by Dawn Chapman
This poor man had killed his family. He’d provided them with the poison to end their lives and that of their children. It was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen. I looked at the children around the desk. They were so young. One obviously was my age — I was wearing her gear. I choked up. This wasn’t what I wanted to be wearing right now. I hated myself for taking it. I hated everything about Puatera.
I deleted everything about his decision-making from the screen and, grabbing a piece of paper, wrote out the most important part of the information. The fact that there was no food for these dragons, these horrific creatures, and they were damned hungry.
I wrote it out and placed it on the edge of the desk, then I started to type and root around the computer system.
That’s when the screen froze. Numbers and lettering whizzed about... like some weird computer virus.
I watched it for a moment and then it simply flashed up, one word at a time.
Play
the
game,
Dahlia.
How the fuck could it know my name? I stepped backwards.
Play
the
game,
Dahlia.
It repeated the message, flashing over the whole screen.
Then my interface pinged, and pinged again.
I backed out of the room, almost tripping over one of the bodies. The ping in my interface turned to something else, a voice. “Dahlia, listen to me. Ignore the glitch. It’s playing on your fears. Leave the estate. Head to Hell’s Pass.”
Hell’s Pass?
But there was nothing else, just that clue. What would I find at Hell’s Pass? I checked the time on the clock. Forty minutes had passed. I ran from that room and the smell and the weirdness of it all. The stairs were slippery with these boots on, but I managed not to land on my ass like I had so many times in this game already.
I rushed to the back rooms, through the kitchens, and found Jarvin and Taegen chatting by the doors.
“Nice clothes,” Jarvin said.
I shrugged, wiping strands of hair from my face. “I borrowed them.”
Taegen raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you find anything?”
I kinda hadn’t. I’d not been able to do anything. Just freak myself out. It seemed the glitch wasn’t just a glitch anymore, but that there was someone else trying to help out. Freakiest damned game I’ve even been part of.
“Hell’s Pass,” I said. “I’m going to Hell’s Pass.”
Chapter 9
“Hell’s Pass is a good trek from here,” Taegen said. “With no transport, we’re going to really struggle in the desert.”
“The desert?”
“Maicreol is a large and vast land. There’s a lot you don’t know about it. There’s an oasis around most of the outer sides. The flooded lands populate and grow trees, but the centre is mostly harsh hot desert, rocky terrain and impassable stretches of land. If you were caught off guard, it would be a quick death. If not, there’s pirates, wild animals and, of course, the Tromoal.”
“I can’t stop this journey now,” I said. “I’ve got to find my sisters.”
“You think they’re at Hell’s Pass?”
“I don’t know, but it’s the next logical place from here, surely?”
Taegen looked back to the forest. “I need to go back to the forest. I have a duty to perform, something to look after and protect.”
I saw the conflict in his eyes and knew why he wasn’t supposed to leave, and why he’d had to help me. Clax, I said inside my mind, if you’re here, watching, please show yourself. It took mere seconds for the bird to appear and flutter towards us. “If Clax says you can come with me, will you?” I asked Taegen.
“Clax? Who’s Clax?”
The bird’s feathers melted and fur sprouted out, just as it had before, and then he was himself, purring and rubbing my legs.
Taegen’s shocked expression was a picture. “He’s my dad’s familiar. His name is Klavictios. What the hell are you doing calling on him?”
Clax looked up at him. “I was asked to watch over you. I’ve been doing that since you were sentenced.”
Taegen laughed. “I should have known he wouldn’t trust me to do the simplest of tasks. Let alone watch the lands for the forest creatures.”
“You were supposed to work with Folmar.” His eyes narrowed and Clax grew in height, weight and demeanour. His ears flashed back against his head, his teeth bared.
Taegen glanced at me. “I fell out with him. We had an argument over a woman.” He looked at the ground, saddened, and I tried to not feel sorry for him.
“Was Folmar a friend?” I asked.
He nodded. “We’ve been rangers for a long time, went through a lot of training together. He was a close friend, one of the team.”
I swallowed, feeling my eyes well up. I’d left him for dead. The guilt inside me was so very real.
This game… the consequences. Ugh, I felt awful. “I’m sorry, but if any of all this is related — my sisters, this issue…” I waved my hands around at Hanson’s estate. “Then we need to follow it through. Clax, I need people I can trust, and I trust these two. If you can let his father know the reasons why we’re leaving, why the Tromoal are attacking the estate, then maybe we can do something good and try and help.”
We moved the conversation outside. More people were leaving. Some were heading straight for the back door of the mansion. “I think we’d better get out of here,” I said, motioning to the road. “We might not have transport, but there’s more about to be going on here than we need to get ourselves involved in.”
Arguments were breaking out at the front gates. Jarvin didn’t so much point, but he flicked his head in the opposite direction. “There’s a delivery gate in the back; we might be better off trying to slip out that way, take some of the heat from the front.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“My life’s taken many turns, but it’s also been part of some good experiences. I did a few months here with the cooks. Someone found me trying to sneak food off a market stall...”
I laughed. I didn’t want to, but I did. His was a classic poor-boy-stealing trope, and I loved him for it.
“What?” I asked when the two of them did nothing but stare at me.
“Not really funny, starving to death,” he said.
I forced a frown and apologized. “Please, go on.”
“Well they let me in, fed me up, and by the time I moved on, I’d learned a lot and earned their respect.”
I kind of felt like I’d been slapped in the face, and I guessed rightly so. I didn’t know much about either of these two guys, and I’d pushed them a lot since our first meeting.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant any offence.”
Jarvin tried to smile. “It’s okay. This has been one of the worst days of my life.”
“I can attest to that,” I said, and started to trudge up the pathway. The clouds began to melt and a light rain spread out. I was glad of the brief watering. The clothes I wore were much more comfortable, but knowing they belonged to a young girl who was now dead was a real sore point. I couldn’t tell the other two what they’d done. I was struggling to process the fact that they’d all preferred to die rather than fight. Was it that shameful in this world to not do your job? I looked at Taegen and Jarvin. They were NPCs. Nothing more.
Incorrect…
A message scrolled across my view.
What? I tried to swipe it away.
They are not just NPCs. They are Companion characters. Totally different.
Who is this?
My name is Tibex. I am Puatera’s guardian.
The AI?
I do believe you call me that, yes.
What do you want?
To help Puatera.
Why talk to me?
Because you and your sisters can help me, help Puatera.
EVENT STARTED – CONTROL FOR MAICREOL
I’d seen this
before, but now it felt different, and I saw the squiggly line cross it out before a new line appeared
QUEST – FIND YOUR SISTERS. UNITE WITH AKILLIA AND MADDIE IN THE WAR FOR MAICREOL.
REWARDS – 10 KARMA POINTS
BONUS – RETURN HOME
Y/N
This was serious? I’d only be allowed home if I completed this quest? How fucked up was that? Who were these other people?
You’re holding us hostage? I spat at him in my mind.
No, the glitch is holding you hostage. I’m the one trying to figure out a way to get you all together and home, as is Maddie.
I stopped walking and shouted into the air. “Who the fuck is Maddie?”
Taegen and Jarvin turned back, but the scrolling message had vanished.
Taegen stepped towards me, holding out some water. “Maddie the Runner?”
I sipped the water from the skin and passed it back. “I’ve no idea what a runner is. I was given the name by some divine intervention.”
“Someone gave you that name?”
“Yeah, someone in my head.”
“Psychic or linked to the messaging system? Did they have a code?”
“No, no code.”
“Oh, strange.”
I just nodded. “So, who is Maddie?”
Chapter 10
We had to go to Hell’s Pass, right? The AI that was in here had told me that, but as we left Hanson’s Estate, something didn’t sit right. Something felt off.
I stopped walking in the middle of the road and looked back, not at the estate, but to the forest.
“Taegen,” I said. “Who else is in the forest? What other creatures are we going to lose because of that portal?”
Taegen let out a sigh. “In all honesty, there’s a ton of animals, creatures, and people who live there. If they don’t know what’s going on, they’re going to be as unsuspecting as Folmar was.”
“We need to leave going to Hell’s Pass,” I said, and stomped off in the direction of the forest.
“What? You can’t do that. Your sisters…”
“My sisters are everything to me, but I’ve seen something else here today and I don’t think even they could stop themselves from doing something. These people in here mean something, and I can’t walk away knowing they are in danger when I might be able to do something about it.”
“What do you think you can do?”
I shrugged, focussing on my little world, my voice. Pounding feet sounded ahead of us, then bolting through the bush came not just one ebolos, but several.
“Where did these guys come from?” Jarvin moved to take the reins from one of them, settling its nervous bouncing about with sharp coos and whistles.
I’d had an idea that not all of them had been gorged on by the Tromoal, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be on the menu if they came back. “There are many more creatures here,” I said to Taegen. “They’re all in hiding, pretty much like Clax is.”
Clax fluttered to the ground. “You’re going back?”
I nodded. “I think we’re going to need some help. Do you think you can get word to Taegen’s father and family and get them to meet us at the edge of the forest?”
“He’s already amassing a small army to fight the Tromoal.” Clax looked up at Taegen. “You’re going to be in trouble again, you know?”
“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” Taegen lowered his head. “I’ll take the consequences as they come. There are many things I should have done, and that I should have stayed for and completed. My task was easy — to protect the forest — but I also should have protected the people there. Not doing so is my fault.”
“I don’t think the glitch was your fault,” I said. “I think Folmar was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Something’d happened to him before we met. Like he’d already been in the grey stuff and managed to escape. Yet he was still caught, as if by some magic.”
“If we skirt around Kodur and the west side we can get to my family before they enter the forest and coordinate with my father’s army. We might have a chance of seeing what is really going on.”
“This isn’t part of the Quest Event, though, is it?”
He shrugged and ran a finger through his hair. He could do with a bath. Heck, I knew I could. The clean clothes were great, but I would have loved to get into a hot spring or something. Preferably without the boys around, though. I laughed to myself. I was thinking just like a girl, whereas they would probably never even bat an eyelid at bathing in front of anyone. That would be just how games worked out. You played that much, you got to see much more, so why would you care more about your dignity when your life was at stake?
Probably not going to happen, anyway. I doubted there were any hot baths around. Or anywhere to get a decent night’s sleep. I might have been able to look at my health bar and see no splotch, but there were other things that made you feel good in a fantasy world. Clothes, and looking after yourself, not peeing in the bushes and showering once a month.
“Is there some kind of spell to stop yourself from stinking?” When they pulled a face I laughed at them, then they also laughed.
Taegen eventually added with a straight face, “Yeah, if you’re a top-level mage with all the goodies, I’ve no doubt you could stop all that — be out in the middle of nowhere, with no water, and still smell like an angel. But out here, most of us have to deal with many other things, and magic like that is not easy to come by.”
The game did have that feature, though. I wondered if I could learn that skill. It would be very nice to have, very nice indeed.
I wanted to find Jessica and Lila, and meet this Maddie, but my heart had seen that young elf lying in the mud with next to no life left in him and I wanted to help the people, and the forest creatures.
QUEST — UNITE WITH PORT ELIXTON AND FIGHT ALONGSIDE TAEGEN’S FATHER AGAINST THE HORDE.
REWARDS — UNKNOWN
Against the horde? That was new. Most alien SciFi and their wars were against something. One of the largest tropes in the gaming world was that the enemy was so vast that they were a horde — goblins, orcs — but these creatures were much more than that. They were evil-looking, and seemingly deadly without even knowing it. Were they actually here to fight, or to just take the lands, doing more damage by taking all life and energy from the area. To essentially rip the world apart, as the glitch kept saying, and the numbers kept on rising.
Yeah, whatever they were, they had to be destroyed.
Clax flew off in the direction we pointed. He knew where Taegen’s family was, and he probably knew much more than what he was telling us. I thought back to our conversation about him watching over the Taegen. When I looked deep into Taegen’s eyes, I saw many things, the most important being a struggle to actually be someone, and to atone for his debts. His own personal losses had been many for his actions, and now he needed to be ready to help and do something to claim that back.
Taegen helped me onto the back of one of the ebolos. “We can each have our own.” He smiled. “You’ll find it fun to ride one properly.”
As my legs splayed to either side of the creature, it grunted. Either it just didn’t like me, or it was still nervous. I patted its neck, and it craned his head a little to see me. “I’m not nervous. I want what’s best for my family.” I heard him in my head. “I’m just not sure going with you is what’s best.”
I guessed that, like most of the creatures I’d had the pleasure of summoning, the ebolos could communicate with their masters. It was interesting, to say the least. I wanted to hear more, but he didn’t seem to want to carry on.
When I nudged him out and into the intercrossing pathways of the surrounding area, he settled into a steady pace. I enjoyed being on top, with no cushioning either side. This was good. The time travelled would be much shorter on the ebolos’ back, and I wanted to enjoy it. I let my hair down and ran my fingers through it so it wouldn’t knot up again, then I remembered the comb and pulled it out.
Jarvin gasped. “You took that?”
I had, and I meant to look after it.
“What… what is it?”
“An enhancement to your summoning, by the looks of it. There’s dark magic inside it, though.”
“What kind of dark magic?”
“The kind that can work with you or against you.”
I turned it over in my hand, admiring the engravings once more.
“I like it,” I said.
“That could be another reason why you managed to call the ebolos. They’re not dark creatures, but they would demand a higher rep than what you’re showing us.”
“That’s brilliant. I really like them.” I patted mine again on the neck and leaned over to ruffle his strange mane. I wanted to do more to make him feel safe. His family was cantering alongside us, and they needed to be here. I couldn’t leave them with anyone else. No matter if I thought they would be safe, I knew they wouldn’t be without a battalion of armed guards. Those Tromoal were hungry, and they were serious killers.
Taegen sat atop his ebolos and moved alongside me. “There are some things you need to know about my family before we get there.”
I saw the profound sadness in his eyes, regret and deep pain. “Sometimes honesty with strangers is a good thing.”
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” he said.
I placed a hand on his arm, his skin warm to the touch. “I know, and that’s one of the reasons why Jarvin and I stuck around. We’ve already learned so much from you.” I glanced at Jarvin, who nodded.
“Thank you. I didn’t know if I could find friends after all the trouble.”