by Rachel Ford
A tidal wave rose in every direction, soaking the indignant Shimmerfax, who whinnied in protest, and tossing Jordan right out of the pool into Jack. They went down in a soggy heap, Jordan laughing and Jack sputtering. “What the hell is wrong with that thing?” he demanded, though it came out as a heather instead of a hell.
Jordan just laughed though, and pushed herself up. Offering Jack a hand, she said, “Come on: that was fun.”
He snorted, and repressed a smile. It had been oddly fun. But he wasn’t going to admit that to her. “Let’s go get those tears before that crazy ogre…” He trailed off as he stood. “Uh…Jordan? Speaking of the crazy ogre, what’s wrong with him?”
She spun around, taking in the same sight: the ogre, floating face down in the pool. “Sugar. Did the fall…kill him?”
“He did belly flop,” Jack observed. “That might have killed him.”
Jordan walked back toward the pool. The ogre lay there face down, floating limply with his arms and legs spread, like some kind of grotesque, reverse snow angel. She prodded one of his limbs. He didn’t move. “He’s definitely dead.”
Jack sighed. “Well, he wasn’t much use.”
“I guess. Still, it would have been nice to have another follower for this next part.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“That’s not worrying at all.”
She grinned at him. “On the other hand, I’ve only got to listen to one of you complaining now.”
Jack took a breather. He was feeling a little shaky from lack of food, so Jordan decided to eat her lunch too. He pulled out an apple pie, and she told him she was eating her salad.
“Rabbit food,” he told her. “Give me a cheeseburger any day.”
Which, she did. A huge cheeseburger, piled in tomatoes, fried onions, lettuce and bacon, spawned in front of him beside a plate full of fries. He grinned, slipping the pie back into his pack and dove in. “Holy crap. This thing is delicious.”
“It should be. It’s built off your taste profile.”
“What?”
“It’s a feature for our VR unit owners. It bases flavors off of your memories and anticipation when available. So this isn’t just the best cheeseburger you’ve ever had, it’s the best cheeseburger you’ve ever imagined.”
He shook his head. “Wow. Well, it makes one heck of a cheeseburger.”
She laughed. “I’m glad to hear it. It wasn’t cheeseburgers they had in mind when they built this thing, though.”
He considered that. He figured the people who could afford to own a VR unit of their own and use it long enough to integrate their taste profile wouldn’t be the Jack Owens of the world. Hell, Jack could have mortgaged everything he owned, and dumped his retirement funds into the mix, and he still wouldn’t have been able to touch one of them. And the kinds of meals that particular feature would have been designed for? Well, they probably cost more than Jack made in a month. “I guess not.”
“I’ve never actually tried it. But the testers who have love it.”
He ate in silence for a minute, savoring every bite of the burger. “How’s your salad?”
“Not bad.”
“For rabbit food, you mean. You need protein, Jordan.”
“You know, I could take the burger away, and leave you to eat rat meat.”
He shivered. “I still have my pie…”
“Pie? What happened to needing protein?”
He shot her avatar a dirty look, and went back to munching his burger. “Hey,” he said in a minute.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks, Jordan. Not for the burger. I mean, thanks for that too. But I mean, thanks for helping me through the game.”
“Of course, Jack.”
“I really do appreciate it.”
“Any time.”
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I sure as hell hope this is a one-time thing. I can’t wait to be out of this machine.”
She laughed. “Me too. ”
Chapter Twenty-Five
They left the dead ogre behind, and marched off in the only direction open to them: forward. The hot pool seemed to be an anomaly in the landscape here. Behind them stood an unscalable wall, and before them lay a stone path worn smooth by the passage of many feet.
Here and there, Jack saw runes carved into the walls. He didn’t know what they meant. Some looked benevolent and welcoming, and filled his soul with warmth and good cheer. Others put a shiver up his back, and he turned away quickly.
“How much further?” he asked.
“Not much longer.”
He nodded, and said nothing; but inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d long ago tired of this place, and its dark halls and strange markings.
The road widened, and forked, but they kept going straight. The ceiling rose, until they reached a great chamber of white stone. A smooth wall had been carved into the far end, and rose until it met the ceiling. Strange gems hung from the cavern roof: four large ones glowing brightly with a golden light at opposite ends of the room, and a host of small, silver gems scattered here and there. Four sets of stairs rose to turrets jutting out of the walls, overlooking the entire chamber.
Jack grabbed for his sword, certain that they were about to walk into an ambush. But Jordan strode forward unconcerned, and he relaxed. He loosed his hold on the weapon, but he kept an eye on the turrets overhead. He didn’t see archers or mages, or watchers of any kind; but he didn’t intend to be taken by surprise if they were there.
They passed the staircases, some on the right and some on the left, and reached the far wall. In the center, a gate seemed to have been carved into the stone. Jack couldn’t tell if it was purely decorative, or if the great stone doors could actually lift. They didn’t budge as they approached. He reached out a hand to the stone and pressed gently. Nothing happened.
“I take it we need to get past this gate?”
Jordan nodded, saying with a touch of amusement, “The Blessed Tears of Saint Acaria are on the other side.”
“Of course they are.” He sighed. “Okay, how do we get it open?”
“Well…if I had to hazard a guess…”
He snorted. “You don’t. You built the thing.”
She grinned. “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say there was some kind of magical contraption that controls this thing.”
“Of course there is.”
“And we need to figure it out.”
“Of course we do.”
“So I’d start by examining the doors. Closely.”
He sighed again. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything that looks out of place.”
“Jordan, it’s a giant magical door in a cursed cave. It all looks out of place.”
“Blessed cave.”
“Whatever. The guardians are trying to attack us, so it seems pretty cursed to me.”
“Just look at the doors.”
He did. They were, as he’d already seen, carved into the natural stone. A flowing script in a language he didn’t recognize adorned the lintel. But interspersed between the letters were strange runes, at seemingly random intervals. He scrutinized them for a long moment. Two depicted celestial phenomena: a crude symbol of the sun and a cluster of stars. Another one portrayed wheat, or some kind of crop. The final two looked like spears, though Jack couldn’t be sure: a cluster of three, and one all by itself.
“If Ceinwen was here,” Jordan said, “she would translate that for you. It’s old elvish. But since she’s not, I will.
“It says, ‘When the [sun rune] shines on [harvest rune], and [constellation rune] is chased forever from the heavens, and the [warrior rune] slays the [army rune], the walls between men will at last come down.’”
Jack frowned in concentration. “Read it again please.”
“I can’t read it. But I know what it says: When the sun shines on the harvest, and the night stars are chased forever from the sky, and the great hero slays the demon hor
des, the walls between men will at last come down.”
“So…it’s some kind of prophecy?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what it means, Jordan…”
“Do I?”
He shook his head, deciding to ignore the prophecy for the time being. “Alright, so, this isn’t another elemental puzzle, right? There’s nothing I have to shoot?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. We can try.”
He threw a glance around the great chamber, his eyes fixing on the crystals overhead. “There are some lights,” he mused. “Should I try shooting them?” Then, as she started to shrug, he waved her answer away. “I will try.”
Which he did, loosing a fireball at the nearest crystal. It enveloped the light for a moment, and then sputtered out without any impact.
“I guess that’s not it,” he decided.
“Maybe we should check out the turrets,” she said.
He nodded, heading for the nearest staircase. It wound its way up the cavern wall in a sequence of stairs and walks, like a series of z’s stacked on top of each other. The climb was long, which didn’t bother Jack much. It was a videogame; he didn’t feel fatigue like he would in real life. But the height and narrow stairs did put something of a twist in his stomach. It seemed every time he reached a level, there were another ten above him.
Finally, though, Jack reached the summit, and then Jordan after him, and finally Shimmerfax behind them both. How the battlecorn managed the climb, he wasn’t quite sure.
Still, he moved out of the creature’s way, into a stone enclosure about the size of a small room. Long, tall arrow slits sat in the otherwise windowless walls. But the balistraria were enough to let in light, so Jack could see the room. It sat empty, except for a tall lever on the far wall by one of the arrow slits.
He frowned at it. It seemed too easy to suppose that this would be the door control. Then again…the turret did overlook the door. Maybe there was supposed to be a watchman here, who could let people pass.
He stepped over to the lever, and pushed it.
A timer appeared in the game: a ghostly set of numbers hovering at the upper portion of his vision, counting down from sixty. “What the…”
The numbers raced by, and seemed to coincide with passing seconds. A timer, he realized. So, he’d been right: it wasn’t as simple as pulling the lever. But this had to be the first step.
He raced out of the enclosure, and glanced around. Directly across from him, up an equally monstrous staircase, was another turret, about the same size as this one. “Sugar. There’s a lever in there, isn’t there?”
“Maybe,” Jordan said.
He frowned at her, then at the stairs downward, and finally at the stairs upward across the cavern. “There’s no way I can make that in a minute.” Jordan said nothing, though, so Jack sighed and headed back into the room. His countdown had already hit forty-some seconds, and as impossible as he believed this task to be, he figured every second would count. So he reached for the lever, intending to pull it back all over again.
He froze. Carved into the stone beside the lever sat one of the runes he’d seen earlier: an orb, with lines jutting off it. The sun rune. He turned to Jordan. “It’s a sun rune.”
She nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“Well, what does that mean?”
She just shrugged.
So Jack pulled the lever again, and the apparition clock reset to sixty seconds. Then, he sprinted past Jordan and Shimmerfax, and down the stairs. He ran as fast as he could go – so fast, that about halfway down, he lost his footing and fell the remaining stories.
The drop cost him half his health and temporarily disabled his legs. But Jack scarfed down a healing potion and ran on. He got about halfway up the first flight of stairs before the clock ran out. A strange, grinding sound overhead caught his attention, and he glanced upward. One of the golden crystals was gliding across the cavern ceiling, slowly and steadily. He watched its progress as Jordan and Shimmerfax covered the distance between them.
“That light,” he said. “It moved when I pressed the lever, didn’t it?”
He half expected another shrug, but she nodded. “Yup.”
He nodded too. “There’s four crystals.”
“Yup.”
“And four turrets.”
“Yup.”
“There’s levers in all four, aren’t there?” She smiled, and neither confirmed nor denied the assertion. He went on. “Which means, I need to pull all of them, don’t I?” Again, she didn’t comment. “And since there’s no way in heck I can do it all in sixty seconds, there’s got to be some kind of order. I’ve got to start with the right one, and that will give me time to get to the next one. Right?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
He snorted, and said, “‘Maybe’ my ass,” though it came out as, “‘Maybe’ my tushy.”
Jordan burst out a laugh, and he cringed. Once she’d recovered herself enough to walk again, he said, “Come on, Jordan. I don’t have all day.”
She was still snorting with laughter, but she nodded. “Right. I’ll just get my tushy in gear then. Where are we going?”
“We’re already on these stairs: might as well try this one.”
He did, and earned another sixty seconds. This time, as he stepped out onto the landing, he watched a different gem crawl across the ceiling. His footing being a little steadier on the way down, he got about three quarters of the way on the first staircase before the clock ran out; and the gem crawled back to its starting place.
So he moved onto the next turret. Like the two before, he got exactly sixty seconds; and as before, he didn’t come close to reaching a second lever before the time expired. He didn’t sweat it, though, even if Jordan had started to frown. He’d ruled out three turrets, and had only one left. That meant the next one was the one he needed to start with. Even if it took a few false starts after that to find the next leg of the sequence, he’d already made good progress.
Except the fourth lever responded exactly as the first three: a sixty second countdown started, and the fourth gem crawled across the ceiling. When the time ran out, it returned to its starting position. And Jack came nowhere close to reaching the next lever.
Jordan’s frown had gotten positively pensive by now – worried enough to catch his eye, and worry him in turn. “What’s going on? Shouldn’t that have been the right lever? It’s not another bug, I hope?”
She shook her head, and he started to breathe out a sigh of relief, when she said, “Actually, I think it’s the same bug.”
The problem, Jordan explained, was that Jack was trying to manage everything himself. “The levers have to be pulled at the same time. You need your companions to do it with you.”
The countdown, she said, wasn’t a measure of time he had left before the crystals returned to their original position, but rather how long it would take the crystals to reach the center of the ceiling.
She sighed when he pressed her for details. “Because they represent the sun when they come together. Once at least two levers are pressed, wisps are going to come out. The enemy army, in the prophecy.”
“Wait, that makes me the hero, doesn’t it? I’m going to have to fight and press levers?”
“That’s why you need companions. Depending on your play style, you can either have your companions press the levers while you fight, or have them defend you while you and the rest of the team press the levers. Either way, they need to be pressed at the same time. And you need to survive while it happens.”
“Well shit,” he said, which came out as, “Well sugar. There’s only three of us.”
“And it’s worse than that.”
He groaned. “Of course it is.”
“Once you move the gold crystals – the sun – to the center of the cavern, you need someone to drive the constellation from the sky.”
“What the heather does that mean?”
“The white
gems…there’s a pressure plate on the western wall. You need to push it.”
“Let me guess: it’s on a timer?”
She shook her head. “No. But you need more strength than any humanoid character can exert. Which, now that I think of it, is probably why the ogre died in the fall. The game probably won’t let you bring non-companions who can do it.”
He groaned. “Okay, so what are we going to do?”
She thought for a long moment. “It should be Karag, with his giant’s strength. But Shimmerfax might be able to do it.”
He stared at her, then the unicorn. It was glittering silver and periwinkle in the crystal light. “The unicorn?”
“Battlecorn. They’re incredibly strong, Jack.”
He shook his head to push the thought from his mind. “So let’s say Shimmerfax can push the lever –”
“Pressure plate.”
“Whatever. Let’s say he can drive the constellation from the sky.”
“Right.”
“We still need two more people to press the levers.”
“Maybe just one. It’s possible we can have Shimmerfax do that first, then go get the pressure plate.”
“He’s a horse, Jordan.”
“Battlecorn.”
He brushed the correction aside. “Either way, he’s got hooves. Not hands. Not opposable thumbs.”
She shrugged. “Battlecorns are an inventive and adaptive race. He may be able to use his horn, and hook it.”
Jack groaned. The part of his brain that rebelled against such absurdity was waging war with the part that didn’t care what the heck it took to get out of the game. In the end, with an effort, the latter won. “Okay. But even so, that leaves us one short. You think, if I really run for it, I can maybe make it in the sixty seconds?”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. And I do have those enchanted greaves, to boost running speed. I could loan them to you.”
“Okay. I think that’s a good plan. Oh, but I do have one more question.”
“What’s that?”
“The prophecy thing. I get that the army is whatever’s going to attack us; and the hero is me. Well, us. The crystals are the constellation and sun. But what’s the harvest?”