by K D Brand
Ty snarled at Varus’s callousness. He’d taken advantage of the NPCs ignorance and desperation, and in doing so, he’d damned Ty to a life in-game, never to see his family again.
“You don’t even care, do you?” he asked the wizard.
Varus shrugged. “They’re NPCs, kid. Whatever glitch caused them to believe my bullshit will eventually be washed away in a patch. They’ll go back to be ignorant schlubs, blissfully unaware. You on the other hand, you’ll have to make your peace with it all. None of which are my monkeys or my circus.”
The words echoing in his head, that’s when Ty realized it hadn’t been his arrival that had affected Char and the others, making them become more self-aware, but Varus’s. Ty had only exacerbated it.
Ty growled and jumped up, knocking his seat over. It clattered to the floor with a loud thump. The Orchid went silent, everyone looking on.
“Maybe you don’t care what happens to them, but I do,” he barked.
Varus took another gulp of his ale, froth soaking his mustache. “Then be smart and keep your head down, kid. The bigger the stink you make, the more likely the system AI is to tag you and your friends as errant strands of code. That happens, you and them go poof.”
Stunned, Ty stood there, glaring, trying to digest the words. “What do you mean by poof?”
“Well, for the NPCs, it’s painless. They go back to doing whatever the system wants them to, selling underwear or torches to noobs, whatever they do, no memory of anything that happened before the wipe that isn’t a part of their prescribed backstory. Business as usual for the denizens of Umbra Online,” he explained. “It’s nothing so nice for you.”
“Tell me what happens,” Ty pressed.
“You sure you want to know, kid?”
“Tell me!” he demanded.
“This would be easier if you drank, but whatever,” Varus said with a shrug. “Death isn’t the same for you in-game as it is for PCs. It’s no eject button that sends you home or reboots you. When you die in-game, outside of the no-kill zones, you’ll only wished you died for real.”
Ty reached behind him and righted his seat, dropping heavily into it. “What happens?” His voice was barely a whisper.
Varus took his time, downing another mug before looking like he’d finally deign to answer the questions. He stared at Ty the entire time.
“You end up part of the system, kid, part of the coding itself, stuck in electronic limbo forever. Not exactly dead, but definitely not alive anymore. Eternal damnation to a pseudo-existence,” he said. “It’s not something you want to happen, trust me.”
Ty groaned, trying hard to swallow the knot in his throat. A tingling numbness washed over him, and he struggled to breathe. He’d had his suspicions as to what would happen if he were to die in-game, but having it laid out so clearly made his stomach churn, bile stinging the back of his throat. It was so much worse than he expected.
Finally, after a long while, he felt sturdy enough to stand again, so he did. To his surprise, Varus reached out across the table and grabbed his wrist, showing the first hint of compassion Ty had seen from the man.
“That spell, the one that brought you and me and who knows who else here, it’s an abomination,” he whispered, his voice loud enough that only Ty could hear him. “It’s not meant to exist, and it’s only going to ruin more lives in-game and out. Take the scroll from them and burn it, like I should have done ages ago, before someone comes looking for it.” He released Ty’s wrist and leaned back in his seat, plucking another mug from the table casually. “And if you find a way home, kid, say hello to Earth for me, would ya?” He raised the mug in cheers, done with the conversation.
Ty stumbled away from the table in a haze. He barely felt each footstep as he made his way back to the table where his friends sat. They just stared at him as he pulled up a chair and flopped into it. Only when his breathing steadied, and he let out a long, protracted sigh, did they dare to speak to him.
“Learn anything?” Deven asked, his lack of subtlety like a glass of cold water in Ty’s face.
“Nothing good,” he admitted after a moment’s pause.
Char reached over and set a comforting hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “He couldn’t help you get home?”
Ty shook his head. “He doesn’t know how, not that he cares.”
She sighed. “I-I’m…” Char motioned to Deven, then to herself. “We’re sorry to have done this to you. We didn’t know…” Her voice trailed off.
“Don’t be,” Ty told her. “This isn’t on you, it’s on Gandalf the Inebriated over there. And now, it’s on me.”
“What do you mean?” Deven asked.
“You still have the scroll, right?”
Char nodded. “It’s in the safe at my shop. Why?”
Ty jabbed a thumb the wizard’s direction. “He told me he didn’t create the spell, and that he’s…that he’s like me, that he was summoned here by someone else.”
Both Deven and Char gasped.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to go home for whatever reason. He’s content here,” Ty explained. “He hasn’t even tried to get back, and doesn’t even have a clue if it’s possible or not.”
The barest of hopeful smiles crept across Char’s face. “So, maybe there is a way?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I’m not going to stop trying to find one. I need to go home to my family,” he said, catching a crestfallen glimmer shadowing their faces as he spit out the words, basically telling them that he was abandoning them the first chance he got. “But you’re my new family,” he assured them, backtracking when he realized he’d hurt their feelings. “And I promised I’d do whatever I could to stop Halgor from destroying the city. I meant that.”
Deven let out a quiet sigh of relief, and Char’s face brightened with her grin.
“It’s just not going to be easy, and I’ll need your help.”
“We told you before, anything,” Char confirmed. What do you need from us?”
Ty offered up a grateful smile. “First off, I need you to convince as many people here as possible to meet us at the gates a few hours before noon. We’ll need as many people as we can get, and we’ll need wooden poles and shovels and picks and wagons, lots of wagons. Hammers and a bunch of nails, machetes, or some kind of blades to carve the wood, and… I don’t know what else right now, but I’m sure we’ll need more. I’ll let you know when I think of it.”
“Sounds like a hell of a shopping list,” Char muttered, glancing over at Deven, who just shrugged.
By now, they’d gotten used to Ty’s oddness and simply went along with it.
“And what will you be doing while we do all of that?” Deven asked.
Ty gestured to the window, the vaguest hint of morning creeping up on them, a sparkle of light on the horizon. “First, I need to see a man about some skills, and there are some other folks I’m hoping might join us against the horde. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day choreographing the biggest upset since the Lions beat the Patriots.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Char told him.
Ty grinned. “Doesn’t matter. Just know we’re going to ruin Halgor’s invasion, and make sure everyone you talk to understands that. Make them understand. The more people we have on our side, the better our chances are.”
“You going to tell us what you have planned?” Deven asked.
Ty shook his head. “And ruin the surprise? Nope.” He laughed and hopped to his feet.
As sick as he was at having his dreams of returning home dashed by the drunken wizard, he couldn’t find it in himself to believe anything Varus said as fact. He hadn’t even tried to return to Earth, so how would he know if it was possible. Him being a drunk just like Ty’s father didn’t help his case any.
Right or wrong, Ty would search every inch of the realm until he knew for sure. Until then, he was determined to help his friends.
And, however unwittingly, Varus had helped him solidify how by answ
ering a question Ty hadn’t even thought to ask.
The morning sun rising in the distance, Ty nodded to his friends. “Get who you can to help and scrounge up the tools I asked for as quickly as you can. It’s going to be the longest day of your life today. Halgor and his horde will be here tomorrow night, if my calculations are correct. We need to be ready.”
With that, he waved goodbye and marched out of the Shady Orchid, his head filled with grandiose plans. But first, he had some points to spend.
Nothing like a beating to start the day off right.
Twenty-One
A Tisket, a Tasket, Ty’s Head in a Basket
“THIS IS EVERYONE?” Ty asked, staring out across the barren entryway that stood just inside the gate to Altunn. There were maybe ten people there, counting his three NPC friends.
“That’s rather…underwhelming,” he moaned.
Amusingly enough, Sully, the baker Ty had stolen from, was there, carrying a pick resting on his broad shoulder. Ty thought about going over and apologizing, but he decided it best to wait until after the day was over and the big man was tired and no longer had something to punch a hole in Ty’s skull in his hands.
Eunice was there, too, of course. She hovered near Sully, trying not to be too close nor too far at the same time. Ty chuckled at her obviousness, but no one else seemed to notice the relationship they were trying not to be open about.
There were also a number of NPCs Ty didn’t know, though he recognized them from his trips to the Orchid. He was also glad to see three of the trainers having joined them. Elor the alchemist was there, as were Morit, the rogue trainer, and Tah, who trained the monks in the game. The group milled about, almost in a trance, clearly uncomfortable being out of their normal space in the game zone.
They clearly didn’t understand why they were there, and Ty figured they would struggle no matter how clearly it was explained to them. Still, they were there, holding tools and looking ready to work, which was really all Ty could hope for.
Char and Deven had done their job as well as could be expected given the circumstances, and he was proud of them for getting as many people out to help as they could.
Cord marched through the crowd, snarling at everyone invading his space, subconsciously understanding something different was going down, but he clearly had no clue as to what it was or what he should do about it. So, he defaulted to his normal routine: doing nothing productive and being surly.
How do I get a job like that?
Ty wondered if he could recruit the sentry to their task at one point. Out of everyone in town, he and his fellow soldiers were the only ones whose purpose in-game was to actually fight against the horde.
Mind you, they sucked at their job, but that was a programming limitation. They weren’t there to really help the PCs defeat the horde, but their natural abilities might still come in handy if they could be properly focused.
Ty would have to think of the best way to approach them and get the most out of their skillset.
Speaking of, he’d spent his morning doing exactly that for himself, on top of a couple other errands. He’d paced outside the various trainer huts for about thirty minutes, debating a last-minute hesitation regarding his plan.
He’d already decided he wouldn’t be a warrior in the game, but he’d still had reservations as to going all-in on his thief or wizardly route. In the end, though, that’s exactly what he did.
Perhaps in even more of an extreme way than he’d originally intended.
But there was no going back on the decision now. It was done, and he’d have to live with it.
Or die with it…but he preferred to be an optimist today.
Now, he only needed to think of a name for his hybrid class.
Wief, thizard, or maybe thorlock? Wiz-Khalthiefa?
Nah, he groaned in his head. I’m going to have to come back to that.
“So, we just going to stand around all day, or did you actually have a reason for bringing us all here?” Sully grunted, interrupting his thoughts. “My muffins are going stale.”
Ty bit back a chuckle, not wanting to discuss Sully’s muffins for several obvious reasons.
“No, no, we’re definitely here for a reason,” he assured. “First, though, we need to meet up outside the walls.”
“Outside?” Eunice squeaked. “But the horde’s there.”
Ty nodded. “That’s exactly why we need to do this,” he told her. “But there’s nothing to worry about.” He glanced about and spotted Madam Elem going about her daily chores, headed toward the gate. “There!” he said. “You see little miss Elem, there?”
The gathering nodded, grumbling all the while.
“Well, she goes outside the gate every single day, and nothing ever happens to her.” They watched as she did just that, shuffling out of sight through the gate. “If that old peach can do it, so can you.”
The grumbling continued, but it had died down a bit.
“You’re not going to be afraid of something a little old grandmother isn’t afraid of, are you?”
Ty hesitated outright calling them chickens to get them motivated, but he could tell by the looks on their faces that he wouldn’t have to break that particular gem out just yet. Maybe tomorrow.
“Just follow her out, and I’ll meet you there in a moment,” Ty told everyone. “Cord won’t bother you, I promise.” He motioned to Amon. “Lead them outside, would you? We’ll meet you there in a minute.”
He stiffened. “Wait! What about Cord? Isn’t he why we snuck over the wall the last time?”
Ty nodded. “It’s mainly because I’m an idiot,” he admitted. “Cord wouldn’t let me out back then, and I just dragged you along without thinking about it. But really, given that you guys are…uh, that you live here, he doesn’t care what you do, just like he doesn’t with Madam Elem. His job is to stop the adventurers until they reach level 5.”
Char turned and examined Ty. “But didn’t you go and train this morning? Shouldn’t you be able to just walk out now, too? You’re level 7 now, right?”
“Yup, but then Cord wouldn’t let me back in if I did,” he explained. “I’ll need to take a different route so I can slip back into town or I’ll be stuck outside.” He grinned and held up a rope ladder he’d procured that morning.
“Oh, now you take my advice,” Deven grunted, shaking his head.
Ty shook his head and ignored the butcher’s jibe, shooing Amon off.
“If I get stabbed…” he grumbled as he started off, waving to the rest of the townsfolk to follow him. The NPCs piled onto the wagons carrying all the supplies, urging the horse forward. They started off at a slow trot.
Ty watched for a moment to make sure he was right, and that Cord would just let them pass with impunity. When he did, Ty winked at Char and Deven, and said, “Come on.”
He went to the guard shack and arranged the boxes again, them clambered up them with the NPCs in tow. Once on the wall, he pulled out a hammer and spikes and mounted one end of the rope ladder to the stone, then tossed it over the side. It unfurled as it fell, and Ty motioned for his friends to head on down. He followed after, then walked with them to join the gathering of NPCs.
They all stood around, stiff-backed, heads on a swivel, listening to the distant sounds of Halgor’s minions.
Ty cut between them and the horde and waved to get their attention. “Okay, folks, eyes on me.”
He went over and grabbed a shovel. Much as he wasn’t looking forward to this part of the plan, it was essential to their success. So, he marched out to the edge of the killing field—aptly named, he hated to admit—and called everyone to attention.
“I need a group of you here with shovels,” he explained. “We’re going to dig a number of long, shallow trenches across the field in front of the horde.”
“You think ditches are going to keep Halgor and his minions from our doors?” Sully asked, his voice gruffer than usual as he bit back a chuckle. “You’re more the fool than I suspe
cted.”
“It’s not so much the ditches as what I plan to fill them with,” Ty answered, letting the grumpy baker get away with his jibe. I did steal a muffin from him. “That’s the second part of today’s tasks.” He turned to Char. “I need you and another group of folks to cut those long poles we brought in half, then carve one end into a point.”
Unaware of even the most basic of combat tactics, never having been exposed to them in-game, Ty struggled to explain exactly what he needed, but he finally managed to get them doing what he needed them to.
When the carvers were working, he went over and set the example with the trench digging. He put spade to earth and went to work. To his surprise, the ground gave way easily, and he was able to dig down three feet within a short time, no real resistance to the game terrain.
This just might work, he thought, settling in to the task.
By late afternoon, his optimism had been cast aside just like the dirt he’d been shoveling for the last eight hours. He clambered slowly from the hole he was in and stretched, groaning.
“That’s enough for now,” he called out, tossing his shovel aside. The rest of the NPCs did the same, moaning and complaining as they took a break, but Ty was glad to see they had performed admirably.
He surveyed the field and was amazed to see that they had excavated nearly the entire thing in alternating trenches, which looked like Morse Code dashes marked across dusty paper.
Those closest to the horde had already been filled in with short, sharp spikes, facing toward the tree line. Dirt had been backfilled and packed at their bases to keep the spikes in place.
Char and her team were placing more of the spikes when Ty had called a halt to the operation. She came over, wiping sweat from her brow.