by John L. Monk
Chapter Eleven
Rita had wandered ahead again. I resisted the urge to call her back and instead picked up the pace. Jim trailed both of us.
New runes flared to life as we went, and those farther back died out. The dimensions of the tunnel were roughly ten by ten. The walls were damp to the touch, and a faint mustiness soured the air.
Not long into the trek, we arrived at an antechamber with three tunnels leading in different directions: right, left, and straight ahead. The way ahead sloped gently downward, and a dry heat emanated from it. To the right, giant spiderwebs covered the entryway. To the left, exquisitely sculpted stone ivy wreathed the tunnel entrance. The walls beyond were permeated with more such vines.
“Now what?” Jim said eying the three choices dubiously.
“We should split up, then meet back here,” Rita said, already heading to the one with the vines.
“Hold on,” I said, grabbing her arm and quickly letting go in embarrassment. “Look, I know we’re not in any real danger, but we don’t even have swords. Let’s pick a tunnel and go together. We can always come back and try a different one later.”
“He’s right,” Jim said gravely. “Go on, Ethan. I’ll be right behind you.”
Rita giggled.
The way I saw it, anything generating so much heat should be avoided at all costs. For all I knew there was a dragon down there, and all the kung-fu in the world wouldn’t keep us from being fried to a smoking husk. As for the right-hand tunnel … well, it’s not that I had something against spiders. They had their place in the world, but that place was as far from me as possible.
The tunnel with the stone vines on the left didn’t seem scary at all.
“Let’s try this way,” I said and started toward it.
If Rita resented me taking the lead, she didn’t let on. She followed quietly, along with Jim.
After entering the new tunnel, the light from the runes died behind us as if on a sensor. We could still see, though, thanks to the faintly glowing moss covering the walls and ceiling. A minute later, we heard a grinding sound of stone on stone. Upon rushing back, we found the way out blocked by stone vines choking the exit.
Jim said, “Good job, man. We’re trapped.”
I smiled easily. “It’s just a game, remember? You’ve died what, twice already? Three times?”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
I kept moving. The tunnel narrowed as the rigid foliage grew thicker. Several times, we had to duck to avoid bashing our skulls on a low-hanging stone leaf or stem.
Behind me, Rita yelped.
I whirled around, fists raised for a fight. “What happened?”
Smiling nervously, she pointed at the wall. “Ambiance.”
Nestled in the vines was a human skull, and just beyond it, what looked like a femur.
“Right,” I said and considered my next question. “Just curious, but do either of you know how to fight?”
Rita opened her mouth to speak, and Jim blurted, “I used to fight with my sisters when I was little. They were awful, always teasing me and getting me worked up. Sometimes I’d flip out and go after them. Then I’d get in trouble for hitting girls. Totally unfair.”
Rita was trying hard not to laugh. I followed suit and kept going.
The temperature dropped a few degrees, and I began to feel distinctly uneasy. With the way back blocked, all we could do was carry on. Pretty soon skulls, skeleton hands, legs, and feet were an all-too-common sight.
“Wow, look at this!” Jim said.
We turned and found him elbow-deep in the walls struggling with something.
“Are you nuts?” Rita said.
His tongue stuck out in concentration. “Think I almost … There we go. Got it.”
Slowly, he withdrew a small sword with a simple hilt and a rusty blade. It was still a sword, though, and I revised my opinion of him. Cowardly, yes, but resourceful.
“Good job!” I said. “Anything else in there?”
“Not that I can tell, but if we keep looking, I bet we’ll find something.”
The ground shook suddenly, and the grinding of stone-on-stone like we’d heard at the entrance vibrated through the walls and floor. The rigid foliage began to rustle ever so slowly—eerily. Then came a xylophone-like tinkling as countless bones dislodged and bounded around.
The vines turned from lifeless gray to a vibrant living green. Before we could react, hundreds of little vines descended to wrap around the fallen bones. They coiled and contracted, pulling them together into the semblance of six freestanding skeletons.
“Run!” Jim shouted and dashed forward, knocking me down in his haste.
Chapter Twelve
The skeletons took a few shambling steps toward us while pebbles, small bones, and dust shook down from the ceiling. Some of them clawed the air menacingly. Others snapped at us. One held a rusty sword like Jim’s.
As nightmarish as they looked, with glowing green eyes and perpetual death’s grins, they were pathetically slow, as if made for a Halloween haunted house.
“We should run too,” Rita said, helping me to my feet and backing away.
“Yeah,” I said and propelled her forward.
The farther we moved from the skeletons, the less green we saw, forcing us to hunch again to avoid banging our heads. A minute later, the tunnel opened into a wide, vaulted atrium filled with columns wreathed in yet more stone vines, as well as enormous stone flowers.
Behind us, the grinding had faded almost to nothing.
“You think they’ll … follow us?” Rita said, panting for breath.
“Yes … probably,” I said, also panting. “Where the heck did … Jim go?”
Hands on knees, she said, “Don’t know … don’t care.”
For the first time since meeting her, she sounded angry.
The atrium was perfectly circular, wide, and tall. Like the tunnel, it was lit by that eerie moss. It stopped about two stories up, leaving the ceiling cloaked in darkness.
Scanning the area for a place to hide, I noticed a wide stone dais with three steps and nothing on it. A visual sweep of the walls showed no other tunnels except the one we’d come through.
“They’re too slow,” I said. “I doubt they could hurt us.”
Rita gaped at me. “They’re slow back there. They’ll be faster when we see them again. Didn’t you ever play video games?”
I shook my head. “Never got into them. I did read a little fantasy, though. When I was younger. Mainly the classics.”
“Rhothfuss? Sanderson? Feist?”
“Sure,” I said vaguely, having only read one fantasy novel in my life, the name long forgotten. “Anyway, I think we’re supposed to go over there.”
Not moving, Rita said, “That’s what Jim probably did. Classic trap. Almost calls to us, doesn’t it? Look at me, it’s saying. Come over here … Come get the treasure and die…”
“We’re already trapped,” I said.
As if in response, a faint grinding sound vibrated the chamber, then stopped.
Rita grinned. “Means we have to do something. A little heavy-handed with the hints. I wonder if it’ll always be like this or just the intro zones.” At my puzzled look, she added, “You know: learn the basics while having fun. So we don’t get bored.”
“Not sure how fun this is, but I’m definitely not bored.”
“Oh, lighten up,” she said. “I played a lot of games in my day. That’s why I came here. Mythian’s the ultimate game. All those other places … Why anyone would want to live in luxury forever, I don’t know.”
More stone-on-stone grinding from the tunnel, and it was getting louder.
“You sure you don’t want to check it out?” I said, nodding toward the dais.
Rita rolled her eyes. “Fine, but it’s a classic trap…”
We stepped onto a square platform of polished black stone, about twenty feet in diameter. I couldn’t help but stare overhead into the deep, wide
blackness … and nearly jumped out of my skin.
“What the…?”
Rita gasped. “Jim! What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but he’s coming down. Get back.”
Our new friend, Jim, sword in hand, was slowly descending from a rope. Or rather, no—a ganglion of thick green vines was lowering him. The strange vegetation wrapped him in thick coils like an anaconda. Separate lengths secured torso, legs, and arms so they dangled freely in the air. Smaller vines covered his head and face, leaving his mouth, nose, and eyes visible.
Those eyes radiated sheer and utter horror.
“Help … me,” Jim said in a strangled tone. The main body of vines held him daintily in place, like a marionette. Jim’s sword flashed clumsily in front of him, not of his own volition.
Deep stone grinding shook the room again, louder than before, and the skeletons I’d all but forgotten about bolted into the atrium at frightening speed, just as Rita had predicted.
The vines holding Jim propelled him toward us, swinging furiously. I fell back and slipped on the smooth floor, barely keeping my nose as the blade swished past. When Jim’s momentum carried him over, I grabbed his leg and got dragged halfway across the dais.
“Rita!”
“You’re doing great!” she yelled back, and left to chase the skeletons.
“Look out!” Jim shouted and stabbed down at me.
I twisted out of the way, but not far enough to avoid the blow entirely. The blade dug painfully into my hip to what felt like several inches.
A distracting red message appeared briefly before fading:
DAMAGE 2 [PIERCING]: Ethan Crane (HP: 8/10, hTick: 1/12m, Armor: 1/1)
Using the hem of my tunic, I pulled the blade out and struggled to keep Jim from drawing it back for another swing. The blade wasn’t razor-sharp, but if it slipped through my hand it’d cut me. Maybe Jim was helping, because his hand stayed motionless long enough for me to clamber to my feet while he flailed clumsily with his other arm.
Yes, he was definitely helping me. I could hear him grunting with effort as his sword arm jerked up and down, side to side.
Drawing upon every ounce of my miserable one point of strength, I jerked his sword arm and stabbed the blade into the thick, fleshy vines overhead.
Another distracting message, this one yellow:
DAMAGE 12 [SLASHING]: Shambling Creeper (Attack Bonus: +20%)
Jim screamed as the evil vegetation shook spastically. At the same time, that awful grinding had magnified to deafening levels.
I was able to twist the sword away for another cut. One, two, three chops—with Jim helping—and he fell to the floor in a spray of green slime from the thrashing severed ends.
DAMAGE 14 [SLASHING]: Shambling Creeper (Attack Bonus: +20%)
DAMAGE 26 [SLASHING]: Shambling Creeper (Attack Bonus: +20%, Critical)
DAMAGE 13 [SLASHING]: Shambling Creeper (Attack Bonus: +20%, Overkill: 3)
The messages came and went, followed by a brand-new notification I hadn’t yet seen:
ENEMY DEFEATED: Shambling Creeper, 700 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
Chapter Thirteen
There was a lot of slime, and it gushed by the gallon. It didn’t seem poisonous, thank goodness, but we shielded our faces against the downpour nonetheless. When it ended, the once-lush vines reverted to stone, then fell and shattered on the dais.
“Oh man,” Jim said, scrambling to his feet. “It was horrible! It kept whispering to me. Saying it was gonna kill me and … Hey, what are you doing?”
I’d grabbed his sword off the ground.
Rita was racing in circles around the room huffing and puffing, as well as limping. The skeletons—all six of them—were right on her tail. At one point, when they appeared to slow, she stopped, wagged her fanny at them, then laughed loudly. They didn’t like that at all and kept after her.
My wound hurt a lot more now. Just how realistic was this world?
Worried I’d bleed out before I could help her, I dashed to the closest skeleton and cut it down from behind with a massive swing. It twitched and writhed on the ground. As with Jim, the vines holding it turned to brittle stone and fell apart.
DAMAGE 8 [SLASHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Attack Penalty: -20%, Overkill: 1)
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 50 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
Two skeletons turned and faced me, and one of them actually spoke.
“Diiiiie…” it rasped in a voice like sandpaper. “Diiiiie!”
“Huh?” I said. “You can talk?”
“Diiiiie!” it said and rushed toward me with outstretched hands.
I crushed this one’s skull with an overhead slash but got raked across the face by the other’s skeletal claws.
DAMAGE 13 [SLASHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Attack Penalty: -20%, Target Bonus: +5%, Overkill: 6)
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 50 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
DAMAGE 6 [CLAWING]: Ethan Crane (HP: 2/10, hTick: 1/11m, Armor: 0/1)
In life, I can honestly say I’d never “seen red” before, but I did now. Blinding rage mingled with the pain in my face, and I kicked the other one in the crotch as hard as I could. My weaponless attack against a creature with no actual crotch barely hurt it but gave me room to hit with the sword. It was enough—the vines animating it crumbled and the skeleton collapsed in a bony pile.
DAMAGE 6 [CRUSHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Unarmed Penalty: -50%, Attack Bonus: +20%, Target Bonus: +5%)
DAMAGE 10 [SLASHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Attack Penalty: -20%, Overkill: 9)
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 50 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
And though I’d only killed the one, a second notification arrived unexpectedly:
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 35 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
Before I could see who’d killed it, another skeleton filled the gap, and this one had a sword. I fell back swinging blindly with the hope of deflecting its attacks through luck, if not skill. With only 2 health points left, any hits the creature landed would almost certainly kill me.
Back and forth I swung desperately while the creature advanced. When I swung too far to the right and lost balance, the skeleton growled, drew back for a slash…
And Rita soared into it with a flying kick I never would have expected from her.
The thing separated in the middle and busted apart on the stone floor. She didn’t stop there—she snagged its skull and smashed another one that reached for her, imploding both skulls in the process.
Perhaps due to her proximity, Rita’s damage messages were now visible, and colored in blue:
DAMAGE 15 [CRUSHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Attack Bonus: +20%, Overkill: 8)
DAMAGE 14 [CRUSHING]: Wimpy Skeleton (Attack Bonus: +20%, Overkill: 7)
The messages kept coming:
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 35 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
ENEMY DEFEATED: Wimpy Skeleton, 35 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)
My next messages displayed as shining gold text, and I felt they were for me alone:
YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO LEVEL 1!
+5 Stat Points
+1 Class Point
+1 Skill Point
I was about to ask Rita if she’d leveled too when Jim ran over.
“We gotta get out of here!” he yelled.
He started to run and I grabbed his arm. He whirled in panic, eyes wild, fists raised like I was one of his abusive sisters.
I let go and stepped back. “Calm down, okay? They’re dead. See?”
Jim’s gaze darted everywhere at once. “We gotta get out!”
“Would you relax?” Rita said, brushing her hands off and examining her leg. Her tunic was red with fresh blood, though it wasn’t a gusher. “This is the best part.”
From overhead came a steady shower of stone chips. The walls of the atrium were shedding their rigid coating of vines, releasing bones, armor, weapons, and glinting gold coins.
“Holy cow!” Jim said, fear suddenly f
orgotten. “Jackpot!”
“Wait!” Rita said.
He didn’t wait. He ran toward one of the walls—and an enormous stone flower crushed his head.
A series of deafening booms shook the cavernous atrium, and the shower of death intensified. Rita pulled me into a huddle where we covered our heads as stinging golf ball-sized chunks rained down for several minutes.
When it was safe to look up, we found the walls stripped smooth. The atrium was now much darker, with only a little light coming from the mossy debris on the ground. On a hunch, I ambled over to a section of wall nearest the tunnel and felt around … and a rune lit up. More runes lit up next to it, then more, spreading in a chain reaction of sunny yellow light from floor to ceiling. Way up high was another tunnel, but there was no way we could get to it without a really long ladder.
“We’re not powerful enough to continue,” Rita said, staring at it. “That’s the point of putting it up so high. Though I do sort of wonder what this room was used for.”
I laughed. “You actually think there’s a reason?”
“Just wondering is all.”
“You were amazing, by the way,” I said. “That flying kick—wow.”
Rita laughed. “I used to take karate. The game spotted me three points in unarmed combat. That’s why my damage wasn’t penalized. Finally came in useful.”
“It sure did.”
“The thing about skeletons,” she said, “is you have to break them up, scatter their energy, and then they fall apart. Good job with the Creeper.”
Flush with excitement, I beamed at the compliment. I felt like I was ten again when everything was new.
“You’re great at this,” I said. “Listen … I know we just met, but do you want to stick together? I was never a gamer, but I’ll pick it up as I go.”
“You did good,” she said. “You must have hit an artery in that thing up there. How many XP did you get for it? I got five hundred, even though I never touched it.”
I stared at her dumbly. “What’s an ex-pee?”
Rita covered her mouth and laughed. “X-P. It’s short for experience points. Just easier to say.”