Dan the Barbarian

by Hondo Jinx

  Nadia laughed and pointed at the door. “Be gone with you, troublemaking elf.”

  34

  A Softer, More Sensitive Two-handed Sword

  After Holly left, Dan and Nadia made love again.

  “You’re sweet,” Nadia murmured as she was falling asleep. “Would never marry you. Wouldn’t do that to you. Couldn’t risk…”

  Then she fell asleep in his arms.

  Dan lay there, wondering about Nadia’s big secret. For one reason or another, she wanted him to think that she was secretly a monster.

  At one point, she’d told him, “You don’t know me, Dan. You can’t. And someday, after you really know me and can’t love me anymore, you’ll understand my reluctance. Please remember then that I still love you and always will, no matter how hard that might be to believe.”

  Maybe this was just her way to fend off Holly’s aggressive suggestions that Nadia marry some guy she’d only known for a week.

  Dan listened to the soft susurration of Nadia’s breathing and thinking about everything that Holly had said.

  Finally, he disentangled himself from Nadia, scooped up Wulfgar, and carried the sword into the bathroom to talk.

  Wulfgar was, after all, supposed to be more than just a weapon. He was supposed to be Dan’s mentor, too.

  “Listen, dumbass,” Wulfgar said, wasting no time once Dan had unsheathed him. “Holly is right. Make your move. Make Nadia your woman.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up and listen,” Wulfgar said. “This isn’t about sex. This is about living the life you want–and the life that they want. Do you love her?”

  “Who, Nadia?” Dan said, his heart jumping a little at the notion. “How could I possibly know after such a short time?”

  “For a college boy, you’re pretty fucking stupid, you know that? You don’t need a slide rule to measure how you feel about a woman, genius. And love doesn’t give a shit how long you’ve known Nadia. How does she make you feel?”

  “I like her,” Dan said, feeling another thrill. “I like her a lot, but—”

  “Do you want to take care of her? Protect her?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Do want her in your bed?”

  Dan laughed. “Of course.”

  “Do you give a shit about her? Deeply, I mean. Do you want to know all about her? Do you care about what she wants, what she needs, even when it has nothing to do with your sorry ass?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said, meaning it, “but why do you have to insult me all the time?”

  “Because you’re dumber than a glass hammer. Do you want Nadia to bear your children?”

  Dan leaned back. “Children?”

  Internally, old-world Dan squawked, You’re way too young to think about any of this, especially children.

  Outwardly, however, Dan only nodded.

  Blocking out old-world Dan, he thought over Wulfgar’s questions. And suddenly it was all so simple.

  “Yes,” he said. “I want to have kids with her. I want all of this stuff.”

  He shrugged, suddenly calm and certain of everything in a way that his former self, who tended to overthink everything except for gameplay, never could have been. “I do love Nadia. I love them both and want them both to be my women, my wives.”

  Wulfgar chuckled. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, shit-for-brains. Let’s talk experience points.”

  Dan nodded. He’d been wondering but hadn’t bothered to ask. After all, he’d recently leveled up, and to move from second to third level, he would need to earn another six thousand experience points.

  So far, he’d only killed an orc and a few acolytes, and his total loot haul was around twenty gold pieces.

  “For the orc, acolytes, and gold, you gained one hundred and twenty experience points,” Wulfgar said. “In the quarterfinals, you fought your way through the leprechaun trap, knocked out the gnoll, used him as a stepping stool, and helped your team make the semifinals–all while acting like a barbarian. That earned you another two hundred experience points.”

  “Wow,” Dan said, surprised–and wary. Since this world was clearly based on the gamemaster style of Willis, and Willis was super stingy with experience points unless the characters needed to advance in order to survive upcoming challenges, receiving points for performance and staying in character made Dan wonder what horrors were headed his way.

  “For having sex with Nadia, you earn another five hundred experience points,” Wulfgar said, “and for handling it like a man and coming to your senses about love and marriage, you get an additional five hundred.”

  “So I’m getting way more points for having sex and falling in love than I am for combat?”

  “For now, you are,” Wulfgar said. “Right now, this is all about you ditching Dan the Dweeb and becoming Dan the Barbarian. Building a harem is the barbarian way, and having a harem isn’t just about banging a bunch of girls. It’s about getting to know them, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, their desires and fears. It’s about protecting and nurturing them and being man enough to know that he can count on them to protect and nurture him, too.”

  Dan laughed. It all made a lot of sense, and the worldview that Wulfgar was painting appealed to him deeply, but the sword had left himself open for a counterpunch, and Dan couldn’t just let that opportunity slip away. “You know,” he said, “for a supposedly barbaric two-handed sword, you’re a pretty sensitive guy.”

  “Fuck you, buddy,” Wulfgar said. “I wouldn’t have to play Dr. Phil if you weren’t trying to micromanage experience points like a little bitch!”

  Dan roared with laughter.

  After a few colorful curses and death threats, Wulfgar joined in.

  Which was pretty hilarious, until a soft rapping sounded on the bathroom door, and Nadia asked him why he was locked in the bathroom, laughing like a madman.

  Dan opened the door, kissed Nadia, and held her by the shoulders. “I’m laughing because my life is so crazy,” he said, “and because I just realized that Holly is right. I love you, Nadia. No shit. I love you, and I want you to be my woman.”

  “What?” Nadia said, leaning away from him. She tried to look skeptical but couldn’t hide her red cheeks or the way she was trying and failing to hide a very happy smile. “You and elf-girl are crazy, do you know that? This is just sex, okay? I don’t need a man, and I’m certainly not looking to become somebody’s woman—or wife!”

  Dan laughed. “We’ll see.”

  Nadia rolled her eyes. “Don’t you start saying that, too.” Then she took his hand and leading him toward the bed, said, “You woke me up with your laughter. Now you have to pay the consequences.”

  “Oh yeah? What consequences?”

  Nadia crawled onto the bed. Up on all fours, she pointed her A+ ass in his direction and smiled at him over one shoulder. “You can start by fucking me until I forget just how crazy you and Holly are.”

  35

  The Tower of Terror

  Dan and the Noobs stood once more upon the intramural fields. Before them, they could see only empty fields and hear only the breeze and the honking of geese flying south in the bright blue sky of what was yet another spectacular October day.

  Campus Quest wizards had used their sorcery to conceal the actual event from the six teams who had made it to the semifinals.

  Earlier, all six teams had stood here at the edge of the field. One by one, however, each of the other teams had been called, and one by one, they had entered a magical door that had appeared out of thin air. The door was a spherical black portal with nothing visible beyond. Once through the magical door, the team disappeared completely.

  Five of the six teams had disappeared through the door. Only the Noobs remained, and they had no idea what awaited them beyond the portal.

  “Could be anything,” Zeke said, seeming more curious than concerned. “It’s right in front of us,” he said, pointing at the seemingly empty field. “We just can’t see or hear it.”


  The breeze shifted, and Nadia sniffed the air like a dog. “The wizards didn’t disguise everything. I smell blood and shit and decay.”

  Dan and the others couldn’t smell anything.

  “You have an amazing sense of smell,” Holly said, bouncing on the balls of her feet, doing her sprinter-before-a-race routine, either to warm up or to burn off nervous energy. And today, she actually was nervous. They all were.

  Things had gotten very real.

  During the chaos of the first day, the idea of actually making the finals had been a dream, nothing more.

  Then, at the quarterfinals, the challenge hadn’t seemed all that daunting, and moving forward had still been such a long shot that the pressure wasn’t too bad.

  Today, however, they were one step away from making the finals, and they had no idea what lay in store for them.

  So yeah, they were nervous.

  “I don’t like that you can smell decay,” Holly said. “Could mean undead, and we’re the only team without a cleric.”

  Holly didn’t have to explain. Clerics could turn the undead. But the Noobs had a druid instead of a cleric.

  “Screw it,” Nadia said, in between impressive stretches.

  Dan was happy to see that she’d worn studded leather armor today. He’d miss the view afforded by her usual attire but knowing that armor would make her safer more than made up for it.

  “Maybe it’s a giant rabbit with bad breath,” Nadia joked. “If so, you can work your mumbo-jumbo on it, and those clerics—”

  The portal popped into existence fifty feet away, looking to Dan like the business end of a shotgun.

  “Here we go,” Holly said.

  An unsmiling official in wizard’s robes stepped into view and beckoned them forward.

  Dan gave both of his girls a quick kiss, then exchanged nods with Zeke. The monkey stared at the portal and screeched anxiously.

  They went through the portal and found themselves in a different world.

  “Crom,” Dan said, his breath frosting the air.

  They stood upon a gray and lifeless plain. Stretching away in all directions as far as the eye could see were ancient tombstones, most canted badly to one side or sinking into the loamy soil, which was covered in pale moss and clusters of gray mushrooms which rose like misshapen hands from the unholy graves.

  Gone was the warm, bright day. In this magical space, all was cold and gloomy, the air redolent with the smells of death, both fresh and far gone.

  Before them rose two structures.

  A glowing scoreboard showed the current team rankings and each team’s final time.

  Unsurprisingly, the Sell-Swords were in first place. Unfortunately, second place belonged to Alpha Alpha Alpha. ROTC was currently in third.

  Fourth and fifth place didn’t matter.

  ROTC was the team to beat.

  Yes, but beat how?

  The second structure dominated the landscape, rising up from the cemetery like a giant rot-spotted forearm with a massive fist at the apex.

  But this was no arm.

  It was a tower.

  A bone white tower, fifty feet tall, with an iron door at its base.

  And at its apex, that was no fist.

  It was a skull.

  A bulbous stone skull, easily ten feet tall, with a sinister grin and empty eye-socket windows staring blankly out at the macabre landscape.

  Dan unsheathed Wulfgar.

  “What kind of fucked up sorcery is this?” the sword bellowed, voicing Dan’s loathing.

  Dan couldn’t respond, of course, not unless he wanted his teammates, who couldn’t hear the sword, to think that he was a few bolts shy of a full quiver.

  “Nice place,” Nadia growled sarcastically, and filled her hands with glowing daggers.

  “Bad energy here,” Holly said, and gave her glowing staff a slow spin as her purple eyes panned back and forth, scanning for danger.

  “Reminiscent of the Plane of Dusk,” Zeke mused, seemingly unperturbed.

  Zuggy scrunched low on his shoulder, chittering like a frightened monkey.

  Then the voice of the official, who had disappeared once they entered the portal, spoke out of thin air. “Behold the Tower of Terror.”

  A chorus of chilling, high-pitched laughter tittered from the direction of the ominous tower.

  Dan set his shoulders and tightened his grip on Wulfgar like a batter at the plate.

  “Directly before you,” the disembodied voice continued, “is the grave of the dread necromancer Ballok Shazar.”

  “What an asshole that guy was,” Zeke said offhandedly.

  “Behold the tombstone,” the voice of the official said, and the large tombstone directly before them glowed with an eerie green aura. Here lie the remains of Ballok Shazar, the chiseled inscription read, whose shade now stalks the dark planes beyond death!

  Beneath these words, at the center of the stone, a keyhole appeared, glowing as red as the fires of hell.

  “This monument is more than a grave marker,” the voice of the official said. “It is a door between our plane of existence and The Plane of Sorrow. To complete your challenge, unlock the grave door. To earn a spot in the final stage of Campus Quest, unlock the door more quickly than at least three of the opposing teams. Farewell.”

  A click sounded high above, and beside their team name on the scoreboard, numbers appeared, ticking upward with every passing second.

  36

  The Quest for the Key

  “Here goes nothing,” Nadia said, and putting away her daggers, pulled out various picks, bars, and levers.

  “Watch out for traps,” Holly said, leaning forward to inspect the tombstone.

  “You can’t pick the tombstone lock,” Dan said. “Trust me.”

  “Don't be so sure,” Nadia said. “I kick ass at picking locks.”

  “It won't work,” Dan repeated. Once again, his mind reached back to countless hours he'd spent gaming with Willis. If Willis’s design sensibilities infused this game, Dan was 100% positive that they wouldn’t be able to simply pick the tombstone lock.

  “How can you be so sure?” Nadia asked.

  Because Willis would’ve put too damned much work into the challenge for them to beat it with an ordinary set of thieves’ picks and tools, Dan thought.

  But he said, “The organizers would never create all of this, call it the Tower of Terror, and let us beat the challenge without us having to go inside that thing.”

  He hooked a thumb toward the tower, and at that exact moment, another barrage of creepy, high-pitched laughter trilled from the tower windows.

  “The boy is very stupid,” Zeke said matter-of-factly, nodding at Dan, “but this time, he has a point. There will be a key inside.”

  Holly nodded. “Not just inside,” she said, and her gaze scaled the tower. “The key will be up there, inside the skull.”

  “Yup,” Dan said. They would have to go all the way up there to get the stupid key. The Willis-ness controlling this world wouldn’t want the Noobs to miss any of the creepy-ass monsters that it had cooked up for them, after all.

  Knowing Willis, Dan thought, the key will be made of something weird, like glowing gemstone.

  One other thing bothered him, though.

  He looked over his shoulder, scanning the gloomy boneyard with wary eyes.

  “What is it?” Holly asked.

  “All these graves,” he said. “Where are the zombies? They should be digging their way out of the graves, coming for our brains.”

  Another mad cackle sounded above.

  “Let’s go,” Wulfgar said. “Stop flapping your lips and kick in that door!”

  Dan nodded. The sword was right. Too much thinking, not enough action.

  “Where are you going?” Nadia said, as Dan marched away.

  “I'm going through the door,” he said, “and then I'm going to fight my way up the tower and get the key.”

  The door was made of heavy timber reinforced with
iron. Dan tested it with a push and was surprised when the unlocked door swung open.

  He peered warily inside.

  The smell hit him like a sledgehammer.

  It smelled like the whole world had died. And not just the people, plants, and animals. The inside of the Tower of Terror smelled like the world itself had turned to flesh, then died, and was now rotting on the shoulder of some intergalactic highway.

  As he reeled from this horrible smell, his eyes and ears registered something like a vast ocean, dead and gray and hungry, rolling toward him, moaning and hissing.

  “Crom!”

  Dan grabbed the door handle and yanked hard.

  The gray wave hit the door just as Dan slammed it shut. On the other side, muffled by the thick wood of the door, came a light pattering, like the sound of a soft rain.

  Dan just stood there for a second, trying to breathe. What he'd just smelled, heard, and seen would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “What is that?” Holly said, pointing to a tubular gray something lying on the ground. “It fell out when you slammed the door.”

  That's because I cut it off when I slammed the door, Dan thought. But he was still so stunned that his mouth didn't seem to be working.

  “Is that a finger?” Nadia said, sounding disgusted. “I think that's a finger.”

  Dan faced his teammates. “Um… this door isn't going to work.”

  “Why not?”

  “I found the zombies.”

  “All right,” Holly said. “Zombies look frightening, but they're actually a fairly easy monster. How many?”

  “Too many,” he said.

  “How many?” Nadia asked.

  “All of them,” he said. “Millions.” And he told them what he'd seen.

  Beyond the door, the Tower of Terror was truly terrifying—and absolutely impossible. From the outside, the tower had a circumference of perhaps forty feet, but when he'd opened the door, he hadn't seen what looked like the inside of a tower, let alone a tower of those dimensions.