by Ramy Vance
“Beth? You’re alive?” he checked the timestamp. She had recorded the message about nine hours earlier, right around the time of the attack.
The message continued. “We’re under attack, Suzuki. These fuckers are actually attacking our base. There are thousands of Red Orcs. I mean, thousands. I’ve never seen so many. And they’ve never attacked our base before.” There was the sound of an explosion that caused Beth to look behind her.
“Shit that was close. I’ve got to go join my platoon. Defend the base. Suzuki, this war is real and…well, I didn’t want to go into what could be my last battle without calling you a douche nozzle one last time.” She winked at him, forcing a smile. “I love you, Suzuki. I always have. I just wish I’d gotten a chance to tell you in person. Take care of yourself Suzuki, and who knows, if I survive this fight, maybe I will get to tell you in person. God knows I want to.”
And with that, the message blinked out.
“What the fuck!” Suzuki yelled.
Suzuki considered the other message from Beth during the attack -- it had been delayed. Suzuki wasn’t sure if that meant anything. From what he knew about how the HUDs worked, they needed to be online to send, so maybe, just maybe hers was online.
Then it hit him. Something so small, but obvious. He clicked through the email stamp’s metadata, strolling through the code until he found what he was looking for.
The message had been composed nine hours ago. But it was only sent recently.
And not from a military base. No, it was sent from another location altogether.
He was right. Her HUD was online. She was alive.
“Beth isn’t dead, guys,” Suzuki said, leaping to his feet.
Stew looked up at Suzuki with a mix of rage and frustration, like he was ready to grab Suzuki and kill him. “Cut the shit, Suzuki,” Stew shouted. “We all got the message. We—”
“She’s not dead.”
“What the fuck do you mean, she’s not dead? You saw the same thing—”
“I just got another message from her. One she made during the attack.” He forwarded the message to Stew and Sandy.
“So?” Stew growled. “The message got stuck in her outbox. Shit like that happens. Doesn’t mean she’s alive.”
“No,” he said, projecting the message’s metadata on the screen. “Look. That message was sent from…from…” he called up a map, clicking the coordinates and a big red pin appeared on what would have been Ellis Island on Earth. “She’s there.”
“No, dude,” Stew said. “Even if you’re right, all it means is some fucking orc accidently sent the message when he was chewing on her skull.”
Sandy punched Stew in the gut. Hard. “Shut the fuck up, Stew. Show some fucking respect.”
Stew threw his arms up in the air. “I am. Her HUD is there. But she’s not. She’s dead.”
“No, she isn’t,” Suzuki said. “She was clear that the attack was conducted by red orcs. Not gray orcs. Red.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Gray orcs kill. They can’t help it. It’s all throughout the stories. Tolkien. Lewis. All of the English myths. Gray orcs are killers. But when it comes to RPG campaigns and stories…red orcs take prisoners. Beth mentioned multiple times that her troop was dealing almost exclusively with red orcs. And Beth knows as much as I do, if not more. If she was in a situation where she was being overrun by red orcs, she would have thrown her sword down and let herself be captured.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“Because that’s what I would have done. And when it comes to the history and legends of Middang3ard, Beth knows way more than I.”
Sandy wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at Suzuki. “She’s alive?”
“No, no…don’t buy Suzuki’s bullshit, Sandy. He’s a lovesick asshole who is desperate to believe his girlfriend is alive. She’s dead.”
Suzuki lifted his hands in surrender. “She might be. Yes, I admit it. But she might also be alive. Red orcs don’t kill. They enslave. Think about all the times your ass got captured by a band of Red orcs, and we had to come save you.”
Stew shook his head. “That was in the game, dude.”
“A game designed to train us for this world. For this war. Why would they put in some crazy detail like that if it didn’t have some truth to it?”
Stew was silent. It was true, in their gaming time, Stew had been captured not once, but three times by red orcs and it was always the same. Capture, imprisonment, put to work…and then he was eventually saved by Suzuki.
Suzuki stepped up close to Stew and looked him in the eye. “All I’m saying is she might be alive. I mean, I’d still be alive. I don’t see how Beth couldn’t be.”
“I don’t know, Suzuki,” Stew said, hesitantly.
Suzuki took a step back and pulled up his HUD, clicking on its map again. “Beth sent a message earlier to me where she said that she was close to Ellis Island. Now her HUD is sending messages from there. That’s not a coincidence.”
“Ellis Island is on Earth, dude.” Stew sneered.
“True, but the geography on Middang3ard is the same as ours. She’s on whatever Ellis Island is called here. She’s on an island, and it’s probably still a prison. If Beth is anywhere, it’s going to be there.”
Suzuki used his HUD to project a 3D map of New York City. Of course in Middang3ard, it was covered with forests and swamps, but from an aerial view, they could make out the unmistakable outlines of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Ellis Island.
The zone flashed red.
Stew growled in frustration. “Shit, dude. Even if you’re right, it says we have less than a three percent chance of surviving that zone. It’s full of the Dark One’s bitches.”
Suzuki was about to say something when his inbox pinged. He checked it and saw another message from Beth. No…that wasn’t right.
He saw the same message from Beth. Sent again.
Whatever was happening and wherever she was, she could send the same message more than once.
He hacked into the second message’s metadata and saw that it was sent from the same location.
“She’s alive guys. And she’s there.”
“OK, ok.” Sandy nodded. “Let’s say that you’re right. What good does that do us? The HUDs are designed to transport us out of any zone with less than a fifteen percent chance of survival. It’s some safety protocol Myrddin installed to stop idiots like us getting in over our heads.”
Suzuki threw his hands up in frustration. “This isn’t a fucking video game. I don’t give a shit what percentage it gives us for survival. We’re going to get Beth. Period.” And before the other two could say anything, Suzuki unsheathed his sword and pointed it to the heavens. “Never split the party, remember? Come on, guys! For honor,” he cried out.
Sandy’s hands glowed bright blue, sparks jumping between her fingertips. “Beth might be alive. We owe it to her to find out. And if she’s alive, we have to save her. She pressed her fingers on Suzuki’s sword. “For glory.”
Stew pursed his lips. “Fine,” he snarled. “Fine…but I’m not saying, ‘For XP’. I’m calling this one for what it is. We’re getting the party back together. We’re doing this for the Mundanes. We’re doing this for Beth.”
Suzuki nodded. “That’s exactly why we’re doing this. For the Mundanes. For Beth.”
Always for Beth.
Epilogue
When Beth woke up, her head felt as if someone had split it open.
She was lying on the floor, hands and feet bound. Blood caked her forehead. Pain wracked her body as she tried to stretch to test the strength of her binding. Whatever they had tied her up with seemed to grow hotter if she moved too much. She tried to look around wherever she was, but it was too dark. She couldn’t make anything out. She could tell that it smelled horrible, though.
“Hello?” Her voice came out hoarse and harsh, like she’d been under for some time.
“Shut up,” Allister replied.
“Capt
ain, is that you?”
“Who the hell else would it be?”
Beth was quiet as she tried to put her thoughts together, but all she could remember was being overrun by red orcs. Her platoon had wanted to fight, but Beth knew that would be suicide. Surrender was better because red orcs don’t kill.
Not when they don’t have too.
She had convinced them all to put down their weapons. And then everything went blank.
“Sir, what happened?” Beth finally managed to ask.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Fighting. Then surrendering,” Beth said before remembering one last thing. “Falling. I remember surrendering and then falling.”
“That would be the magic.” The captain sucked in a deep breath. “Best I can tell was that when we laid down our arms, the bastards cast some sleep spell on us. Most of the platoon was knocked out.”
Beth looked around and saw about twenty of her fellow soldiers tied up, all sitting in some cave, somewhere on Middang3ard. “I don’t…understand. Red orcs don’t use magic. How could they have done that?”
The captain shook his head. “Not sure. I don’t speak orc, and even if I did, I doubt they’d tell me. Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Where the fuck are we? And how many of us are left? And—”
“Soldier,” the captain growled. “Get a hold of yourself. Now.”
Beth gritted her teeth. “Yes, sir.” Then taking a deep breath added, “May I request a quick debrief, sir? That is, if you’re not too busy, sir?”
“Now that’s more like it,” the captain mused. “Keeping your head in shit like this is the greatest weapon. Don’t forget that. Now to answer your questions. I woke up while they were bringing me here. We’re in some kind of catacomb. I’m not sure how far down. Best I can tell, about half of us are here. Why only half? I have no idea. There should be more of us, so either the other half is dead, or they split us up. Either way, count yourself lucky. Very lucky.”
“You have a twisted concept of luck,” Beth muttered before adding, “sir.”
Allister chuckled, and Beth could hear him struggling in the darkness. After a couple seconds of movement, Allister stopped moving. He let out a heavy sigh. “These aren’t your typical red orcs. The sleep spell is one thing, and these braces are obviously magic too.”
“Again, sir. Magic? Orcs can’t use magic,” Beth said as she fiddled with her HUD. It was disabled, and she couldn’t get it to display anything. No percentages, inventory. Nothing. “Seems they’re pretty good with tech, too. All things that Intelligence said they shouldn’t be able to do. So I’m guessing Intelligence ain’t so intelligent after all.”
Allister laughed again before breaking out into another cough. “You would be the one to keep your sense of humor, soldier.”
“I am a comedic juggernaut, Sir,” Beth said in a flat tone. She flipped through her disabled inventory. All useless. Except for one thing. Her mailbox was disabled, sending a new message was completely blocked off. But there was one message flashing in her Outbox. A message that she had meant to send to Suzuki.
She held her breath as she clicked the send button.
For a split second, nothing happened. Then she heard the whoosh of an email being sent into cyberspace.
“It’s the least I can do to lighten the mood when we are so close to being fucked,” Beth said with a devilish grin. The message was sent, hours after the attack. Suzuki would put it together; he’d know that she was alive and kicking.
“Close?” Allister lifted a curious eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but we are royally fucked. Unless you know something I don’t.”
Beth checked her HUD again and saw that although the message was sent, a copy still sat in her Outbox. Probably a glitch caused by whatever they did to the HUDs to make them inactive.
She clicked Send again and the message whisked away, only to pop back into her Outbox again. She could send and resend the same message again and again. If that didn’t get Suzuki off his ass...
“I do, indeed, sir.” Beth grinned. “And I’d say we’re fucked, but not royally.”
“And how is that?”
“Because there was a message stuck in my Outbox. I guess their hack wasn’t as complete as they thought it was. I couldn’t modify the message, but I was able to send it.” She didn’t bother mentioning that she could also resend it.
Allister tried to sit up. He ended up groaning in pain instead. “You were able to reach Command?”
Beth tried to move out of reflex. It was a mistake. Her wrists and ankles felt like they had just caught on fire. “Not quite. It was a message to Suzuki. He knows what happened.”
“Suzuki again. Always going on about Suzuki. You really think this kid is going to be getting us out of here? We don’t even know where here is.”
Beth smiled. “Trust me, sir. He’ll get us out of here.”
“So what’s the plan? Sit here and wait for your knight in shining armor?”
“Fuck that, we’re not going to wait. We see an opening, we take it. With a little reassurance that we have backup coming.”
Allister laughed, and Beth could hear him trying to sit up. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”
There was the creak of a door opening. A little sliver of light shone through. Beth was able to make out some of the detail of their surroundings. They were definitely in a cave. There wasn’t much room. It looked like it might have been a cell. Wherever they were, it was far from where they had been fighting. Beth didn’t know of any place along the plains where she had been stationed.
A large red orc lumbered into the room. It was carrying several bowls on a large wooden platter. The orc tossed two bowls onto the ground in front of the captain, and then two more.
Two bowls for each prisoner.
Beth wiggled over to the bowls. One was full of water, and the other was full of foul-smelling slop. Even with the intensely disgusting smell, Beth was ravenously hungry. She shoved her face into the bowl and started eating as the orc returned with two more bowls.
Allister chuckled to himself. “Beth, why don’t you just make yourself easier to poison?”
Beth’s mouth was full of some kind of animal she could never have imagined eating. “They’re not going to keep us prisoners and poison us. What would the point of that be?” she managed to get out between slurps. “So while we’re figuring a way out of here, I for one am going to keep my strength up.”
Beth pushed her face into the bowl, licking up the last of the foul soup.
Suzuki was coming. She had never been so certain of anything in her entire life. Once he got her message and put together the pieces, there wasn’t going to be anything to stop him.
He and the Mundanes were coming.
And when they did, the party would be back together.
Author Notes
August 3, 2019
Joint Author Notes – Ramy Vance (He who shall be called truth-breaker) and Michael Anderle (He who shall be called story-corrector.)
(I’m totally hijacking his author notes because otherwise this poor excuse for the story will become the ‘official’ story and Ramy will look at me with his eyes full of mischief and just shrug his shoulders. – Michael Anderle)
Author Notes Ramy Vance
and Michael Anderle
Fucking Tolkien.
This was how my elevator pitch went when I met Michael in Vegas last November: “Michael, I got a great idea … imagine a world where all the stuff we read in Tolkien, Milton, Beowulf was real. Where Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t an RPG, but actually training for the some seriously bad shit lurking off-world. Where, when we travel to said off-world location, humans are all super-strong, fast healers, more endurance, etc…”
“So basically, we’re all Captain America in said off-world?” Mike asked.
“Yeah! That’s exactly it!”
“Cool.” His eyes lit up with the possibilities of my proposed universe. “So what’s going to happen on that off-world place? Humans--us--we’re going to, what? Fight the Dark One?”
“Exactly!” I’ll have to come clean here. I hadn’t thought of a Dark One or any big bad, really. I had just come up with a cool world.
He took a sip of his Coke. That’s Michael for you. Always on brand. “Fight the Dark One before the Dark One brings the fight to Earth?”
“It’s like you read my mind,” I lied. It was more like he was feeding me the story. But who was I to complain?
“A world where the DnD, RPG and video game players are the heroes?”
“Are you psychic?”
“I dig it. But what do we call this place?”
And that was when the magic happened. We both … and I kid you not … said, “Middle Earth.” Or more specifically: Middle3arth.
We even got a cover commissioned to honor our most awesome title.
Over the next few months, we plotted, planned and wrote until we came up with Suzuki and Beth’s story--a three book series to introduce the world and, if successful, kick off the universe.