“This is just terrible,” Craig said, giving the mutilated corpses of Fred and Jenny a final glance as they carried Angie outside, ahead of the rest of the Unicorn’s denizens, who didn’t seem aware of what was about to happen. Austin heard a loud crash behind him but kept chugging along with his girlfriend in tow.
Some of the inn’s patrons had made it out before the building collapsed completely, but only a few, some of the quicker ones, the halflings and a few elves, mostly, covered in dust and clapping themselves off. Screams came from the pile of dusty wood and building material that had formerly been the Flatulent Unicorn.
“Come on!” Jake shouted, waving his twin swords above him. “To battle!”
The war god screamed beside him in the center of the mostly empty town square, his face pointed up at the cloudy sky. Again the clouds began to part, and in the blue sky behind them Austin saw a shape coalesce, what looked like a child of five or six, wearing what appeared to be a roman toga and a crown of laurel.
“WE ARE NOT AMUSED!” the young god, presumably Jerry, though he looked a bit older now, bellowed.
The war god Kray-Kun pounded his chest with one fist while brandishing his double-bladed battleaxe at the young god. “Begone, child, or come and meet your death at the hands of one of the elder gods.”
Jerry grinned maliciously. Austin had a bad feeling about it. “There is only one god,” Jerry said, slowly and precisely, his voice much softer now, more like distant thunder than that of a squadron of fighter jets, “AND HE IS A JEALOUS ONE!” The clouds surrounding the boy-god roiled and blackened; a lightning bolt erupted from them, striking Kray-Kun and exploding him into tiny bits of tattooed viscera. A smoking ear lobe, blue-tinged, landed near Austin’s feet. He sat Angie down on the ground. She shook her head, trying to waken. He sat next to her, waiting for the end. Jake still waved his twin swords at the god, but even with all his armor and his weapons, he was the one who resembled the petulant child, not the all-powerful tyke in the skies above them.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY LAST WORDS, HUMAN IMBECILES?”
Wayne strode forward, running a jet black hand through his platinum afro. “Yeah. If you’re going to kill us, how about you tell us just what’s going on here, huh? I mean, what could it hurt?”
The boy-god glared at the dark elf. Now that Jerry appeared a bit older, maybe seven years old now, Austin realized he was beginning to resemble the blond kid who played in the Home Alone movies. McDonald Culkey, or something. The blond god perched his fingertips together in a steeple and glowered down at them. “Fine. Perhaps I will enjoy sharing my genius with you before I destroy you. Not that you could understand the complexity of it.”
“Jeez I need another drink,” Angie murmured, flopping down on the ground next to Austin. “And if I’m going to be killed, I’m going to take this scratchy robe off before it happens.” She pulled the newbie’s cleric robe off over her head. Her avatar was quite buxom, Austin noticed. Everybody else noticed, too, Wayne blatantly ogling her, Jake and Craig politely looking away, then sneaking glances.
Even the boy-god who went by the name Jerry kept staring at her. “Your form is alien to us, yet still pleasing to the eye,” he admitted.
“You look human enough to me,” Wayne shouted at him.
“I adopt a form that will be understandable to you, dark elf. But I assure you, I am far from human.”
Austin raised his hand. “Uh, what exactly are you, oh mighty one?”
“I am of a race of mighty beings in a world far away from yours. I am, as you might see, of the real world, and you are all just a simulation in our world.”
“You mean the game, Morn’a Doon, is a simulation?” Craig asked. “We know that, uh, Lord. Humans created it.”
“Hah. You entire existence is a simulation, little creatures. You are an artificial intelligence experiment being run by the entity that I suppose you would term my…my father, though mother might be more technically accurate. Kind of. S/He is one whom you would term a scientific technician examining advanced simulacra techniques. Your universe is one of his/her little experiments.”
Austin raised his hand again. “Does…she-slash-he have a name…by which we may refer to…him-slash-her?”
The blond kid rolled his eyes back in his head for a moment, then stentoriously announced, “YOU MAY CALL HIM…HER…PAT!”
“Jeez that feels better…” Angie had sprawled back on the grass in the town square. The warm sun shined down on her near nude body. She didn’t look at all like the real Angie, but Austin still enjoyed looking at her. If this was the last thing he was to see before dying in this digital world, he would cling to the sight and tell himself he was dying a happy man. Jerry kept shooting glances at her as he spoke, too. He was bigger now, looking more like a young adolescent.
Jake raised his hand. “Does your mother, or father, know what you’re doing?”
“He-she said I could play with the computer game part of your universe, some of the games you’ve created. That’s all I’m doing!”
“Excuse me,” Craig said, “don’t you think you should check with your parental figure before you alter her, or his, experiment any further?”
“I’M NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG!”
But the boy-god Jerry looked nervous now. His gaze jerked back and forth from one of them to the next, lingering longer and longer on Angie. She was near nude, lolling in the grass. Austin wasn’t sure how drunk she was.
“Hey, Jerry,” she said, “why don’t you let my friends and me go, okay?”
Austin could practically see the smoke coming out of Jerry’s ears. Then the boy said, “FINE! I WILL LEAVE FOR NOW!” He disappeared amid roiling clouds, his exit punctuated with a thunderclap.
Angie sat up. “Jeez. Why do you guys play this stupid game, anyway?” She pulled the cleric’s robe back on. “How do we get out of here?”
“Somebody try to log out,” Austin said, clutching Angie’s hand.
“On it.” Jake sat cross-legged, his eyes rolling back in his head. Please let him log out, Austin thought, hoping more than anything that Jake’s avatar would disappear in a moment.
Several moments passed.
“So much for that,” Jake muttered, standing.
“I just don’t get it,” Angie said. “There you were back at home watching me log into the game, and now you’re here and you say you’ve been here all day. I don’t get it at all.”
Craig cleared his throat. “I still think our biological selves are alive and well in the real world.”
“What the…heck am I, then?” Wayne asked him.
“A dumbass,” Austin muttered. Wayne glared at him.
“I think we’re all digital copies of our…other selves. Although if Jerry is to be believed, our real selves are only simulacra, too, existing in a software program that’s being ‘played’ in whatever universe, or dimension, he and his people inhabit.”
Austin stood and clapped his hands against his arms. It all felt real to him. “Whatever,” he said. “I think, therefore I am.”
“Like that French fisherman guy,” Wayne said.
“Sure,” Craig said, “I mean, I feel real, too. But I find it comforting that even if we remain trapped in here, our real selves are probably out in the world doing our real world thing.”
“Hey guys,” Wayne said, “looks like company.” He pulled his rapier and struck and en garde position. Half-a-dozen dwarves walked toward them. They held hammers, tongs, and what looked like other blacksmithing equipment that could easily serve as weapons. Austin received a text message: “THE GUILD DOUG AND DIANA’S DWARFSMITHS HAS DECLARED WAR ON YOU.”
Austin started to nock an arrow to his bow, then dropped it back into his quiver. “One thing about dwarves,” he said, “they can’t run very fast.” Grabbing Angie’s hand, he turned and made for the front gates of Freetown, followed by the others. The shouts of the dwarven smiths receded behind them as they briskly ran away from town and toward the woods.
/> “Hey! Friends come back to be with Gorm!” It was the troll. Austin pulled up, panting.
“He’s still enchanted?” he asked Craig.
“Apparently.” Craig shrugged. “Maybe it’s permanent. Everything seems different now.”
Austin clutched Angie’s hand even harder. “Look,” he said to her, “I’m sorry I got you into this, and I’ll do everything I can to get us out of it. I…I love you, you know.”
She glowered at him, then shrugged. “Find me another tavern and maybe I’ll forgive you.”
He grinned, hugged her, then turned to the others. “Guys, I have no idea what’s really going on, but we’re stuck here for now. Gameplay is more…real, I guess you could say. And I think death is real, now. This world is now more vicious than ever. Ken doesn’t seem to be coming back.”
“To Ken,” Wayne said, raising a leather wine bag and shooting a stream of dark red liquid into his mouth. He capped the bag and slung it back around his chest.
“Dude,” Jake said, “you’re supposed to pass it around after a toast.”
“Yeah, well get your own wine.”
“Especially after a toast to a fallen comrade, jerk,” Jake continued.
“Yeah, well fuck you – oww!”
“As I was saying,” Austin continued, “this world is even more vicious than ever, though apparently gratuitous cursing will be punished from now on.”
“Whatever,” Wayne muttered. But he uncapped his wine bag again and passed it around.
The End
Also by Alexei Tripmiov:
Bounty Harlot
https://www.amazon.com/Bounty-Harlot-World-Brutalia-LitRPG-ebook/dp/B079ZX4YDP/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1521109941&sr=8-1&keywords=bounty+harlot
Jerry, God of Morn'a Doon Page 5