by J P Carver
The system had long since deserted those that it was meant to serve, and the system’s new masters were not looking out for what was best for the population they ruled over. That idea had always been in the back of my mind, but walking though that crowd of crying and angry people stirred it to the front. But what could be done about it?
As I was thrown out onto the sidewalk, I stared up at the washed-out night sky and found that I had no answer. A relieved sigh shuddered through me as I started down the sidewalk, slipping between people who might as well have been poles, for all that they mattered to me.
I’d gotten out by the skin of my teeth, and not cleanly. At least two CES peeps still had me on their radar, which was not where I wanted to be, but I’d have to deal with it.
I stopped at a red Don’t Walk sign and looked at the crowd around me. Even in the middle of the night, people still couldn’t stand to be in their homes. I booted my neural and smiled as it came online. The sight of it flickering on across my eyes was the first feeling of normalcy I’d had in what felt like a long time.
“You a ghost in the machine?” a voice asked.
I darted my gaze up to see Ziller in the comm box. “Boo.”
He smiled and leaned toward the camera. “I’ll take that as a no. All square now? I hope so, since cashing in a favor with a high-ranking CES officer is gonna cost you, big time.”
“You can put it on my tab. We’re good, mostly.”
“Nothing is ever definitive with you, is it?”
“Ain’t nothing black and white about this, Ziller. I’m out, but I doubt I’m free. It’s enough. You tracking Crow?”
He nodded as I started across the street with the crowd. “Yeah, she’s at a coffee shop about two blocks from you. Kid is pissed, so I’d step carefully.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll handle her. Thanks, Ziller. I mean it. Without you, I’d be another veggie in a CES cell.”
“Eh, I make more off you when you’re alive, so it was worth it.”
“Gee, glad to know you care,” I said with a laugh, which earned me a few stares from those around me.
“Just business, girl.” He grinned. “But I’m damn glad to have my Ragdoll back.”
“I bet you are. Night, Ziller.” I closed the channel.
I could see the coffee shop, light shining golden across the slick sidewalk. I picked Nina out of the dozen or so patrons. She sat at a table one row in from the two large windows, her head coming up from her cup to search outside every few seconds.
I broke away from the crowd, crossed the street and went to see if I could get my friend and protégé back on my side. I stepped into the coffee shop, a little bell at the top of the door announcing me.
Nina looked up, a look of worry turning to anger and then to relief. She stood up so fast that her chair tipped over, and she ran at me, pushing me back into the doorjamb from the force of her hug. “Raggy!”
I hugged her back as tightly as I could and mumbled sorries against her hair. The others in the shop were probably staring, but I didn’t care. For a time, I hadn’t expected I would ever see Nina again, and I wasn’t going to let her go so soon.
It was a few minutes later that we sat down at a table, ordered new drinks, and fell into a bunch of chitchat.
One
Autumn Sin
There was something to be said for not having friends. Without friends to meet up with, I wouldn't have to wait around for people when they were late. And my friends were late, as usual. Normally, I wouldn't get bent out of shape over something so simple, but the place where we decided to meet had a creepy vibe. The landscape looked dead, the grass was as brown as a paper bag, and fall leaves dropped continuously. The trees themselves had little ovals of darkness between their trunks, and the sun was setting behind a patch of sharp pine trees. If a werewolf had howled, it would have been perfect horror-movie material. I liked the vibe but not when I was alone.
I took a deep breath, the smell of wet decay almost overwhelming me, and shrugged my shoulders. My feet started to hurt, and every muscle felt stiff. The clock on my neural showed a little past one in the morning. If they waited any longer, the raid would be over.
Birds chirped off to my right then faded away to the hoots of owls and the annoying croaking of crickets and frogs. Blue fireflies danced in the clearing ahead, and wisps played in the ovals of darkness. Their ghostly giggles gave me the creeps. They added even more to my anger at being stood up.
I leaned back against a tree and watched General Chat to pass the time. As always, it was mostly spam for gold or selling duped items. Once in a while, an interesting argument would start, but nothing that lasted too long.
A beep on the radar at the corner of my vision startled me to my feet. My chakrams came out spinning in swirls of magic, and I waited for whatever monster had taken an interest in me. My breath caught when a name appeared in red above a crop of tall bushes: Samhain.
"You gotta be kidding me." I turned to put as much distance as possible between the bushes and me. Branches and leaves sprayed as Samhain swung at me. The claws connected with my back and sent me flying.
I landed hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs and could only curse in my head for a moment. The pain here was simulated. The sensation of claw marks feathered along my back. Not pleasant, but not tear inducing either.
Once air returned and I could swear out loud again, I got to my knees and readied a town teleportation scroll. It shattered in my hands. At no point did the quest say not to use teleportation, but apparently, that was an unspoken rule, which meant there was no quick way out.
Samhain stepped out of the bushes. He towered over the clearing, at least eight feet tall and built like a humanized bull. Muscle strained against his deep-pink skin, and two golden eyes bulged from the sides of his horse-like skull. A sound like teeth chattering came from him, and it sent shivers down my spine and loosened my guts. He carried no weapons, but the three long claws on either hand looked just fine for rending flesh. Hell, he'd already done a number on my health, which had dropped by half.
I rolled away from him and downed a health potion from my inventory. At some point, I'd bought ones that boosted defense, so I downed those as well. Neither was fast acting, which I knew would be a problem as a bunch of pumpkin-headed creatures rolled out of the bushes behind Samhain. They squeaked like one-year-olds and fell over themselves. Their faces were carved from hollowed-out pumpkins, which were attached to shriveled wooden necks. Their eyes and mouths glowed from a candle in the middle of each of their heads. The flame shifted with every movement they made, and it flared when they faced me. The idea of dying at the hands of B-movie horror creatures was ego crushing.
I ran to the other side of the clearing while my health slowly ticked upward. There were far too many to take on with Samhain around. It would have almost been better to log out and take the XP and gold hit, because there was no way I'd be able to kill a raid boss. I sent a message to my best friend, Nina.
>Whisper to: [M*S]Crow:> Where the hell are you guys? I'm kinda in deep here.
No answer came in the chat window, and I looked back at the creatures. Samhain sat like an ape a few yards away, his hands fisted on the ground. He just stared at me. The chattering of his teeth grew louder, and the pumpkin mobs danced around him. Two broke away and came after me, wisps of fire whipping from their eyes.
I switched from my rogue gear to some real armor. Though the quality was crap, it had better damage resistance. I tossed out a chakram, and the blade buzzed across the field in a blue-and-white trail. It connected with one of the pumpkin children, and the creature screamed, the sound like a high-pitched whistle. The disk sliced through the top of its head, and a second after, the head exploded in a blue flash. The chakram went out to the trees then turned in an arc, catching the second pumpkin child and removing its leg in a spray of orange blood.
>Whisper from: [M*S]Crow> Server is bogged to hell after the update. We can't get in, Raggy.
I glanced at the whisper from Crow as I caught the chakram.
>Whisper to: [M*S]Crow>That's just great. The raid boss showed up, and he's got a bunch of little friends. Tell the group they owe me the coin I lose when he turns me into ribbons.
I dodged what looked like a ball of lava. It lit the leaves behind me on fire. The entire grove became covered in a layer of smoke in a few seconds. My second chakram connected with the fire-spitter pumpkin child, and he went up in a spectacular explosion, killing two others. Sometimes things worked out. Sometimes they didn't… six new pumpkin heads emerged from the trees. Two of them broke off and came for me. I jumped back, caught the disk, and used it to block some of the incoming attacks, but I was knocked off balance. Before I could catch myself, they were on top of me.
What health I had regained disappeared under their claws. With one hand, I held them back and was able to get to my pouch. I dropped a smoke pellet on the ground, which teleported me a few feet back. From there, it was easy to dispatch the two of them with another disk.
A faint beeping sound drew my attention to my health bar, which had turned green. An overwhelming sickness washed over me, and I dropped to my knees, swallowing against the worst nausea I'd felt in my life.
I heard the chakrams coming back but couldn't sit up enough to catch them. They fizzled out above me. There wasn't time to reequip them, so I pulled my dagger from the sheath on my belt. The pumpkin children were all around me in the smoke, their grinning mouths lit by flames like something from a nightmare. At that point, there was little I could do. The little bastards had overrun my poison resistances, but I couldn't remember the last poison that made me so sick.
One of the pumpkin children attacked, and I deflected with the dagger. Then came another and another, and they kept batting away at me, almost as if they were enjoying having me defend against every attack. I couldn't keep it up—my limbs felt heavier by the second. To say that I was screwed would be like saying the sun exploding would be inconvenient. My situation grew even worse as Samhain finally decided to join in on the fun. His lumbering form moved toward me, the smoke parting around him as if afraid.
I braced for his attack and the loss of gold it would cause, but it never came. I struggled to look up and found shimmering metal in front of me. Sparks sprayed from the front in orange and yellow. Samhain had stepped back and started to clack his teeth in annoyance.
"Raggy!" someone said.
I craned my neck to find a cute little mage with a billowing midnight-black cloak. Her hair was purple and hung down to her shoulders in twin curls. It took me a few blinks to focus and see that it was Nina.
Ziller stood beside her, wearing barbarian armor that would have been at home in an S&M catalog. Behind them, conjuring some kind of black magic, stood a necromancer that I didn't recognize. As I looked at them, stunned, someone picked me up from the ground. The piece of metal was actually a heavily armored paladin. His shield was scuffed up and singed, but he looked okay healthwise and carried me easily back to the group.
"Nice of you to show up, Plotigan," I said, and he dropped me to the ground. I cursed at him, which wasn't an unusual occurrence. His real name was Marcus, but I hadn't talked to him much beyond the game, where he was always doing something stupid. He was more Nina's friend than mine, as she was far more social than I was. She had brought him into the group a few months before.
"Poison, huh? Don't tell me those little pumpkin things did that to you. I'm disappointed, Doll." Marcus gave me a grin on a fantasy hero face. "At least you survived long enough for us to save you."
"Go ahead and give them a try, jackass. They do three hundred a hit."
Marcus whistled and glanced over his shoulder. "Well, the game has been getting a bit stale. Crow, heal up Doll for us. Ziller, how about me and you go smash some of these ’kins?"
Ziller grinned, and they both charged off like the idiots they were. They slammed into the crowd of pumpkin children, with their heavy blades swirling in arcs of color and sprays of orange. The pumpkins fell under their attack, and for a moment, I wished I'd rolled a different class than rogue.
"Winter? Try to keep them alive, all right?" Nina dropped to her knees beside me.
"Those two? Yeah, I'm not making any promises." The necro raised one of the pumpkin children as he went. He sent it off into the fray as he casually walked toward Ziller and Marcus.
"You need to stop getting yourself into trouble, Raggy." Nina wiped hair from my cheek.
"Shut up."
"It's just a bit of advice. I won't always be around to save you." She stuck her tongue out at me then started to wave her staff about as she stood. She took a step back, and all humor left her face. "Huh…"
"Huh? Why 'huh'?"
"This poison isn't in the database… my cure skill won't work against it."
"But you're our healer. You've maxed the skill."
"Which is why I said, 'huh.' Maybe an NPC can cure it, or it's a patch issue…?" She looked around the clearing and frowned. "Probably best we go back to the town that gave out this quest."
"That's freaking great… I tried a town scroll, but it shattered, so we're walking."
"Seriously?" She opened her inventory and tried to use one.
"Crow, don't—" The scroll shattered just as mine had. Nina stared at her hand, stunned. "Did you think I was joking?"
"I didn't actually think—" A shout cut her off. I looked back to the battle just as Marcus's shield was knocked from his hands. It went flying and embedded itself into a tree. The pumpkin children littered the grass in chunks and splinters, but Samhain had joined the fight and looked able to handle the three guys on his own.
Marcus dropped to the ground, his armor striped with claw marks. Ziller was doing his best to draw Samhain's attention, but few of his attacks broke the creature's skin, and his taunts had zero effect.
"Nina, we need a circle heal!" the necromancer yelled. Nina had called him Winter, which was her boyfriend's game name. Winter applied a curse to Samhain, which caused a stream of green smoke to come from the creature's head. Samhain stumbled back, blinded.
"Right, sorry!" Nina stood and used her skill to create a giant golden circle around the clearing. Even with that, Winter went down with a poison icon above his head.
"God dammit. That crap barely cares about resistance." He tried to crawl back toward Nina and me, but the curse on Samhain wore off before he could. The creature went for Winter in a fit of anger and picked him up from the ground.
"Help! God dammit, guys! Get him off of me!"
Ziller ran forward, ax above his head. Marcus stumbled to his feet and followed. Nina called down a rain of flame over the trees and bushes, setting them on fire.
Samhain walked through the flames without pause, holding Winter above his head. They were only visible for a moment before they disappeared on the other side of the fire and smoke.
Marcus and Nina ran to the wall, which Nina put out with another spell. There was nothing besides scorched underbrush. The two of them looked in all directions then stepped in farther, calling out for Winter. He didn't answer, and after a few minutes, they came back.
"Did I kill them? AOE isn't supposed to hurt party members. Where did they go?" Nina stopped beside me. She turned to look at the smoking sections of forest and started to nibble on her thumbnail.
"If he was killed, then he's gotta be back in town. Let's grab the loot and get Doll out of here," Marcus said, kicking over one of the pumpkin children. He cursed and looked back to us. "There ain't a damn thing here."
"You're kidding," I yelled. The poison had started to wear off enough that I could sit up. "All that and not even some damn coin?"
"Ain't nothing here. Damn, that's a kick in the teeth…" Marcus sighed. "Anyone get any experience at least?"
Nina shook her head. "Not a drop. Winter is gonna be pissed."
"Glad you gotta deal with him and not me," Marcus said.
"Hey, you're forking over some
gold for him too," Ziller said. "This was a major screwup. We really need to rethink our tactics before we go at this bastard again."
"We can do that later," I said. "I'm done for the night once you guys help me back to town."
"Oh, joy. Carrying you will be loads of fun." Marcus picked me up before I could protest.
"You drop me again, and I'll have Nina feed you enough fireballs that you'll be crapping flames for weeks."
He laughed as we left the clearing.
Winter wasn't in town. We searched for over an hour, checking the map and sending chat messages, but there was never a response. Nina finally decided to log off and make sure he was okay. I logged off a few minutes later, tired and fighting a headache.
A raid boss should never have attacked just me, especially when I was outside the trigger. Raid bosses were meant for groups of people, so they were very tough and usually huge. Samhain was too small and his mobs too few to be any kind of challenge for the bigger guilds. The entire encounter felt off.
I stared at the ceiling and watched shadows of bone-like branches sweep across the peeling white paint. Maybe I spent too much time playing the game. After the whole deal two months before, when I almost went to jail, I didn't do much else other than some simple system cracks and playing Autumn Sin Online. It was a massively multiplayer online game that had over thirty-five million players. Insane didn't even begin to cover what the game was like when even a portion of the subscribers were on. Wars that rivaled some of the biggest in history broke out every couple of months.
The group I belonged to in the computer-cracking world, the Mourning Stars, also played together as a mercenary group. We took jobs in the big wars and spent the rest of our time doing quests and farming dungeons. We were small, being the only ones that Ziller could convince to play, but thanks to our nonexistent social lives and lack of salary jobs to tend to, we'd become pretty powerful. Nina was by far the highest ranked out of all of us, as the spell system was needlessly complex, but she had a head for it and was one of the few in the game who knew all the spells the system had to offer.