by Vic Connor
“We’ll recover later,” I say. “Bring them here. Let’s get this over with.”
The anxious look on Axolotl’s face as he starts reading the letters turns to unabated pleasure by the time he finishes.
I haven’t bothered standing up. Sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, my fettered legs stretched in front of me, perhaps isn’t the most dignified posture with which to conduct business with the representatives of Tepetlacotli and Duurstad—but screw it. I’m neither in the mood nor shape to stand on my crutches while we finish our transactions.
“Is this what you were looking for?” I ask.
“Yes,” replies Axolotl. “Yes, indeed.”
Jan Bakker, the Viking bureaucrat and the Opzichter’s right hand man, seems equally satisfied: High Priest Tlaloc has joined the long list of those owing the Opzichter a favor.
What consequences these letters will have in Tepetlacotli, I have no clue. And, frankly, at the moment, I couldn’t care less.
Axolotl rolls up the letters and tucks them inside a long cylinder made of clay, then puts the tube away among the folds of his tunic. Today, he again wears his clothes in the Aztec fashion rather than European. “We’ve been told of what happened during your escape,” he tells me, bowing his head low. “Truly a terrible loss.”
Abe hawks and spits on the floor.
I nod to the Aztec envoy, saying nothing.
Axolotl shoots a glance at Father’s book over the table. “You’ve also returned with what was stolen from you, I see?”
“We did,” Juanita says. “May the Lord of Here and Now make it all worthwhile. Whatever ancient secrets these pages contain are tainted with far too much blood.” She scowls at the book.
Jan Bakker looks at my crutches, the left one armed with the three Langesnuit pistols he gave me when we set out for this job.
“They were very useful,” I tell him, in response to his unspoken question. “My thanks for them.”
He nods. “I shall report back to the Opzichter. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I lower my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Very well,” he says. “You’re free to come and go in and out of our city as much as you please, my friend. And—” he nods toward Father’s book “—good luck with the next step of your journey, wherever it may lead you.”
I returned to the Lobby as soon as my avatar went to sleep in his room at the Lachende Dame. Juanita and Miyu had done the same, but Abe had spent the evening mourning Uitzli and getting drunk on the pub’s strongest ale.
It probably wasn’t the best idea, but I’d been way too exhausted and depressed to complain, let alone order him to bed like the rest of us.
“Did we do the right thing?” I asked Sveta. “Leaving her behind … was I right?”
“You made it back to Duurstad, boss,” she offered. “More or less in one piece.”
“That’s what’s bothering me—we could have dragged Uitzli’s body with us. Barboza’s men didn’t put in much effort to pursue us; Miyu and Inktmeester could have carried Uitzli most of the way, even if Abe couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t have known this, boss,” Sveta reminded me gently. “For all you knew, you would have had a dozen Alanos chasing you half a minute later, and those dogs can outrun even a healthy, unburdened human without breaking a sweat. Or the Moorish guy could have showed up again in full health. With your crew injured and the Moor now aware of Inktmeester’s backstabbing ways, he would have chewed you all up for supper.”
I pressed my fingertips against my closed eyelids. “I feel like a piece of trash for leaving her behind.” I massaged my temples. “This game is going to kill me.”
“Well, boss,” she pointed out, “that’s what the game is trying to do. There would be no competition otherwise, don’t you think?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Speaking of which, do I want to see the frigging percentage of all the players ahead of me?”
A thin smile came to her lips. “I’d say no, boss. You really don’t.”
“God, what a day. Or night, or evening, or morning, or whatever it is out there.”
She took off her dark-rimmed glasses and placed them on the table. “There’s a loophole,” she said mysteriously. “In case you want to hear about it.”
“Loophole?” I droned, narrowing my eyes.
“I’ll take that as, ‘Tell me all about it, Sveta,’” She grinned. “Remember when you got stuck? In the Pain Tutorial?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget about it. Much as I’d like to. Why?”
“Remember how we got a few VPs, as a reward for you finding a bug?”
I nodded. “Well earned, I’d say.”
“That’s the thing. Depending how you twist the fine print of the Tournament rules, you could argue that you have the right to restart the game from scratch, if you wanted to. You’d lose all your progress thus far, though.”
“Sorry if I’m slow today, Sveta, but why on Earth would I want to do that?”
“To play it all again from the start? This time knowing what to expect?”
I almost heard my mind clicking the pieces together when I understood what she was aiming at. “So I could replay the whole game from scratch, and this time see if I can keep my whole crew alive. Right?”
“It could be an option, on the grounds of you suffering from what Engineering has admitted was a serious bug.”
I looked at the wall where the clock and percentage would be if I hadn’t asked her not to show them for now. “But I’d lose all my progress.”
“Yes,” she replied. “A clean slate.”
“While my opponents keep getting ahead. Right?”
She raised her hands, palms upward.
I sighed. “I can’t have my cake and eat it, you mean. Which sounds fair, don’t get me wrong. Would I go all the way back to my resurrection point?”
“Yep,” she confirmed. “You could even pick different skills and a different build this time, if you wanted to.”
“Would I still be swinging on crutches?”
“Not sure,” she said. “But that’d be my guess.”
“And this time, I’d know where to find Uitzli,” I said to myself, “so we could skip that whole search. We could go straight to Tepetlacotli, rather than waste time wandering around…”
She nodded.
I toyed with the idea. “Any news from Dad?”
“Not that I am aware of. I’m sure he is alright, though. We’d know immediately if he had to go back to the hospital.”
I drummed my fingers on the desk. “How far do you think we are? I mean, how long until we unlock Multiplayer?”
“My guess is as good as yours, Jake.”
“And that guess would be…?”
She studied the bird’s-eye view. My avatar lay asleep in his Lachende Dame room, and Father’s glyph-covered book rested nearby. “Taking the book to the pyramid is the obvious next step,” she observed.
“Yep. No clue what comes next, but that has to be it. By now, we’ve travelled Isla Hermosa back and forth several times… I think whatever secrets the pyramid holds, the book is the key to wrapping things up here.” I tapped my index finger against the table, considering my options. “It’s just a game. Just a game. None of this is real; not even this Lobby is real. The only thing that matters is to catch up with the damn clock.”
She nodded gravely. “No restart, then.”
“No. Part of me wants to do it, real bad. Replay the game again and again until we pull it all flawlessly and nobody dies. But these are all NPCs, and I’m here to save Dad. No restarts; it would take too much time.”
“Decision made,” she announced. “Off to see what that pyramid holds, then?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
With her dark-rimmed glasses back on her nose, Sveta’s playful assistant persona returned. “Go get ‘em, boss.”
“Oh, I will. This may be a game, yeah, and our friends and enemies may be n
othing but NPCs… But this goddamn thing has just become personal.”
Swinging on crutches and fettered feet across the muddy jungle trail has become second nature. We leave Duurstad when the early sun rises from behind the sea. Before mid-morning, we cross the first bridge leading north; soon after, we cross the second one; and before we know it, we are traveling once again along the Northern road, heading west toward the makeshift path Abe carved into the jungle two days ago.
We walk in silence, each keeping our thoughts to ourselves. I expected this from Miyu—the Noh mask concealing her face, thoughts, and soul behind an impenetrable veil—but Abe’ silence speaks volumes. His breath reeks of the ale he’d gulped all night long, and his perpetual scowl at me and Juanita leaves no doubt that Uitzli’s demise has dug a deep chasm between us.
Juanita, too, keeps mostly to herself. She has returned to her Aztec zig-zagged poncho and gnarled staff, discarding the sunrise garb she wore yesterday. “Her blood was all over them,” she said, for all explanation.
Uitzli’s blood should be all over my own clothes, too, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. That’s one detail in which Maneesh and his crew seem to have eschewed realism: Worn out, frayed, and threadbare as my garments are, constantly covered in dust and mud, they don’t seem to get any more stained by the frequent spilling of blood.
We follow the deserted Northern Road until we see the cluster of knolls and hills to our left, the sawed-off peak hiding deep among them. Just before noon, we arrive at the trail Abe had cut through the jungle. Without a word, the pirate takes the lead and marches forward, cutlass drawn to hurl an angry slash from time to time at any vine or branch that may have gotten the bad idea of getting in the pirate’s furious path.
The hill with the sawed-off peak stands before us. I touch the pocket over my heart: Father’s book is there, perhaps as anxious as I am to find what secrets, if any, it can unlock. Quetzalli’s golden bracelet is there, too, tugging me softly toward the pyramid.
But, safety first… “Check your gear, folks,” I order, “before we get into the cave.”
“Do you think there may be more of those ancient fiends, young Jake?”
“I hope not,” I say, “but let’s not walk right into a trap this time, all right?”
Juanita lets a fistful of bees scout ahead around the mountain, then sends a second handful into the narrow crevice leading inside the pyramid’s cave.
I check that my eight pistols are all in place: the three Langesnuit on my left crutch, the three common pistols on my hips and thighs, Hendricks’ gun ready to Quick Draw if needed, my trusty and crude pistolón on my back.
Together, Abe and Miyu draw their blades, the dull glint of steel shining under the sun.
I nod toward the crevice; this time Miyu leads the way, with Abe closing the rear.
37
A Scar of Blue Light
We peer into the main cavern. The rays from the midday sun illuminate the spacious cave, with light falling like a cascade across the pyramid’s steps.
The headless and chopped up remains of the Ancient Mummies litter the floor. They seem in no shape to rise again to fight us.
Still…
“Let’s make sure, crew,” I say uneasily. “Abe, check the pyramid’s right side; Miyu, you take the left. Don’t let each other out of sight.” I peer into the pool of shadows lumped at the cavern’s corners. “Juanita, tell your busy bees to search everywhere our eyes can’t see. Everywhere. If anything looks even remotely aggressive, pull back.”
Abe grunts his understanding. Miyu floats to the left while the pirate trudges to the right.
“Nothin’,” yells the pirate.
“Koko-mo nai,” agrees the samurai.
“I guess we should’ve done this the first time we came here,” I tell Juanita.
“We were not expecting an ancient pyramid, my child,” she reminds me. “Let alone its ancient guardians.”
“Still,” I say, “we should’ve been more careful.”
She places her hand on my right shoulder. “It was not your fault, Jake.”
I stare at her. “Do I lead this team?”
“We are bound to you, yes.”
“Then the team’s well-being is my duty,” I state simply. “And if harm comes to any of us, it’s my fault.”
Hesitation shows in her eyes and an uncomfortable silence descends. I can feel she’s weighing her next words carefully. “My child,” she begins, “do you trust the pirate?”
I glance to where Abe stands by the rightmost corner of the pyramid, a flickering torch in one hand and his cutlass in the other. “Which pirate?” I ask.
Confusion seeps into her face.
“You mean the one who mugged Father?” I continue. “Or the one who joined our cause after Uitzli saved his life and has been fighting on our side since then? Or this one, who’s furious at you and me for leaving Uitzli’s body behind?”
She lowers her head. “It was the right choice, young Jake. You know it. Barboza’s men were around the corner. We were injured and spent. We would not have survived another encounter.” When she lifts her face again, her eyes are grim and firm. “All of us dying together and falling by Uitzli’s side would have been brave, yes. Would have been honorable, too. But it would have been vain, and would have served no purpose.”
“Part of me agrees—”
“This is the rational part, my child.”
“—and part of me is angry at you for suggesting we leave our little sister behind,” I tell her. “But above all, I’m furious with myself for making that decision.”
She says nothing. I stay quiet, too.
The bees come buzzing back, to nest inside the witch’s fists. “They tell me there’s nothing but us here,” Juanita translates.
The Noh mask and the pirate await our next move, each standing at attention in a different corner of the pyramid. I swing forward on my crutches. As I advance, I feel the subtle tingling, like an electric current, of the pyramid’s power. Its apex glows in the sun rays.
I pull out Father’s book and hand it to Juanita. She gives me a half-puzzled look.
“So you can start as soon as you get up there,” I explain, nodding at the pyramid’s top. “See if you can make sense out of all this.”
“Will you stay down here?”
“No. I’ll drag myself up, but there’s no need slowing you down.” I turn to Abe and Miyu. “Go,” I call to them. “I’ll be up there in a minute.”
Miyu nods. Abe grunts and, without a word, starts climbing.
It takes me more than just a minute. I was expecting our skills to be buffed as we climbed the pyramid’s steps, like they were when we overcame the mummies, but it’s not the case this time. And without Uitzli’s boosting my strength, I’m left to heave myself up each step.
It’s a chore. Each damn step is about two feet high, which forces me to sit on my butt, place the crutches on the step above, then lift myself on my hands and elbows to sit up on the next step, and repeat.
But I make the climb. Eventually.
Juanita seems to have spent her time well. As I dry the sweat drenching my brow, she says, “Look.”
She shows me the book. On one of its pages, she’s discovered a detailed sketch of the five concentric circles painted at the top of the pyramid. The next couple of pages present the same glyphs, but neatly arranged in straight lines.
“I imagine this is the order in which the Words of Power need to be invoked,” she explains.
“Invoked for what?”
“I do not know.” She shows me some additional pages before and after, written in a language I’ve never seen.
“Ya be toyin’ with ‘em things better left alone, lad,” Abe growls. “Some unholy pagan ritual.” He crosses himself; he’s about to spit to the floor, too, but after a quick look at the glyphs he seems to reconsider.
I take the book from Juanita and examine the sketch. “Can you read these glyphs?” I ask. “In the order show
n on these pages?”
“I can.”
Let’s leave this pyramid alone for now and investigate some more.
Let’s get this over with. Start reading, and let’s see what happens.
Some choices are tough as coffin nails.
Others, though, are a piece of cake. “Let’s get this over with.”
She grabs the book from my hands, kneels right in the middle of the five concentric circles, and, in a loud, solemn voice, chants the two hundred and forty-four glyphs from Father’s book.
Abe shuffles his feet, uneasy.
The onyx beads behind the Noh mask are fixed on the chanting witch.
I feel a growing vibration deep in my stomach. It rumbles in the air and rolls beneath our feet, right from the pyramid’s core—partly like an ancient machinery restarting its grind after centuries of idleness, partly as a monstrous heart remembering how to beat, and partly like an electric current charging the air with static.
Juanita’s voice becomes deeper and louder as she intones the Words of Power.
Abe gasps. “Mother o’ Heaven,” he says, his voice shaking, “Lord have mercy…”
A small ripple of bluish light appears, like the veil of reality being torn away. It floats about five feet above the ground, right above Juanita’s head. The scar is, at first, no more than a few inches wide, but as Juanita invokes the Words, the strip of light grows larger and wider.
“May I sink and perish in blood!” yells Abe. “This ain’t no light from Heavens, Ol’ Abe knows that much!”
But it might as well be. I’ve seen this bluish hue not long ago, and I remember it clearly. “It’s a portal,” I explain. “That’s what this pyramid is: a portal. And Juanita is opening it.”
“Err, what, lad!?”
“A passageway,” says a potent, baritone voice.
Startled, Miyu and Abe spin around.
“A shortcut, if you will,” continues the voice. Coming from the foot of the pyramid, it’s the sort of commanding voice that can make itself clearly heard without the need to shout. “Between places no human is meant to travel in his lifetime.”