by Rachel Ford
“Uh…is this for real?”
“What?”
“A battlecorn?”
Richard laughed. “Oh, sweet. You got your companions, then.”
“No, Richard. Not sweet. I don’t want Arath, and I don’t want a goshdarned unicorn.”
The other man laughed again, correcting, “Battlecorn. You know, like ‘battle unicorn’?”
“Yes, I managed to figure it out on my own.”
“Battlecorns are a fierce warrior race.”
“He sparkles.”
Richard shrugged. “I mean, yeah. He’s a unicorn. A warrior unicorn.”
“I don’t want a unicorn, warrior or otherwise. I’m a knight, not a little girl playing with dolls.”
“Knights need horses, don’t they?”
He scowled at the other man. He had kind of walked into that one. “This isn’t a regular horse. This is the Edward Cullen of horses.”
Richard shook his head, obliviously. “I don’t know who that is, dude.”
Jack waved it away. “Never mind. The point is, I want it gone.”
“No can do. He’s your companion’s pet. As long as you have the companion, you have the pet.”
“Then get rid of Arath. I don’t want him, either.”
“No can do,” the other man said again. “You need him to finish the quest. You need them all. Heck, you need them to get through this level.”
Chapter Six
Richard was no help at all. He laughed at all of Jack’s objections, and told him to wait and see what Shimmerfax could do before “whining about it.” Then he left, and Migli’s AI personality resumed with the rest of the game.
This put Jack in something of a foul mood. It didn’t help that his newfound companions turned into chatter boxes. He couldn’t tell which was worse – that Ceinwen and Karag traded barbs the whole way, or that Arath and Migli fell into reminiscing about old times, and the women they’d pursued, the gold they’d lost, and the adventures they had. Only Er’c, of all of them, was mercifully silent – him, and the ridiculous, shimmering beast that followed Arath.
Still, as the day got warmer and more humid, Jack’s mood soured – right along with Arath’s body odor, which was another point of contention.
So he decided it was time to take a nap. They paused by the bank of a rapid river. The road had followed it for a space. It seemed a good place to rest, as shady trees grew by its banks.
“There’s a bridge up ahead,” Ceinwen had told him. “We’ll cross it in a few hours.”
Jack took a drink from the river. Its waters were sweet and icy cold, and the water relaxed him a bit. “I’m going to sleep now. You all can keep watch, or whatever. Just, stay quiet. And Arath?”
“Yes, Jack?”
“Take a bloody bath.”
This time, he slept easily, though not for long. He’d been finding it harder and harder to stay asleep lately, and this time was no exception. He rose before mid-afternoon.
Er’c had a plate of grilled trout waiting for him. “Caught it while you slept, Sir Jack.”
He’d cooked it perfectly, and it tasted excellent. Jack drank a little more of the cool river water, and noted with satisfaction that Arath had lost some of the grime – and a little of the smell.
The battlecorn was still there, so all had not righted itself during his nap; but he’d take the victories he could. So, feeling a lot better about everything, he set out again.
Migli seemed to have spent the time composing a new ballad, this one about a group of valiant heroes setting out to save the world. He was pretty sure the tune was a recycled bit that he’d once dedicated to a fair maiden’s golden hair and emerald eyes. Either way, he had to admit that the song was alright, and hearing it lifted his spirits a little more.
They walked on through the afternoon, following the river as they went. “The waters of this river are swift and fast,” Ceinwen told him. “They’ll sweep any who try to cross away to their deaths.”
“It’s called the River of Skulls,” Er’c added. “For the bottom is said to be littered with the bones of the dead.”
“Shouldn’t it be the River of Bones, then?” Jack wondered. “I’m assuming the bodies don’t wash away, right? So it’s more than heads down there?”
Neither Ceinwen nor Er’c had an answer to that. She said instead, “The bridge we’re coming to is the only way across the river.”
Jack nodded. He knew how impassable rivers worked, and bridges too. “Cool.”
“I’ve never been this far north or east,” Er’c said.
“I have, but many years ago. There are rumors that bandits and foul things have taken up residence in the old fortresses.”
Jack grinned. He knew how dungeons worked, too, and he looked forward to leveling and loot. “Awesome.”
“Though I am but a simple cooper, I do not fear bandits,” Karag said. “I believe we will be fine.”
Ceinwen shot him a dirty look. “Now you make barrels? I thought it was shoes.”
The giant shrugged, declaring himself a man of many gifts. “The gods bless the worthy, or so the priests tell us.”
They reached the bridge by late afternoon. The sky was a crimson canvass, over which some unseen hand had painted streaks of gold and orange. It was quite pretty, and quite lifelike; and the bridge over the running water looked absolutely picturesque against such a backdrop.
Picturesque, save for one thing: someone had draped skulls and skeletons all over it. Jack froze. “Uh, it might have been nice to mention the actual skulls all over the bridge when you were telling me about the river, Er’c.”
“These are new,” Ceinwen said, unsheathing her sword. “They weren’t here when I last passed this way.”
“Well, they’re definitely here now,” Jack said, glancing around. He didn’t see the decorator, but he figured they probably weren’t far away. “So, uh, we should probably move. Before whoever did this comes back.”
The party agreed, and they hustled toward the bridge – and then, stopped short. A figure clad in dark armor stood on the opposite end of the structure, staring at them. He wore plate armor as black as a night sky, so polished it shone in the afternoon sun. His face was completely obscured behind a tall helmet. On his shoulders, in place of spaulders, were the crisp, white skulls of fallen foes. In his hands, he carried a massive halberd, with a wicked spike topping an axe blade on one side, and a cruel, gleaming hook opposite it. He stared at them, and then stepped forward, one heavy step after the other.
The bridge echoed with the clanking of his armor. Migli took five long steps backward. Arath and Karag were a little more subtle in their retreat, but not much. The giant fell to the side of the bridge, and the ranger pretended to be arranging Shimmerfax as he moved backward.
Only Ceinwen and Er’c stepped up to Jack’s side.
The black knight kept advancing. Jack fought the urge to draw his own sword. The other man towered over them all – all except Karag, but the giant’s height advantage would be little use since he was cowering by the riverbank. Jack figured the safest means of dealing with the stranger would be diplomatic, even if he didn’t have high hopes on that score. It was hard to, staring into the empty sockets of the skulls on his shoulders, after all.
The knight advanced to the end of the bridge, and took exactly one step off it. “Pay the toll,” he said, “if you mean to cross.”
“Who are you, to demand a toll for crossing a public bridge?” Ceinwen asked.
“How much is the toll?” Jack wondered. He had a sneaking suspicion it would be more than 43 gold.
“Ten thousand gold marks,” the other man said.
Jack laughed. He didn’t mean to be rude – especially not to a guy who covered himself in human remains like they were some kind of fashion accessory. It was just that, he’d need two hundred and thirty-some times the amount of gold he had to get across. Which wasn’t going to happen. Not just to placate a mid-level boss. “Yeah, that’s not really feas
ible. I can give you forty-three, but that’s all I’ve got.”
Now, the black knight turned, extending a gauntleted hand in the direction of the remains behind him. “You insult me, little man. Behold the fate of others who insulted me.”
Jack decided now was a good time to de-escalate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. But I really do only have forty-three gold.”
“Then you will not pass.”
“I really need to get across.”
“Then pay in gold, or pay in blood.”
“Look, we’re on a quest, okay? The fate of the world is resting on this quest. And, more particularly, my own fate – in real life – is riding on it. So if you could just let us go by without a big boss fight, that’d be really great.”
“Pay the toll, or I’ll add your skull to my collection.”
Jack sighed. A battle it would be, then. He started moving his hand toward his blade when a flash of motion in the periphery of his vision stilled him. Something moved forward so fast, it was almost a blur – almost, but not quite.
Karag, who had been loitering unobtrusively by the side of the bridge, sprang forward. He swept his mighty hands together, like someone might in thunderous applause – or, if they meant to squash an insect with a particular vengeance.
In this case, it was more the latter than the former. He struck the black knight’s squarely in the midsection, before the other man even realized he was under attack. His armor crumpled, and his helmet popped off like the cap of a tube of toothpaste. Indeed, the whole spectacle rather resembled someone squeezing a tube of some kind of red, cinnamon flavored toothpaste: the top popped off, and contents oozed all over the place in a violent rush.
Except in this case, the paste was a sludge of human parts, all squashed together; and the top was the man’s head.
Jack puked. Er’c puked, and Ceinwen puked. Even Migli puked. Arath laughed. “Well, can’t say I’ve seen that before.”
Karag shrugged, a little apologetically. “A bit messier than intended. But it got the job done.”
Ceinwen shot Jack a furious glance, wiping vomit from her face. “Still think it’s a good idea to bring him?”
The giant frowned at her. “And what were you planning to do? Reason with him? Is that why your hand kept hovering over your sword?”
“I wouldn’t have crushed him to death.”
“No. You would have had a long and bloody fight on your hands, and risked harm to the entire party. Whereas I finished him with a clap of my hands. You should be thanking me, Miss Ceinwen.”
“You are ridiculously strong,” Jack observed.
“And sneaky,” Er’c said. “I didn’t even notice you, and we were looking right at you all the time.”
The giant shrugged modestly. “Well, as I say: many gifts.”
There was nothing for it, of course, but to keep on going. So once Jack rinsed his mouth with river water, he hunched his shoulders and said, “Alright: let’s go find Aderyn.”
He took the first step, and he heard them fall in behind him. He was paying too much attention to his feet, though, and trying to avoid getting any ooze on himself. It wasn’t easy. The black knight was all over the place. So Jack tiptoed and leaped and grimaced as he picked his path.
Ceinwen, behind him, was saying, “I can’t believe this. This is what I get for trusting you in the first place.”
The giant snorted. “Come now, are you telling me an elven warrior such as yourself has never seen a little blood?”
Er’c’s stomach was making funny noises – the kind that encouraged Jack to pick up his pace, lest he wind up wearing whatever contents of the orc’s lunch he hadn’t already purged.
Migli was moaning to himself about his fall from glory. “A prince of dwarves, in such straits. Alas, alas.”
Arath seemed content to snicker at the lot of them. “I’ve recruited a load of yellow cowards.”
“Of course you don’t mind walking through human remains,” Ceinwen said. “You can’t possibly smell worse than you already do.”
Karag laughed.
Jack, meanwhile, reached the end of the bridge. He took his last step on the wooden planks, and then planted his feet firmly on good, solid earth. “Well, that’s done.”
He expected to hear – something. But he didn’t: not the squabbling of Karag and Ceinwen, not Arath’s laughter, or even the unhappy gurgling of Er’c’s stomach. He heard nothing at all, except the clomp, clomp of Shimmerfax’s hooves.
Jack turned, wondering what had silenced them all.
He saw no one at all – no one but Shimmerfax, making his steady way across the bridge, and the black knight – or, what was left of him, still running and oozing this way and that.
Jack blinked. “Ceinwen?”
Nothing.
“Migli? Er’c?”
Still, nothing.
“Karag? This isn’t funny, you guys. Where the heather are you?”
The afternoon rang with a steady, rhythmic, clomp, clomp. The river sped past, and water sloshed against rocks. Here and there, a fish leaped out of the water and splashed back in again. Shimmerfax kept coming. Clomp, clomp.
But no one answered. Jack felt a cold sweat slick his brow. “Guys, where are you? This isn’t funny anymore.”
Chapter Seven
Jack waited for Shimmerfax to cross the bridge – an eternity, it seemed to him. The delay, though, gave him a moment to think. He figured either that his companions were pranking him, or that he’d hit some kind of bug.
The former seemed a little too advanced based on what he’d seen of the AI so far, so he leaned toward the bug scenario. He’d seen it before in other videogames. He knew that there were invisible borders, and checkmarks, and all kinds of things behind the scenes. The player wouldn’t know the difference, but the developers would set a marker to delineate a border, or game progress, or any number of things that the game needed to keep track of. He’d had companions disappear, or horses vanish right out from under him. Usually, a bug patch would solve the issue.
But Jack wasn’t the kind of player who put his game off for a day, or a week, or a month waiting on a patch. Not if he could help it. Jack was the kind of player who figured out workarounds.
Sometimes, it was as simple as retracing his steps. So, as soon as Shimmerfax left the bridge, Jack headed back over. He ended with lots of the black knight on his boots, but he didn’t care. He was too anxious to find his companions again.
They didn’t reappear, though.
The next, best trick was to sleep or rest for a while. Sometimes, the vanished items would find their way back to you, by whatever game magic worked behind the scenes. Jack decided to give it a shot. He couldn’t fall asleep in real life – he was too wired at the moment for that. But he made his character sleep anyway, for a full hour.
He woke up in a darker, but otherwise unchanged world. He and Shimmerfax were all that remained of their original band.
Which left him with the next, next best option: reload.
Jack sighed and pulled up his user interface. He navigated through to the load menu – and cringed. He hadn’t saved in hours. The last save was an autosave, after he’d woken from his nap. “Mother trucker.”
Still, Richard had been clear: he needed the companions to complete the quest. So he reloaded.
The evening, and the bridge, and the black knight’s bloody remains all disappeared. He found himself back at their makeshift camp, in the sunshine, by the burbling brook. Everyone was back where they were supposed to be. Er’c had a plate of trout waiting for him, as before.
Jack wolfed the food down, and followed the same general steps as before. They walked on through the afternoon. Migli sang, and the rest of the group listened.
They reached the bridge. The black knight trundled across, huge and imposing, and demanded his toll. Jack tried to negotiate, and the other man rebuffed his efforts.
Karag stepped in as before, and reduced the errant knight to a sl
udge. Jack was ready for it this time, so he didn’t lose his lunch. Otherwise, the scene proceeded as before – until Jack started taking his first steps across the bridge.
He remembered to save. Then, he turned around and watched the rest of his team. He took a step backwards, and heard his boots slosh in the black knight’s remains. He didn’t take his eyes off the rest of his team.
Ceinwen was scowling, and shooting poisonous looks the giant’s way. “I can’t believe this. This is what I get for trusting you in the first place.”
He snorted. “Come now, are you telling me an elven warrior such as yourself has never seen a little blood?”
Er’c said nothing at all, though he looked greener than usual.
Migli moaned as before. “Alas, alas.”
And Arath mocked them all as cowards.
Jack took a step backward, and another, and another. Shimmerfax ambled up onto the bridge behind them all. Everyone kept walking. Jack took another step, and felt solid earth underneath his boot. He kept his eyes fixed on his companions. They were all still there, exactly where they should be. He moved his last foot off the bridge.
Everyone but the battlecorn disappeared. They just – vanished, right before his eyes.
Jack loosed a few swears, that the game translated into absurd and meaningless phrases. Then, he reloaded. He’d noticed that his companions vanished shortly after Shimmerfax got on the bridge. He decided to pull the battlecorn with him, ahead of the group, just in case he had something to do with the bug.
It didn’t change anything, except Shimmerfax arrived only a step behind him. Otherwise, it all proceeded as before: as soon as Jack’s feet touched the opposite bank of the river, his companions vanished into thin air.
He tried variants a good dozen times before, in something of a panic, he chose to speak to a supervisor. Richard was still around. He knew this, because a thin, reedy voice from everywhere at once, “Woah, dude. What the heck’s going on? Where’s Migli? Why am I in ghost mode?”
Jack wasn’t sure what ghost mode was, but he assumed it was whatever happened when the supervisor joined the game but didn’t have the Migli interface to slip into it. “That’s why I called you, Richard: all my companions just vanished.”