Glitch Kingdom

by Sheena Boekweg

And on top of a crowded desk was a full cup.

  The arrow in my mind disappeared.

  I grinned. “Bottoms up, bro.” I handed him the glass.

  Task completed.

  “Are you certain this is a good idea?” Ryo asked.

  Seriously? “Would you trust me already?”

  Grig cracked his neck and puffed his cheeks. He sat in a gilded chair, popped his heels onto the desk, and lifted the glass. “Cheers.”

  He drank it all down.

  10

  GRIGFEN

  Three notes sounded, as familiar to me as a lullaby, and then a low voice shouted:

  “Welcome, adventurers, to the land of traitor kings and vicious queens!” I waved my hands as ghosts and machines fought one another right in front of me, but I made no contact. So I closed my eyes and thought back on my Devout training as the voice continued. “Who will win the throne in this epic RPG by the makers of Ashcraft?”

  My eyes cracked open. Ashcraft?

  I’d heard and said that word so many times that in one instant everything clicked. Right. This thing was a video game.

  Static flashed, skewing the image for a moment and then the cut scene continued. Pretty standard, all in all, so I didn’t watch. Instead I tried to find my stats. There we were: Mage class, Magic high. Intelligence low (that seemed faulty) and Constitution—super squishy. Grand. That’s the problem with Mage class. Phenomenal cosmic powers, itty-bitty healing space.

  It was all right though.

  There were three things in life I was better at than any other living person. Number one: remembering ska band names from southern Edinburgh in the late nineties. Number two: making the best seven-layer bean dip in the galaxy (the secret was nine layers). And number three: winning top score at Ashcraft.

  “There are two ways for you to win the crown,” the voice continued. “The first is as a member of a team. You will aid your party with your Devout magic, and they will protect you with their might.”

  An image flashed with a girl I knew well, in full Everstrider uniform, looking so different from the first time I’d met her.

  Bluebird.

  I grinned. Six months ago, I took high score in Ashcraft by five thousand points and qualified for the eSports competition to be one of the first to play The Heir’s Ascension. I was in my room (where else would a seventeen-year-old be on a Friday night?), and I lifted my arms above my head and the crowd cheered, or actually the radio played from my dusty speakers while my granddad snored down the hall.

  “Griffin!” my mum yelled at me from the kitchen. “Take out the bins!”

  “Hold yer horses, woman,” I muttered.

  “What?!”

  I cleared my throat and pressed pause. “Yes, Mum.”

  And by the time I got back, someone else had taken the top spot. Some chap named bluebird_ofdeath had done the impossible. It cost three Vimto sodas and a burnt stovie, but about three the next morning I finally won the top spot again.

  Seven seconds later, bluebird_ofdeath had stolen it again. I hadn’t even finished my victory dance.

  “Wut?” I wiped some grease from the corner of my mouth and pulled up the chat to call the lad a cheater.

  But then, of course Bluebird had to reply,

  It’s skill, not cheating.

  I was going to say something mean and get in a real row, but then I kinda noticed Bluebird was a girl.

  A real live, breathing, about-my-age female.

  And this girl … Mother of Dragons, she was adorable. A black girl with light pink hair and blue-framed glasses, wearing a Firefly tee shirt, her fingers parted in “live long and prosper” like she was manga drawn straight out of my nerd-boy fantasy. I sat up so quickly I knocked over a half-full can of Vimto and had to mop it before it stained my wood floor, and by the time I figured out what to say back, she’d logged off.

  Which was, you know, fine and all. It was late and I had to get my granddad breakfast in a few hours.

  She’d left a message though. She’d spied on my high scoring game and thought I needed to look out for the smoke demons near the falls, which I knew, obviously. Later, while my granddad napped, I loaded the game and followed the smoke demons, and behind the waterfall was a whole secret room full of jade, and in the next moment my score soared higher than ever.

  And my subtle attraction morphed into a beast of epic proportions.

  I thanked her without saying anything too awkward, and she messaged me back, and I replied again, and so on, and so forth, and typing was the best. I could really obsess about how big of a knob I was being before I pressed send and dial back the nerdometer. It got better over the next few weeks as we swapped tips, jabs, high scores, and a string of swears when she beat me at head-to-head, and I realized a high nerd rating was one of the many things we had in common.

  That and we both qualified for the eSports competition.

  Bluebird had to be in this game somewhere.

  “And the second way to win,” the voice went on, “is to gain your team’s trust, until the very last moment when you betray your friends and steal the armor for yourself.”

  That took a turn. The image shifted to one of me with glowing green eyes, stabbing Ryo through the heart before I stole some strange crown and sat on a gilded chair.

  “Then you, too, can win the throne.”

  Not bloody likely, to be honest. I wanted top score for myself, sure, but I owed Bluebird. We trained together.

  We’d video chat before we played, which was a bit awkward, like I had to shower and comb my hair flat before I played a game, but I got used to it, and to cleaning the bits of my room where the camera might see. It was worth the effort, because video Bluebird was like profile pic Bluebird to the nth degree. My crush/obsession with this girl had evolved from a regular Eevee into like Vaporeon by this point.

  So we’d play the game, but by this point, the best part was the talking. We’d talk for hours about everything except the bits that regular people seemed to go on and on about, you know? I knew what fandoms she obsessed with, what OTPs I could tease her about, and what ones were sacred. I told her the secret ingredients in my bean dip, and showed her my dad’s vinyl record cover where he played a trumpet with his mates in matching shiny purple vests.

  I knew she was from the States because of the time difference, but I didn’t ask where she lived. Luckily we both stayed awake late into the night so we caught each other waking up and going to bed.

  Once she left her game logged on while she slept. She just said “Alexa, turn off the lights,” and then she didn’t shut her laptop. I didn’t like stalk her sleep or anything—I had things to do, like take Granddad to the park and get his hearing aid adjusted—but I checked in on her from time to time. It was so peaceful, watching the dim light of her laptop glowing against the freckles on her brown shoulder.

  I left my laptop on that night while I slept. And the next night, hers was on again.

  We didn’t talk about it. But it couldn’t have been an accident, so we smiled and talked around it.

  She knew more about me than anyone else did, but she didn’t know my real name, and I didn’t know hers. She called me Grig, because the name I wanted, Gryffindork, was already taken, so I went by Grigfen314, which meant nothing, but at least no one else was using it.

  Somehow that made it better. Like I couldn’t mess it up, if we were still strangers.

  I fell hard for the way her mind worked, and for the way she understood how those things that mattered to no one else mattered so much to me. When my granddad’s health took a turn, there wasn’t much room for anything resembling a social life, so talking to Bluebird while we trained became a kind of holiday from caretaking. She had a disability, so she understood when I talked about doctor visits and my fears for the worst. She knew how to joke our way through it.

  Then my granddad died.

  And it left me in this funk. I couldn’t talk to her. I couldn’t talk to anyone, let alone play in the tournament
. I shut off my games, my computer, my phone. Everything that had distracted me from the time I had with him.

  I didn’t know how much I loved him until I lost him.

  It took me weeks to even be able to open my phone. I didn’t intend to look for Bluebird. I didn’t know how to talk to the girl I’d used to escape my granddad, but I couldn’t ignore the heap of messages from her, some swearing at me for quitting, some in caps lock—all date stamped about two weeks earlier.

  The second I connected to our chat, she was there.

  You all right?

  It took me a minute to answer. I always said I was fine when anyone else asked. But I didn’t have to lie to her.

  No. I’m really not.

  Is it your granddad?

  I didn’t answer.

  Oh Grig. I’m so sorry.

  It was later, on video chat, when she convinced me to try to get back in. I’d forfeited a few matches, but there was still time. If I won the final match with a high enough score, I could still get into the game. The best part of The Heir’s Ascension competition wasn’t the experimental immersive technology; it was that the winner would also get an internship at the company, on-the-job training, and the promise of a future that didn’t require a degree.

  I didn’t want to leave my home. But as I glanced around my half-cleaned room, I realized I didn’t really belong here anymore anyway. My granddad would want me to live my own life.

  All I needed was the ability to get a high score.

  One of my top three skills.

  Just behind the bean dip.

  Bluebird was already in. She told me all she could about the other players, their strengths and weaknesses, and tips about that final round.

  When I won that match, I was giddy like a fool, because it meant I could meet her. Once we met, whatever it was we had would become real.

  I couldn’t betray her.

  Not for all the money in the world.

  The cut scene ended, and Dagney knelt by my side, Ryo next to her. They seemed to be in the middle of an argument of sorts. I closed my eyes. “Oh, would you just kiss already and get it over with?”

  “Grig,” Ryo said, though I noticed his cheeks reddened, the poor boy.

  I let out a laugh, and I couldn’t stop. Suddenly my whole fake life was just the funniest thing in the world.

  “Are you all right?” Dagney asked. “Does your head hurt? You overwhelmed? What are you thinking?”

  Oy. There comes the headache.

  I pressed the side of my head tight until the pain receded, cursing my squishy Mage class.

  Dagney clung to my arm.

  “I’m all right,” I told her. “I’ve just got to find my Bluebird.”

  Then it wouldn’t matter what world I was in.

  11

  RYO

  “So who is this Bluebird person?” I asked. I had several questions, of course, but that seemed the most pressing.

  “Bluebird of Death,” Dagney said. “She’s incredible. If we get her, we’ll win the game for sure.”

  This was the second time I’d heard the world called a game.

  “Of course she’ll join us,” Grig said. “She’s my, erm … partner.”

  “What sort of game?” I asked again. Perhaps now Grigfen would explain, since Dagney did not have the patience.

  “I told you,” Dagney said. “It’s an arpeegee.”

  I tapped my foot. “As though that were clarification.”

  “If you really wanted to know you could drink your seer water!”

  “Ah, get a room, you lovebirds,” Grigfen said.

  Dagney scoffed and then took a step away from me. “What? No…”

  I would have scoffed as well, except I was busy looking everywhere other than at Grigfen, or at Dagney, or at the bone spear that had once impaled me.

  The desk, basically. I was looking at my uncle’s desk.

  “So what do we do next?” I asked.

  “Did Ms. Takagi say anything to you?” Dagney asked Grigfen.

  I scratched my jaw. My mother’s given name was Takagi. I’d have asked more questions if I’d known my mother had spoken to her through the vision.

  “Wait, she spoke to you?” Grig said. “I just watched a cut scene giving an overview of the game, and then went into a detailed win condition.”

  “How do you win this game?” Dagney asked.

  “Me personally? Either as a member of Team Ryo, or as a Devout—I’d need to win the loyalty of the high priests, retrieve the Armor of Irizald, and take the throne to rule as a theocracy, after betraying the prince, of course.” He shrugged. “Pretty standard secretly evil sidekick storyline.”

  My stomach twisted into a betrayed knot. “Grig!”

  “Relax yourself, Ryo. I wouldn’t tell you I’d betray you if I were planning on it.” He squinted at me. “Is that an icon over your head?”

  “You’re getting your game vision!” Dagney’s eyes shone. “It seeps in slowly.”

  I stepped away and glanced around the Holiest’s office. How exactly did I come to be here with this madness?

  “What’d Ms. Takagi say to you?” Grigfen asked.

  Dagney pulled her hair over her shoulder. “She said there is a glitch in the pain receptors, so we should do our best not to get hurt. She said we are trapped in the game until someone wins and we break out, and that the glitch is affecting the source code.”

  I understood about one word in five she said, but Grigfen paled and sat back down. “I’m pure done in.”

  “I know.”

  She sat on the edge of the desk.

  “What happens if we die?” Grig asked.

  “I don’t know.” Dagney gestured to me. “Ryo here comes back from the dead. Best-case scenario we feel every inch of death, so I can’t advise it. And that’s if we have extra lives. I don’t think we all do. I think Ms. Takagi gave Ryo extra.”

  She twisted her ring around her finger.

  I stepped forward. “I have a few questions.”

  “I’m sure you do, mate,” Grigfen said. “Just let us plan for a wee bit and we’ll explain things on the road.” He turned his back on me. The impudence.

  Dagney’s lip was a thin line. “So we go after the Armor of Irizald. Did your vision say where to find it? My vision was interrupted by Don’t get hurt, please save my son. I don’t even know my win condition.”

  Grig cupped his jaw. “Mine didn’t say where the armor was either.”

  I lifted a finger. “I know where the armor is.”

  They turned to me. Finally.

  “Seriously?” Dagney asked. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “I don’t know, perhaps because you seemed so receptive to everything I had to say.”

  She huffed. “You could have told me.” She glanced down and then met my eyes. “I love game lore.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I think the Historian’s shortcut bought us a moment of peace,” Grigfen said as he slid open a drawer and riffled through. “We’re listening now.” He pulled out a sharp knife with a polished bone hilt and claimed it as his own.

  Thieving ran in their family, apparently.

  If Grig was distracted by looting Edvarg’s desk, at least Dagney seemed interested. Well, if she insisted. “Irizald was the last queen of the Devani. They made the armor for her.”

  “I love that the armor was made for a woman.” Dagney leaned forward. “Sorry. Continue.”

  I closed my mouth. I was only going to tell the pertinent information, but with Dagney’s rapt attention, I had the strangest desire to tell the full story, the way my father told it to me.

  “Before my family claimed this land, it was ruled by the Devani witches. They weren’t one nation or race, but many, drawn together from every continent to pursue magic. They gained their power by making deals with powerful spirits, friendly bogeys, and the Lurchers—monsters two stories tall with sharp teeth and an unending hunger.” Dagney’s eyes widened so I c
urled my fingers like claws.

  “But every deal they made strengthened those monsters, and they couldn’t turn against them. The monsters crept out of their forests and hunted our people. The Devani changed, learning to imbue magic inside objects, or weapons, so they could reuse the same spell without strengthening the monsters. But it was too late. The Devani couldn’t stop those monsters they’d freed alone.”

  “That was when the Everstriders formed, right?” Dagney asked.

  “Indeed. Together they fought those monsters with honor, but a few Devani would not stop making their deals. Until one day, my grandmother Verelise discovered a way to steal the ghosts’ energy.”

  “The first high priestess,” Grigfen said. He opened one of Edvarg’s trunks and glanced up at us. “They taught us about her back at the chapel. She drew ghostlight from the lining of the magical barrier between the living and the dead, and the more ghostlight we drew, the weaker those monsters became.”

  I folded my hands. “She worked with the Mechani to create the first Whirligigs to aid the Everstriders. With an army of mechanicals and the Devout on her side, she had more power than the queen of the Devani. When the Devani struck back, our people revolted. They were tired of being hunted. Tired of their witch queens. It was the Devani’s turn to be hunted. Those who survived imbued their power into a set of armor, sacrificing their lives in order to create talismans anyone could wield. They left this armor to Queen Irizald. If she survived, she’d sit on her throne and bring back the day of witches.”

  Grig and Dagney grinned, as though they didn’t hear the pain in my voice. This was a story I did not care to tell.

  “The day of battle came. My grandmother Verelise survived. Irizald did not. Afterward, we scattered the armor, for using the armor could bring those monsters back. We sent each item to one of our allies, and they hid them. No one, except my father and I, know where every item is hidden.”

  I crossed to Uncle’s desk. “The Crown of Visions went to the Savak clerics. They were our allies then. From my father’s reaction to the seer water, I’d wager it’s at the bottom of the Seer Spring. Then there’s the Traveling Boots. The wearer can travel leagues per step, reach our farthest ally in only moments. We buried that one on the feet of my grandfather.” I put on a grin. “Hopefully he’s still in the King’s Crypt. The Axes of Creation and Destruction were given to our most trusted allies, the Kneult. No clue where they’ve kept it, although judging by the power of their trading ships, I doubt it gathers dust. It can tear down a forest in an afternoon and build a house before morning.”