by Ramy Vance
Diana hung her head and shook it. She looked worried. “You and me both,” she muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been at this magic game for a bit,” Diana said. “Never have I seen such rapid development of magical power. I don’t know what’s going on with her, and I don’t know if we should keep pushing her.”
“That’s her choice and not ours.”
“I don’t know, after what she said last night about power and knowledge…just keep an eye on her, all right?”
“She’s a Mundane. Her life is my life.”
José smiled and nodded as he put his hand on Suzuki’s shoulder. “Well said, kid. Well said. So, what are we still doing standing around with our dicks and clits in our hands? Let’s get moving.”
The Horsemen all rose, Diana and Chip making their way to the Marines who were starting to congregate together. José and Suzuki returned to the rest of the Mundanes, who were in full roast mode. Sandy and Beth were flinging quips at each other faster than Suzuki could keep up with. He sighed and shook his head. This had the potential to be a very long trip. He had forgotten what the Mundanes were like when they were all together: a band of warriors who were known in VR not just for their skills, but for an excessive amount of shit talk. This was going to be just like the old days when they used to pour hours and hours into raids.
Suzuki gave Sandy, Beth, and Stew the rundown of the game plan. None of them had any objections, so they agreed to go forward with it. After breaking down the camp, they prepared to go topside. Earlier in the night, Chip had scouted back through enemy territory to retrieve the axbeaks they had had to leave behind when they went underground. She assured the Mundanes that they would be waiting topside, tied to a tree a little east of where they would exit.
The Mundanes packed up and headed topside. Suzuki was excited. It had been days since he had had a breath of fresh air. He had gotten used to existing in a constant state of claustrophobia. He couldn’t imagine how the grimpons had evolved to survive underground. The thought of never seeing the sun was enough to depress Suzuki. He didn’t want to think about what it actually would be like.
They exited the tunnel and found themselves in a lush garden. It looked far too beautiful to be part of the defense rings of the Dark One. The only things Suzuki had seen the Dark One cultivating had been dead looking stone or sterile technology. This lively garden looked like it belonged in a painting of the Shire. Perhaps this was an area of the defense rings that the Dark One hadn’t had time to destroy, an oasis that managed to avoid his deadly grasp—or maybe the Dark One didn’t feel the need to destroy everything. He was, in fact trying to enslave whole races, not destroy them. Maybe there was some part of him that valued life.
Near the exit, they found the axbeaks that Chip had herded for them. Once mounted the Mundanes and José made their way through the deceptively-alluring garden. The more time that Suzuki spent moving through the garden, the more he found its initial appeal to have been built upon deception. There was something rotten in the garden. It was hard to place his finger on it, but it started with the scents. Although the garden was filled with blooming flowers, there were no sweet or floral aromas. If anything, the closest you could say that the garden had to a scent was a hint of decomposing flesh. When the Mundanes stopped to water their axbeaks at a river, Suzuki knelt and touched the grass. He found that it was sharp enough to cut his skin with hardly a touch. He looked at the axbeaks’ feet. Luckily, their birdlike talons appeared to have been made for this kind of terrain. Suzuki was horrified to think what would have happened to a horse’s hooves, let alone his own feet.
While the axbeaks drank, José wandered around, looking at the different plants that made up the garden. He drew his sword and pointed it at a plant that was nearly his own size. The plant resembled a type of pot. It had a bulbous bottom that stretched up and tapered off like a pitcher. A large leaf hanging over an opening in its midsection secreted a horrid stench.
José prodded the plant with his sword. The plant’s leaf suddenly flapped open and the plant leaned forward, a row of sharp fangs gnashing at José as its pitcher mouth snapped open and shut. José jumped back and laughed. “Guess that’s why these are in the defense ring.” José chuckled. “It’s probably bait for steeds. I don’t see a human falling into something like that, but a wandering horse, looking for something to nibble on? These things have probably taken their fair share of lives.”
Suzuki led his axbeak away from the water, which he now considered suspiciously. If the plants were vicious, who was to say that the water wasn’t poisonous? José saw Suzuki’s worried face and laughed again. “You don’t need to worry about the axbeaks,” José said. “They’re tough. That’s one of the reasons they’re reserved for only the elite of the MERCs. These things can eat and drink anything. Their skin’s immune to most blades unless they’re magically enchanted. You could feed those things cyanide biscuits and they’d just shit it out. It would probably make a handy grenade.”
Beth walked by as she grabbed her axbeak and mounted it. She made a face of pure disgust. “You would throw axbeak shit at someone?” she asked. “What the fuck, dude. That’s some straight-up primate shit.”
José mounted his axbeak, along with the rest of the Mundanes. “I’m not above slinging my own shit if it’ll keep me alive,” José said. “The dead don’t talk shit last time I checked.”
Sandy looked up, her eyes were hollow as if she were looking beyond her compatriots beside her in the garden. “No…” she murmured, almost trancelike. “The dead do indeed talk shit.” Her eyes cleared. She looked around like she was lost for a moment, before shaking her head as if she were trying to clear a fog. “Huh…that was weird.”
Stew rode up to Sandy, slapping his axbeak in the back of its head as it tried to rear up and toss him off. “Babe, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Totally fine.”
As they continued forward, Suzuki noticed that the head of the orc necromancer that he and Sandy had killed earlier in their journey still hung from the side of Sandy’s axbeak. Its eyes were wide open, staring ahead as if it could see into a world that Suzuki was yet to be made aware of. All and all, it was a little disconcerting. “Hey, Sandy, what’s up with that head?” Suzuki asked.
Sandy looked down at the orc necromancer’s blank head, staring off into the distance. “Oh, that? I don’t know, I think it looks better out and about than collecting dust in my inventory. You, know, a little bit of that old pagan fear mongering.”
Suzuki tried to avoid the gaze of the dead orc’s head. He felt like its eyes were watching him, but that was the least of his concerns at the moment as they continued forward, following José’s directions.
Chip had left him a detailed map of the next two rings of defense on which she had thoroughly mapped out each junction, enemy camp, and body of water. The plan was to move through this floral ring and through a swamp to pass through the final ring of defense unnoticed. There they would find the Dark One’s main tower in the defense ring fortress. If the swampland was anything like the garden, getting to the final ring was going to be a piece of cake.
They made their way through the garden and watched as it slowly became more decrepit and fouler. The healthy greenery came undone before their eyes as the axbeaks’ talons tore at the grass beneath their feet. Trees drooped, their fruit and leaves hanging like the appendages of an elderly man, crippled by age. Many of the fruits were still rotting on their branches. The grass was dulled and browned as if it had been scorched by an angry sun. The earth itself started to break, giant cracks spreading throughout the ground, the torn earth looking as if it had been stricken with a great hammer by some violent, vicious god of old. The air grew sourer.
Beth and Suzuki were riding beside each other. They did not speak much, Beth occasionally mentioning or taking note of the terrain around them. Her conversation tended to stick within the realms of their mission. She sometimes asked questions or pointed o
ut potential situations that they could encounter. It was very different from Sandy and Stew, who couldn’t have been any less concerned with talking about work at the moment. They were both horsing around, trying to outpace each other in a snail’s race behind Suzuki and Beth. From what Suzuki could tell from the snatches of conversation he could catch, they were trying to see who could ride the slowest without their axbeaks losing balance.
“Are they always like this?”
Suzuki snapped out of his thoughts when he heard Beth talking to him. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Are they always like this?”
“Like what?”
Beth pursed her lips. “They don’t seem worried about anything. It’s like they’re having fun.”
“They are having fun.”
“Hmm. Being out here with you guys is different. It’s not like back in the military. No one talked out on our patrols. The commander would have been chewing them out for giving away our position. Things with the MERCs seem…a lot more relaxed.”
Suzuki nodded. “Yeah, I would figure. We don’t really have commanders, not even party leaders.”
“You seem like you’re leading the party.”
“Maybe, but it’s not a formal thing. I guess it’s kind of like back when we used to play together. I wasn’t really the leader, just the guy who came up with most of the plans. It’s not like anyone has to listen to me or anything. Same with the Horsemen. Mostly, I’ve seen José coming up with plans and tactics and shit. But sometimes it’s Diana, and Chip usually has something to throw in, here or there.”
“It feels almost like I’m gaming with you guys…”
“Were there a lot of gamers in the military?” Suzuki asked.
“Honestly, a shit ton, mostly those pro-kids and shit. I guess that would be the big difference, that and you MERCs are out for the loot, right?”
“Well, that’s their whole marketing thing, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. Honestly, our loot was shit until we found out about you. We were only trying to find better equipment so we didn’t end up dead out here.”
“What about the whole killing the Dark One thing you were going on about?”
Suzuki shrugged. “That’s part of the gig too. I guess we’re just having a better time doing it. Not having someone barking orders at us kind of helps. The most we have is an annoying-ass dwarf who thinks that we’re his proteges or some shit like that.”
“Seems nice.” Beth sighed.
Sandy’s axbeak suddenly surged forward, nearly bucking her off of its back as it tried to push its way to the front of the queue, running directly into Beth. Both Sandy and Beth were thrown off their axbeaks. They rolled across the brown grass until they stopped in front of a giant plant that looked like a mix between a Venus flytrap and a rose bush.
The plant growled hungrily at the two women as they slowly stood. “We shouldn’t make any fast moves,” Beth suggested.
“Yeah… nothing too fast,” Sandy agreed.
That didn’t stop the plant. Thorned tendrils shot out of the plant’s roots and wrapped around Sandy’s feet, flipping her into the air as it opened its mouth, greedily waiting for its meal.
Beth drew her sword, shouting, “Sandy!”
The worry was pointless, though. Sandy spun in the air and conjured her staff into her hand. She threw it down sideways so the plant snapped its flimsy jaws on the staff and was unable to break it, its mouth stuck open. Sandy then conjured her wand, landed on her feet, and set the plant on fire, her staff shooting jets of fire from inside the plant, her wand shooting a thin bolt of lightning. The plant was reduced to ashes within seconds. “Goddamn it, Stew,” Sandy shouted, “I said no fucking tickling. That’s cheating.”
The rest of the Mundanes and José hadn’t bothered to stop riding. Stew looked over his shoulder, that boyish shit-eating grin resting smugly on his face. “Dude, I totally saw you trying to enchant my kilt,” he called back. “I just got you better than you got me.”
Sandy laughed and jumped back on her axbeak, punching it in the back of the head so the creature wouldn’t attempt any further revolts. She almost rode off, but stopped and cast a glance back at Beth. “Hey, you coming along?” she asked.
Beth mounted her axbeak and followed after Sandy. “Were they about to leave you?” she asked.
Sandy shook her head. “Them? No. I mean, no one is going to stop over something that I can easily take care of, but I know they’re watching out for me. We just trust each other, that’s all.”
“Looks like a lot of trust.”
“I trust Stew and Suzy with my life.” Sandy’s eyes sparkled as she spoke.
“It must be nice.”
“What do you mean?”
Beth looked away. “Nothing, forget about it.”
Sandy and Beth caught up with the rest of the party and they snaked their way through the garden as it deteriorated into a swampland. This was nothing like the swamp that the Red Lion was built upon.
The Red Lion’s swamp was lush, dark but still inviting. Trees hung overhead, covered in Spanish moss; pathways were built to keep you above the mucky waters mixed with treacherous mud. It smelled of life, of trees and vines, of greenery bursting with the desire to continue its own existence. There was something deep within that could not be explained, the very joy of life that the splitting cell has, that smell mixing with the fresh food cooking for returning MERCs.
This swamp was nearly the opposite. There was nearly no scent, the little bit that there was could only be called the smell of death. It wasn’t the smell of decomposition nor the iron scent of blood that set your nose on fire. No, this was something else. It was almost the absence of scent. That was what Suzuki thought death must smell like.
José pulled his axbeak closer to Sandy. “I have a bad feeling about this place,” José whispered. “How’s that invisibility spell that Diana’s been working with you on?”
Sandy wouldn’t meet José’s eyes, obviously embarrassed. “Eh…” she murmured. “I mean, I can cast it on myself, but I can’t quite get other people right. They tend to turn blue.”
Stew, who was riding at Sandy’s side, nodded and grunted in agreement.
José waved away Sandy’s worries. “Don’t worry about it,” he said before turning to Suzuki. “And what’s your scent set to right now?” he asked.
Suzuki brought up his HUD. Unless there was a reason for it, he rarely checked what his scent SD card was set to. He didn’t usually need to worry about it. His scent was always set as something other than “English Blood” so that he wouldn’t attract any giants. At the moment, his scent was set to 120-year-old aged whiskey. He told José, causing Beth to laugh so hard that she had to cover her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles. “What’s so funny?” Suzuki asked.
Beth put on a straight face, still trying to keep the giggles from bubbling over. “I was wondering why you smelled so good,” she explained. “I thought it was a cologne but, I was like, where the fuck would Suzy be getting cologne from?”
Stew cleared his throat loudly. “Uh, could you guys keep all the PDA shit to yourself.” He scoffed. “That’s kind of a closed-door conversation.”
Suzuki stared at Stew, his jaw nearly completely detaching from his skull. “Are you fucking serious, Stew?”
José cut in, putting the question on the back burner. “You should change it to something less conspicuous,” José suggested. “Maybe something more in line with the natural scents of the swamp.”
Suzuki flipped through his HUD, imagining what the best scent for this muggy swamp would be. Usually, he would have swayed toward something natural. But he had a feeling about this swamp, one that he believed echoed whatever José was picking up on.
Suzuki chose “Decomposing Flesh.”
At Suzuki’s side, Sandy waved her wand and cast her invisibility spell. Suzuki saw her slowly wave out of sight as if her body was nothing but a few ripples in the light spectrum. She turned wavy like
a hallucination and then was gone. Suzuki thought it was a pretty cool trick, something that could come in handy when they were overwhelmed. If Sandy had the spell down well enough, she could easily double as a rogue.
That was something you didn’t see often.
A mage-rogue.
That would give the Mundanes an insane edge.
While Suzuki was thinking, he raised his hand to scratch his nose. He stopped midway, his hand hanging in midair. Or, at least, he assumed his hand. His palm was nowhere to be seen. And the rest of him was slowly disappearing as well. He looked down as his entire body slowly vanished. Then there was a loud pop and he could see himself again. “Uh, what the hell just happened?” Suzuki asked.
José laughed as he disappeared and then reappeared with a pop. “Everyone has their talents. Mine usually goes unnoticed. I have a very strong, passive, rally buff going at all times. Unless it’s being used like this, most people don’t even pick up on it. But any spells or buffs that are cast in my vicinity are amplified to the whole party.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, that explains so much!” Suzuki marveled. “That’s how you were able to get all of those soldiers out. All you needed to do was find a few mages and you could—”
“Cover an entire army with this badass power. It’s a Horsemen secret, though. Try not to let it get out, newbs.”
“Dude, not a fucking problem. Your secret is safe with us.”
“All right. Now let’s check out this swamp. But first…”
José leaned over and placed a small stone on the ground. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the stone. Then he tapped his HUD and a glowing beacon popped up beside the rock. He walked away without explaining anything. Suzuki figured that he’d find out when and if it was important. José didn’t usually like to waste time with words or explanations. Hell, he’d only just told the Mundanes that he’d been passively enhancing their skills since they first left. Whatever the stone was for, Suzuki felt like he’d find out eventually.