by Ramy Vance
“No.”
“I’ve known many leaders in my lifetime. What is it that you lead for? I have yet to see a MERC who is concerned with anything other than loot.”
“I came here to fight the Dark One.”
“Yes, I wonder if you did.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?” Irritation was sneaking into Suzuki’s voice. He could hear Fred’s condescending sneer with each question.
“I have known many MERCs. I’ve seen them come and go. It is a rarity to see one with such pure, angelic purposes as yourself.”
“So what if I want to be a leader?”
Suzuki snapped his quill pen. He hadn’t even realized he had been holding it so tightly. He sighed as he stood and went looking for Gorgol.
Fred circled Suzuki’s mind. It felt as if the imp were trying to invade his thoughts. “A soft spot should be guarded more thoroughly,” Fred chided. “You do see yourself as a leader. Or at least you want to be a leader. What is it, may I ask, you wish to lead for? I have seen many leaders succumb to the various strains of their office. Power does ultimately corrupt, as I have heard.”
Suzuki picked up a quill pen from the desk of a random dwarf. The dwarf looked up at Suzuki and sniffed loudly to voice his displeasure. Suzuki managed a weak smile before walking off. “Corruption seems like something you might have a good idea about,” Suzuki said.
“Yes,” Fred hissed. “It is something which I’ve established a good understanding of. A good enough understanding to offer a word of wisdom. I believe that the Dark One was an admirable, kind-hearted leader at some point.”
“Did you know him?”
“It is difficult not to know him when you are as ancient as me. I knew of him much like I have known of and watched many leaders. And I can say safely that leadership is not for you, Suzuki. I do not believe it will suit you, even if it does feel intoxicating.”
“Shut up,” Suzuki spat. “You don’t know me or what I want.”
“True. I doubt you do either.”
Suzuki sat back down his chair. He was shaking with anger. Sandy looked at him, her face soft with concern. “Suzuki, what’s up?”
“Nothing. My familiar is just kind of an asshole.”
“Dude,” Stew broke in. “You chose an imp. What the fuck were you expecting?”
“I dunno. Maybe some slyness. Not an outright troll asshole.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Sandy said. “And we are definitely in the beggar spectrum. At least we’re in Middang3ard.”
Sandy was right, and Suzuki knew it. There was no way around that uncomfortable tidbit of information. The Mundanes had barely made it into the cut to save Middang3ard, though Suzuki wasn’t completely certain that’s what they were here for.
But Suzuki didn’t air his concerns. It didn’t make sense to worry any of the other recruits. It also seemed like it might have been impossible to worry anyone else.
Even though dwarves came, collected their paperwork, and handed out more, everyone in the log house appeared to be extremely excited. There were smiles and laughter in abundance. Suzuki felt as if he were the only person with doubts about the whole situation. Even Stew and Sandy didn’t seem all too worried.
A passing dwarf handed the Mundanes a seventh package of forms. This last stack was dedicated to outlining the last ten years of video game experience he had. The stack before this one had been about the last fifteen years of his reading list. Suzuki and Sandy had to provide Stew with a handful of titles to flesh out his list. It had looked a little bare.
Once the dwarf meandered off, Suzuki shook his head as he started on what he hoped was his last checklist. “Why did you guys even want to come here?”
Sandy put down her pen. She reminded Suzuki of a child who was getting ready to lie herself out of a lie. “The same reason anyone else did. To fight the Dark One.”
“Come on, Sandy, don’t bullshit me. We’re supposed to be friends. A party. And what’s the first thing that we said that a party needs to do to work?”
Sandy lowered her eyes and avoided Suzuki’s gaze.
“What was it?” Suzuki repeated.
“Trust each other,” Sandy whispered.
“And how can we trust each other if we can’t be honest with each other?”
“We can’t.”
“So why did you want to come to Middang3ard?”
“Because I want to get good.” Sandy folded her hands over her paperwork. She looked as if she were getting ready to defend a dissertation. Her eyes still refused to meet Suzuki’s. Even Stew had finished fussing with his paperwork to listen to what was going on. His eyes were locked on Sandy’s, but hers strayed from contact with anyone else’s.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stew put his hand on Sandy’s. “You are good. Great even. The best.”
“In a game. I want to get good for real,” Sandy interrupted as her eyes sparkled with electricity. “Suzuki, you remember when we first started playing together? Before Stew joined the party? Back when I couldn’t get any of the hotkeys right. I kept screwing up all my spells and roles. I couldn’t get why you kept playing with me because I was always fucking up our missions and getting booted from raids and shit. I asked you what I could do to get better. And what did you do? You sent that stupid ass meme of a cat dangling on a string. You know, the one with the caption, ‘Hang in there’. Do you remember that?”
“Sort of.” In truth, Suzuki didn’t.
“So I hung in there. I got good. I spent hours every day trying to get good. And then I was. But this…this is something so much bigger than that. I can get good for real. I want to get good here. I’m sick of sitting in a fucking cubicle, answering phones and coming home to play make-believe. I know it’s a walking cliché, but I don’t give a fuck. This—here. I can find out if I’m capable of something. Every taste of actual magic I’ve gotten…it’s just…I can’t give that up. Ever. That’s why I’m in Middang3ard. I’m tired of pretending to be a badass. I want to find out if I can actually be a badass.”
“You want power?”
“No.” Sandy stretched out her hand and a flicker of flame and a fireball burst into existence, hovering in her palm. “I want to be godlike. I want to be the strongest mage any of the realms have ever seen. And I want to torch the Dark One with that power.”
“Damn,” Stew said as Sandy closed her hand and extinguished the fireball. “I thought that whole ‘death and murder’ thing was just a joke.”
“No,” Sandy whispered. “I’m tired of being weak. I don’t want to be that anymore.” And then her demeanor changed completely, as if she hadn’t been displaying her power as she revealed her desire to take on the Dark One. “That’s me,” she chirped in a cutesy voice. “What about you, Stew?”
Stew fidgeted in his seat. He looked as if he would have been more comfortable running away. Suzuki had never seen him look so uncomfortable before. Stew was actually turning red. He gave a heavy sigh and pushed up his glasses. “It’s nothing as heavy as Sandy. I just want to wreck shit. And there’s nothing to wreck on Earth. Not like here. What about you?”
Suzuki felt Fred surfacing in the back of his mind. “Yes, human,” Fred growled. “What about you?”
“Beth,” Suzuki said without hesitating. “I want to see Beth.”
The Mundanes sat in silence for a few moments before they returned to their paperwork. Suzuki felt that this was the first time that he’d ever truly seen Sandy or Stew. No amount of gaming or talking had prepared him for this moment. They were his party.
His family.
Yet there were so many parts of them that he had no understanding of. He wondered how much of Beth he didn’t know.
“You guys had much cooler reasons than me,” Stew grumbled.
Sandy and Suzuki stared at Stew. Then they broke out laughing. Sandy laughed so hard that she had to grab Stew and lean against him. The other recruits stopped their writing and looked at the Mundanes as the trio laughed h
ard enough to bring tears.
“Guess that’s why the MERCs have the one rule,” Suzuki said. “Cause we’re all here for fucking stupid reasons.”
A slew of dwarves were now walking down the aisles of benches. They were collecting paperwork, finished or not. A surly dwarf with a stained beard and burned overalls grabbed all of the Mundanes’ paperwork and scuttled off. There was a loud gong (Suzuki had figured this was Middang3ards equivalent to a siren), and a loud voice magically projected itself.
“MERC recruits, please assemble in the back of the office to receive your equipment,” the voice commanded.
The recruits slowly rose and made their way to the back of the log house. A queue formed. The Mundanes were somewhere near the back, and this time, Suzuki didn’t feel comfortable trying to make his way to the front.
He was thinking about what Fred had said. He knew that there was still a lot to learn about Stew and Sandy, but he had not been expecting their reasons for coming to Middang3ard. It made him wonder about his own reasons for being in this new realm. Was there any truth to what Fred had said or was he just playing the imp? Suzuki wondered what purpose Fred would have for unnerving him.
By the time that Suzuki got to the head of the line, he felt as if he was going to pass out. It was hard to tell how long he’d been standing, absorbed in his own thoughts. There were no clocks anywhere, and his cellphone had stopped working a long time ago. His legs were sore, and his feet were numb. He assumed that Stew and Sandy were in the same boat. Neither of them was talking. Sandy’s eyes were closed, and she was leaning haphazardly on Stew’s shoulder. Suzuki stepped up to the desk, where four dwarves sat at a long table like a panel of judges.
“Name, please?” the robed dwarf asked.
“Robert ‘Suzuki’ Fletcher,” Suzuki answered.
“Ah…Suzuki.” The dwarf said, looking at the panel. “You are a warrior-mage, correct?”
“Yeah, I used to play as a warrior-mage.”
“I did not ask what you used to play as. I asked what you are.”
“A warrior-mage.”
“Good. Take your HUD. Your armor will deploy from your HUD. Next!”
Suzuki took the HUD that the dwarf held in his hand and moved out of the way. He went over to the wall, away from the line.
The further that Suzuki got in all of this nonsense, the more hardcore everyone seemed to be. He was getting a little annoyed at the constant reiterations that this was not a game. Anyone who hadn’t realized that by now wasn’t going to make it out alive—even if he was constantly being supplied with devices that blurred the distinction between game, reality, and fantasy.
Suzuki held the HUD in his hand. It was rough and scratched. It was used, and Suzuki tried to put out of his mind any thoughts as to what had happened to its original user.
A single earpiece that fit snugly over his ear, with a visor that stretched across the eyes. The earpiece had a touchpad on it for navigating menus. Suzuki brought the HUD online and pressed the touchpad. As soon as he did, he felt the weight of armor materializing over his body.
When he looked into the reflection of the log cabin’s window, he saw himself in standard chainmail that was a tighter fit than anything he’d worn before. It felt as if it had been crafted just for him.
That’s probably why there are so many dwarves here. Then a thought occurred to him that made him chuckle. That’s probably why we had so much paperwork. The dwarves were probably buying themselves time to make the damn armor.
Examining the HUD display, he noted that it was different than any he had seen so far. There was only one corner display in the right-hand corner: the success percentage meter, with several lines below it for modifiers, health, and mana.
This was a step back from anything the military had. Suzuki found it hard to believe that the rumors and propaganda of the spoils of war that Beth and Manny had spoken about were true after seeing his MERC gear.
The MERCs HUDs looked as if they were from the first iteration of Middang3ard, maybe something out of the beta. It didn’t appear that the MERCs had any money. If there was loot, it wasn’t going into funding the organization.
Suzuki noticed that there was one other icon on the HUD. At the bottom left of the corner, there was a flashing icon of an imp. Suzuki clicked the icon.
Familiar: Frekreteritdickentrot
Race: Eldritch Imp
Bond: Fragile
Origins: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown
There was another flashing icon beneath the previous information. Suzuki clicked the icon and a message popped on his HUD.
“There is something in Frekreteridickentrot’s past that he does not wish you to know,” the message read. “Gain his trust and learn about his past. That is the only way to truly bond with your familiar. Until you bond with your familiar, you will be limited in your ability to advance in Middang3ard.”
Sandy and Stew were coming over to Suzuki. They were both putting on their own HUDs.
Sandy hit her HUD and little flower buds sprouted and bloomed, sending petals everywhere as robes flew from them, covering her.
When Stew activated his HUD, his shirt vanished and a plate mail kilt rolled out over his waist. A longsword hung from his side.
Stew pulled out his sword and checked its weight and balance. “At least we get started off with some decent gear.”
Suzuki agreed, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about the message that he had just read. Gain his trust and learn about his past.
Great, Suzuki thought. Just great. Figure out an ancient imp’s past and get him to trust you? Taking out the Dark One sounded like a much simpler task.
Chapter Fourteen
The little bit of sun had disappeared, a swollen full moon hung in the sky, and stars twinkled as the newly- armored recruits trickled out of the log house and back into the marshlands.
Guided by the few lights on in the buildings that made up the village sitting near the swamp, they made their way into town, the dank murkiness of the swamp filling their nostrils as the chirps and screeches of small animals and insects filled their ears.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Suzuki muttered as the Mundanes separated from the rest of the recruits who were cautiously poking around the various buildings.
“I don’t know about that,” Sandy said. “Eerie noises, no lights, perfect setting for some wild storm to swoop us away…we very well could be in Kansas.”
As they headed for the only source of light, from a structure the size of a motel, Suzuki tried to message Beth. Touching his HUD, he called up her contacts and tried to DM her. “Hi.”
A little spindle turned and turned before a red X appeared. Apparently, the message couldn’t go through.
“OK,” Suzuki murmured, trying to send her an email. He got a short message that said they were in Middang3ard, but as soon as he heard that cyber swoosh of an email being sent, he got a ping with a message that said his email had bounced back.
“What the fuck?” Suzuki growled. Then he remembered how difficult it was to speak to RealDeal, one of the first people he knew to enter Middang3ard. Messaging wasn’t as straightforward as on Earth. Probably because they were in the military, but then again, who knows? It wasn’t as if there were cables under the ground pumping terabytes of data around. Maybe the Internet hadn’t made it here, yet.
“If only Al Gore was a MERC.” Suzuki chuckled to himself, resolving to find a way to message Beth. But later.
Now…now he needed to learn more about his new home.
As they approached the structure, Suzuki heard loud shouting and music coming from the building. It sounded like a party.
Suzuki went up to the building and eased open the door.
A bustling bar opened up before the Mundanes. Much like the processing area that Suzuki had just lost six hours of his life in, the bar seemed to stretch back farther than was reasonable for how small the building looked from the outside.
The wooden walls caught the candlelight cast from chandeliers, and the floor was covered in a variety of different animal skin rugs. The walls were decorated with stuffed big-game heads. Some were recognizable, such as deer and bears, but there were also creatures that Suzuki had never seen before. One looked like a boar, only it had no fur. Instead of fur, the boar had tiny quills like those of a porcupine. Its snout was covered with a dozen eyes of different colors.
Magical creatures from all of the existing realms were sitting together or cloistered off at tables with members of their own race. The majority of the bar patrons were humans and dwarves, and their tables held the most mead. There were no similarities between their armor, other than a red streak, which started at their neckline and stretched down to their waist.
Suzuki scanned the bar and noted that everyone except the recruits had at least one red streak somewhere on their armor or clothing.
“It’s a symbol of the MERCs,” he muttered to himself. “It’s got to be.”
As the Mundanes made their way into the bar, a dwarf walked in front of them, cutting them off. The dwarf stumbled and sloshed his mead onto his beard, whirling around and nearly toppling over.
When he caught his balance, he jabbed his finger at the Mundanes. “You watch them gams, human,” the dwarf growled. “I’ll have ‘em strung up someplace, and we all know what to do with them afterward.” The dwarf hiccupped, and his face took on the color of a beet.
Sandy knelt down to look the dwarf in the eye. “And what exactly are you going to do with them?”
The dwarf stared long and hard at Sandy. When she didn’t budge, he leaned forward and pointed at Stew. “That one’s got a nice face,” he murmured. “You all got real nice faces!”
Someone at a nearby table shouted, “Leave the newbs alone! Next round is on you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the dwarf grumbled as he tottered over, stabilizing himself with chairs and tables as he went. And all the while, he smiled brightly, his cheeks still shining red beneath his scraggly beard.