejected. You’re exactly the kind of people we need.

  “Anyways, I don’t have a lot of time. Just wanted to stop off and tell you guys I miss you and I’m doing well. I know you douche nozzles were disappointed that you couldn’t come. I am, too. You would love it here.

  “Sandy: The silk in the markets here is otherworldly. It makes anything you’d pick up from Harrod’s look like yarn.

  “Stew: You’d fit in with these barbarians. Leeroying it up is a thing here. You’d think that these kids would be safer, but I dunno. Guess it’s a personality thing.

  “Oh! I was talking to some of the other troops about you guys, and they totally knew who the Mundanes were. We are kind of like a bootcamp legend for your in-game swag. There’s even a bet to see who can figure out Suzuki’s real first name.

  “Anyway, hope you guys are keeping making a name for yourselves in-game. Remember to keep your eyes open. All of them.”

  Suzuki closed the message. Both Sandy and Stew got a shout out, but there was nothing for him.

  “I gotta go, guys,” Suzuki told them.

  “Wait,” Sandy said. “What’s—”

  Suzuki signed off and the VR screen went blank. He pulled off his headset and sat up in bed.

  How could Beth just forget about him like that? Maybe she had met someone else. It’s not like they had anything going on anyway. Nothing official at least but he’d always thought that there was something there.

  Maybe it was just in his head. Maybe he was someone easily forgettable. Beth was amazing. She’d probably met someone who could keep up with her. Not some nerd sitting in his room trying to figure out if he was going to read through a D&D manual or jerk off.

  Jerking off did sound like a good idea at the moment, so Suzuki started to pull off his sweatpants when he got a ding on his VR headset. He sighed and put the headset back on only to be greeted by Beth’s face wearing a devilish grin. He rolled off the bed and pulled up his pants.

  When he looked closer, he could see that it was a message, not anything that was real-time or live-streaming. Thank God, he thought, as he opened the video message.

  Beth stared back at him. Her face was dirty, and it looked like she hadn’t bathed in a few days. Her eyes were a little sunken, and her hair had grown longer. Suzuki thought she still was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Beth leaned forward and straightened out the camera.

  “Hey, Suzuki. Just wanted to say hi. I miss you. A lot. It’s been weird being away from the party. I always thought you guys would be here with me. I didn’t want to freak out Sandy and Stew or anything, but this shit is real. Like real real. A couple of people from my squad…well…I mean, they didn’t make it.

  “We did a raid on this orc camp, and it wasn’t planned well. It went bad. Which is why we need people like you here. There’s a disturbing lack of strategists. It’s mostly just meatheads. It’s got me worried. The shit that I’ve seen out here…I mean, it’s beautiful here, but what the Dark Lord is doing to these people, to this place! It could all be gone. Anyways, I’m not trying to stress you out or worry you. I’m safe.”

  Beth looked down at her watch. It was an old digital Casio that her mother had given her years ago.

  “Let’s see if I timed this right,” she said. “In about ten seconds, you should hear a knock at your door.”

  Beth stared awkwardly at the screen. Suzuki counted: 7, 8, 9. He heard a knock on the door downstairs. He took off the headset, ran down the stairs, and opened his front door, where he saw a package sitting on his stoop.

  Suzuki picked it up. It had some weight to it. Suzuki pulled up his private messenger on his phone. There was another message from Beth. It read: Get this dongle installed as soon as you can and use it when the time’s right. It might just save your life.

  Suzuki opened up the package. Inside was a small attachable dongle. He didn’t even know what it was supposed to attach to. It was a slim cylinder, and it didn’t have any ports that he’d ever seen before.

  What the hell is this for?

  He brought Beth’s video message back up, but he didn’t bother playing it. He just looked at Beth. He felt his stomach knot up. He was flooded with the same feeling he always got when he looked at a photo of her or checked through the loot they used to share. He should be watc
hing her back. He knew that. Yet here he was, walking upstairs to go to sleep.

  This was hardly an adventure.

  Chapter Ten

  Knock, knock. Knock.

  Suzuki turned back to the door. He’d hardly made it a couple of steps away from the stairs, and there was already another knock on the door.

  Another knock, this time louder than the last. Whoever was on the other side of the door sounded impatient. Suzuki reached over, gripped the doorknob, and flung the door wide open.

  There was no one there.

  Suzuki stepped outside into a typical day in his suburb. Every front yard had a pristinely-manicured lawn with patches of green grass stretching as far as he could see.

  Most days it turned his stomach to see such uniformity. When he was growing up, his mother had told him that nausea was caused by allergies, but Suzuki knew the only thing he had been allergic to was the boredom and mediocrity.

  And now that his mom was gone, having died from cancer three years ago, he’d inherited the house. Instead of selling it and moving to the city, he just stayed where he was, using the money she’d left him to game.

  That’s probably why he was so good at it and probably why it mattered so much to him. Since his mom died, in-game was the only place he didn’t feel so alone.

  Well, the only place he used to not feel alone. He felt it even more now since the adventure of true Middang3ard had been ripped from his hands.

  Suzuki sighed, trying not to think about his mom or Beth or what he was missing out on, and went back inside. As he closed the door, there was another knock. Suzuki flung the door open, thinking to himself how much he was going to enjoy going off on whoever was pranking him.

  Nothing.

  He slammed the door. “What the ever-loving fuck?” he sighed under his breath.

  Knock.

  Suzuki didn’t waste any time flinging the door open. “Okay, where the hell are you?” he shouted. Still nothing.

  Nothing except when he looked down and saw something that made his jaw go slack in a mixture of disgust and awe.

  A floating, fleshy orb was in the door’s threshold. It was hovering about knee height and wasn’t much bigger than a tennis ball. It had a mass of tentacles sitting on top of its head, each tentacle ending in a slimy eyeball. It had a mouth that turned up like a pug’s and an overbite showing its numerous, small, dagger-like teeth. Its skin was gray and scaly. A large eye sat in the middle of the floating head’s face. A thick eyelid rested over the eye so that the thing would have looked sleepy if it weren’t for the halo of wide-open eyes surrounding its head.

  “Ahem,” the eye-covered creature said. “May I come in?”

  The smell of dust and ancientness wafted from the floating head as all of its eyes appraised Suzuki.

  Suzuki opened the door nearly as wide as his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Come on in.”

  The head floated into the house. Its tentacle eyes whipped around as they looked at every inch of the living room. They never stopped moving. Suzuki wondered just how much information must be pouring through that gray head all of the time. Finally, the creature turned to face Suzuki with its large middle eye. It didn’t say anything, only stared at Suzuki with its dozen eyes.

  Suzuki took a huge breath and scooted across the living room, trying not to look as if he were obviously trying to put some space between him and the ancient Beholder before him.

  “Can I help you with something?” Suzuki asked.

  “It is I who have come to help you,” the creature said. “I am known as He with Many Eyes Who Watches throughout and beyond Time Unceasingly. Mortals refer to me as Manny.”

  Suzuki stuck his hand out for a handshake before thinking better of it. “Err…nice to meet you.”

  “You as well.”

  “Can I…uh…help you with anything?” Suzuki repeated, unsure exactly how to speak to a Beholder.

  Manny’s eyes bored into Suzuki. Someone staring at you was already bad enough, Suzuki thought. But this was unbearable. Most of Manny’s eyes didn’t even blink. Not even the massive one.

  “You really live up to the ‘Unceasing’ part of your name, huh,” Suzuki joked.

  Manny opened its mouth and something like a growl and a thousand screams came barreling out. “Humor is not generally a strength of your race. I find you to be the exception.”

  “Do you want to take a seat or something?”

  The living room filled with the sound of Manny’s frightening parody of a laugh. “No,” Manny said. “I have arrived on business. Business for you.”

  “What kind of business would I have with a Beholder? You are a real Beholder, right? Not some kind of mechanical trick to get me to order another update of Middang3ard?”

  “Thankfully, Myrddin is finished with his tacky publicity stunts. I informed him such tactics are unbefitting for a wizard of his age and talent. Naturally, I was unheeded. As if I were not capable of seeing that which others are unaware of. One does not need twelve eyes to see that Myrddin was embarrassing himself. Greatly. But I am not here to speak to you of that which I have seen, I am here to speak to you of that which I have been told. I am a recruiter for the MERCs.”

  Suzuki took a seat as the news hit. He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair as he tried to wrap his mind around what he had just heard. Between all of the Middang3ard players going on about how they all knew someone who was in the MERCs and the rumors on the online message boards, Suzuki had stopped taking the existence of the MERCs seriously. Though, if he could accept a Beholder randomly showing up at his front door, he could imagine that the MERCS might be a real thing. But why were they at his front door?

  Manny broke Suzuki’s train of thought. “I can see that you are confused, human. Allow me to dispel your concerns.”

  All of Manny’s tentacled eyes glowed. They looked like bouncing Christmas lights.

  His middle eye rolled back so that only the white of his eye could be seen. Then he began spinning in a circle, faster and faster until he was only a blur. A bright light projected from his glowing eye until what looked like a massive scroll wavered into existence.

  Manny stopped spinning and returned to his unnatural floating position as the scroll unfolded.

  There were no words on the scroll, only a moving image of men and women in various kinds of armor. There were muscular, hardly-clothed barbarians covered in war paint; mages with flowing robes that reached to the ground and rippled and changed colors like the running waters of a river; archers and gunners; soldiers ---and warriors.

  In the middle of the image was a paladin with bright, silver armor and a kite shield nearly the size of his body. A massive greatsword with a golden hilt set with jewels and precious stones rested in the warrior’s hand.

  The warrior reached for his helmet and touched its ear. The helmet rearticulated itself, bits and pieces moving back and forth like small building blocks being taken apart.

  Suzuki’s face was behind the helmet.

  “At no time in history,” Manny said, “has an army ever been enough. There are things that governments are not capable of. There are things that heavily regulated forces are not capable of. There are things that people simply do not want to do. That is when the different realms rely on the MERCs who are completely unsanctioned, untethered to race, realm, or government. When soldiers are afraid to get questionable blood on their uniforms, the MERCs relish in shedding that very same blood. And we are paid well for that bloodshed.”

  “Are you saying that you’re working outside of the government?” The thought of doing something illegal made Suzuki nervous.

  “There isn’t always a need for government. The government did nothing to stop the destruction of past realms, and the government will continue to step around what needs to be done. The realms are at war---make no doubt about that---and war is not beautiful. It is foul, disgusting, and unrelenting. Not everyone has the stomach to do what needs to be done in times like these. When your go
vernment hesitates, the Dark One destroys. He is a never-ending force of destruction and chaos. There is no room for hesitation.”

  Seven of Manny’s eyes closed at once, as if to emphasize his last point.

  “So it’s illegal?”

  More lights shone from Manny’s eyes, and the image on the scroll changed. The soldiers were all gone, replaced by a battlefield with dozens of soldiers who lay dead in a green field, their weapons littering the field as if they were gravestones.

  Manny floated beside the image. “Death is coming for your people. I have seen it. Your simple notions of right and wrong, legal or illegal, private or government will do nothing to save you. Are these dead men and women soldiers or mercenaries?”

  Suzuki looked at the image of the dead. There were more than he could count. All that he could tell from the image was that they were humans, dwarves, elves, and gnomes.

  So many different races, so many dead.

  “When did this happen?” Suzuki asked.

  “Answer the question,” Manny bellowed.

  Many of the dead soldiers wore armor. Some of them were impaled on long spikes and hung in the air as if they were some form of offering. The grass was stained with blood that wasn’t only red, but other colors as well.

  I guess not everyone bleeds red, Suzuki thought before saying, “I can’t tell the difference.”

  “Exactly. Soldiers die. It does not matter if they are illegal or not. Their sacrifices all mean the same.”

  “So why not have regular soldiers?”

  “We are the arm of force when situations are dire. Soldiers do not like low survival rates. We MERCs see that as a challenge. We’re the unofficial cannon fodder.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “The unofficial cannons,” and under his breath, he added, “fodder.”

  The image on the scroll transformed again. This time, the warrior with Suzuki’s face was surrounded by other MERCs. He knelt beside a large golden chest. Light shone out of the cracks of the chest.

  The warrior opened the chest and stared down at its contents. Manny floated closer to Suzuki, filling the air with his ancient smell.