by Prax Venter
The walls were immense granite blocks packed together with age and the ceiling was one slab of flawless stone that had to be the bottom of a Town building. As Jack studied the custom construction, he wondered if they could build their own bunkers under what might be flawlessly supported ceilings. He shelved the branching concept of an underground network of cave-in-proof passages under Blackmoor Cove for now. All components of his brain needed to be focused on getting he and the love of his digital life out of real danger.
“She didn’t get a Negative Mark,” Lex said, giving up her pointless search. “I… what if she sails to Blackmoor, Jack? No one here will believe us.”
Jack looked over to see her eyes start swelling with tears and he moved to embrace her again. They each drew strength from the other until it seemed as if enough time had passed to start safely working this problem.
The door itself had a ring handle on each side with no locking mechanism, but when he tried to push it open, it only moved a minuscule amount.
“She’s blocked it with something,” Jack said after one more hard, sustained push. Even with both working in tandem and bolstered by terror, the door still only wiggled in its frame.
“Unequip the mace,” Jack said, cycling through standard videogame logic. “There has to be some way out of this puzzle and maybe we can see some hole if we let our eyes adjust.”
“Good,” his wife said, drenching them in pure darkness. “I am so glad you’re in here with me, Jack. This… this is a situation and a cruelty I am having a difficult... Having a hard time thinking what we can possibly do.”
“I know. Your world doesn’t seem to have prisons. More like visible karma meters, kinda.” Jack pulled up his inventory and zipped down through all the non-equipable items he had. Food, satchels of water, cords of wood, his entire wardrobe of decorative clothes, rope, torches, ink, paper, seaweed, a fishing net made from seaweed, a stack of raw fish caught with the net himself… Nothing seemed helpful here, so he focused to the first low-level spear he had and sent his intention to only hold the item, not equip it.
The weight appeared in his hand, and he let out a sigh of relief. He couldn’t really use the system to attack with it, but it was progress.
“She seems to think as you do,” Lex said from behind while he carefully pressed the tip as far as he could between the door and its solid frame. Jack grunted in response as he jammed it in and pulled back, trying to use the unbreakable weapon as leverage. Lex continued, “I obviously don’t mean the evil parts. But she called us digital irritants, so she must have believed you were spawned of Mother Sana.”
He wasn’t getting anywhere with prying and almost dislocated a shoulder trying to crack their cage.
“It’s probably why Alt had to vanish,” Jack panted, taking a break. “If she inspected me and saw the exact name of her old ship on a glitched sword belt stuck to a new Irrelevant King waltzing into her place of power, she might have erased us instantly.”
“She is neither Townsfolk nor Hero,” the Bastion said from crotch level, and he could feel her trying to get a peek under the door. Jack heard her scrape what had to be her sword against the stone, and he carefully stepped away to give her room to try her approach. Lex continued speaking from the floor as she rattled it against the metal door. “What exactly is she doing here in this beautiful Town? That vile woman is not a part of our world.”
Once he was a step back and paying attention, he could see the faint pinholes of light where she must’ve chipped out rusted bits of the door.
“Come see,” she said after she’d done what she could, and he watched the Bastion-shaped shadow push off from the ground.
Jack pressed his cheek to the cold stone floor, and as he slid near the corner, he could make out the flicker of torchlight on the dirt outside their stone prison. The door was thicker than he had hoped but if he squinted, he could make out several five-ton stone blocks from the nearby cave-in braced against the far wall. It didn’t look promising.
“You can Teleport out,” his wife said by his ear.
He turned to face her in the darkness, her nose inches from his.
“Perfect. Yeah I can push over whatever is holding this door closed, and-”
“Jack,” she said, and the intensity her eyes made him freeze. “If you cannot open the door, you must get word to Haylee and the others. Someone must warn Blackmoor.”
He looked up at her, internalizing what she just implied and the revulsion was so strong he had a hard time forming sentences.
“No! No, no, no. With that thing out there? I’m not. I am not leaving you locked in here. I will be able to kick down whatever is outside. There isn’t another choice-”
“Jack,” she repeated, putting her leather gauntlet on his shoulder before he could turn back to the slit under the door. “I am the Queen of Blackmoor Kingdom. While I am important, the people of that Kingdom are far more important. I know you know that. If you cannot move the obstruction, you must do what you can to warn the world as fast as possible. Our home, Jack. This Corrupted Velintanna might not return for hours and only you can cross great spaces in the blink of an eye. We cannot just wait for our destruction.” She cradled his face as tears spilled out of her golden eyes then added, “But do try your best to get your butt back to rescue me quickly, King Jack.”
He pressed his lips to hers, and Jack felt a void open in his chest when he calculated the possibility that it was their last one.
“I’ll be back very soon,” he said pulling away, positive the emotional diesel pumping through his core right now would be enough to break his wife free from anything. Jack gave her a peck on her small nose before pressing his face to the floor again and squinting his eye close to the peephole.
With a firm grasp on his Tier Three instant shift to anywhere within visual range, Jack triggered its activation and found himself lying in the tunnel outside.
The first thing he did was roll to his feet and search the immediate area. The subterranean passage continued back the way they came past two more such closets and then hit the first intersection. Jack didn’t see any high-heeled women further down the tunnel and turned to start knocking over-
His breath stopped in his throat as torchlight flickered over the efficient barrier Velintanna built before she left. Four massive stone chunks from the cave-in behind now stood evenly stacked- two by two, door to wall and floor to ceiling. There was no way he’d be able to dislodge a single one of these without heavy machinery.
Jack growled and tried anyway. A simple, Floor-4 spear popped into his hands and became decently jammed between the ancient stone blocks but even standing on the unbreakable shaft and forcing his gloved fists against the ceiling, Jack simply wasn’t strong enough to impact the wedged-in blockage.
He turned to face the iron barrier between his heart and hers and felt the plummeting inevitability constrict his insides.
“I can’t let this happen,” he whispered, banging his fist on the inch of door not blocked by massive bricks. As if his digital mind became stuck in a processing loop, Jack found himself unable to move.
He couldn’t leave Lex.
Yet, he couldn’t just stand there like an idiot.
He couldn’t even go back again until his Teleport reset in 15 minutes.
Doing nothing was not an option!
He would not leave her behind…
The blocks of stone to his right silently screamed their solidity in his face, and he hated them. Hated Velintanna. He balled up a fist and punched the closest one on its flat surface and almost snapped his wrist despite the protective gear.
Reaching for anything, Jack triggering his Data Blast ability and was shocked by the visually impressive wave of orange fire radiating out from him. Other than losing 20 mana and flickering the wall-mounted torch behind him, nothing else happened.
Jack took a step back, snarling in disgust. The magic ability had only knocked back foes and never affected the environment before, so he wasn’t surpris
ed when the immobile bricks didn’t crumble before him. Especially when he should be doing zero damage anyway.
On a whim, he held out his hand and was still able to burst out a Mining Laser from his palm. Yet, it too had no physical effect on the environment.
Now that he’d been out in the passage alone for who knows how long, Jack started feeling the pressure of time. He had to do something, now- find some explosives, or someone to help, or something. Anything.
He took a deep breath and remembered for the first time since shifting out into the cave that Haylee, Ryea, Jip even existed.
The King of Blackmoor dropped to his chest and pressed his mouth to the corner of the rusted iron door.
“Lex,” he shouted to be heard above the industrial mill above. “I love you, and I will come back for you. No matter the cost!”
With time not on his side, Jack ignored the searing agony inflicted on his soul from sprinting away from his golden-haired Bastion trapped alone in darkness.
- 6 -
Jack tried not to trip over the abandoned gardening equipment as he dashed through the underground waterway with his notepad open. The intangible interface floated ahead as he retraced his steps toward the surface, and after some initial frustration, he found he was able to resize the display’s shape and position at will. He’d just shoved it to the edge of his vision when he noticed his own footsteps echoing and stopped on the bridge they’d crossed earlier.
It was here that he first noticed this place was a custom-built underground structure, and the idea to jump off hit him again. Everything beyond the two eternally burning torches was a void of blackness yet Jack took a few precious moments to think through his instincts about this potential shortcut.
He knew the cave was high enough not to drown him with an underground current by the smell of fresh air rushing in to oppose the man-made river. Making his choice based on both desperation and years of experience, Jack vaulted over the railing and into the darkness. This could be a terrible mistake, but he knew caves, and he knew the risks.
Jack’s boots slipped off the moss-covered bottom after his head went under by about two feet and felt even better about his choice as he pushed back above the surface. Darkness enveloped him, but he wasn’t a bad swimmer and had no problem staying afloat in the freshwater runoff. He did bounce roughly off two curves before he saw the circle of light broadcasting freedom far ahead.
His exit orb.
Rage gripped him again and he powered through a mad sprint of breaststrokes until his knee hit the ground, then Jack barely squeezed through a decorative rock formation at the back of a shallow irrigation pond. Once outside under the storm-darkening sky, Jack crawled low in the brown water to the nearby shock of greenery.
A glance at his surroundings told him he’d come out in a tiered series of emerald rice patties on the northern tip of the mega Town- a flight of lush, carpeted stairs for some sea giant.
The coast was close and so was the 100-foot eastern Wall of the city. Even without Thymus’s unlocked Defensive Lightning Towers, the quartz brick fortification seemed impenetrable. The thought sent his eyes down to his missing scabbard and he remembered that those Towers were added by the system-level AI who’d been a part of him since being resurrected into this new surreal life. The terror of their situation flared again, prodding him forward, and Jack checked the time as he risked getting up on his knees.
[02:08:09]
Just over two hours left until Exit.
Most of the Farmers who worked these fields must have all gone home for storm-related reasons or otherwise, and despite the few Townsfolk he saw squatted intent on their work, no one saw the muddy King of Blackmoor crawl out of the sewer.
There were still five minutes left on his Teleport, so Jack crept up the wet levels of farmland as he solidified his plan. Finding Haylee was the goal. She would have seen their Party info drop from her custom UI when Alt freaked out, but he didn’t know how exactly she would react. Would she demand to see her King and Queen? What reason could she give?
The moment his Teleport was ready again, Jack popped to the top of the Town Hall. He’d chosen a decorative section of vertical stone that stood out against the darkening sky, but since he’d targeted the side of a surface, Jack fell a few feet to the roof after reappearing. Many experiences had made him sure-footed and he only landed with a grunt instead of a snapped ankle.
As it was on the mountain top, the wind was much stronger when there was nothing in the way to bar its blustering gusts, so Jack didn’t dare step near the edge in fear someone would detect his flapping hair. Above, the fast-moving black clouds racing from the East trumpeted their impending downpour with deep rumbles.
The first thing Jack did was locate and lock in the irrigation pond he’d emerged from into his memory. He then spun around under the blackening sky until finding the path back to his wife. Once he’d made sure Ivyset Crag’s layout was either etched into his mind or recorded in his hovering notepad, Jack turned westward toward the Docks. Everything that far away was mostly gray shadow in the growing darkness, but his epic boat was there among those distant bobbing blobs.
That was where he needed to end up, and somewhere between the here and there were the three others he’d brought into this Venus Flytrap of a Town. If he followed the inner walls cordoning off the rest of the city, he found a quadrant of the hilltop dedicated to colorful mazes of vivid vegetation. This had to be the mayoral garden.
Jack narrowed his focus to try and see if he could spot any Dark Prisms while he waited for his 15-minute Teleport, yet the tangles of living artwork separating the foot paths obscured more than half of the space, and Jack saw almost no one. In fact, most people he saw were Townsfolk rushing to get in out of the coming rain.
Not seeing anything but botanical splendor, Jack turned his mind on breaking Lex out of her underground cell. Everything he could think of involved bringing in outside help or physically moving those stones. He didn’t remember passing any explosives shops while walking through this fairytale of a city, and even if he did, there was a chance people would be searching for him again. Window shopping for Subroutine Sana’s version of TNT might not be wise for several reasons.
He could wait the two hours for hordes of Heroes to come out of the Tower at Exit and cause a big enough scene to trigger a confrontation with Velintanna. It could easily backfire in several ways, but that plan required waiting around for two hours, and if he had no other solution by then- so be it.
His instant movement ability still had about a minute left so Jack shot a final glance far to the East. From here, he could see over the Wall standing high at the edge of Town, but after that, the world became mist and dark curled shapes covered in house-sized thorns. The rain he knew was coming fell over that distant tangle as smeared lines and Jack nodded his appreciation to Mother Sana. He knew the darkness and noise would only cover their-
“…escape,” Jack finished his thought out loud as he saw a thin beam of pure white light connect a nearby building to the low moving clouds. The afterimage lasted long enough for Jack to get an idea of where it came from, and a smile split his face.
Moving away from the Mayor’s private gardens, Jack tiptoed toward the Town Hall’s back end. Creeping over the ancient vegetation that infested this side, he parted a few vivid green leaves and surveyed the area.
Haylee’s signal came from an enormous building that could be a luxury condominium complex back in the real world, yet if he were remembering the angle correctly, it came from the side facing the sea. And away from him.
Pulling in a lungful of humid pre-storm air, he narrowed his focus on the distant structure’s roof- then after the instant shift in reality, he took another breath to stabilize his perception on this new surface. Scrambling toward the coastal side, he found eight floors of six windows spaced down to the ground level but only had a vague idea which one the ray came from.
A few heartbeats passed where Jack had thought he might have wasted
a 15-minute Teleport and began eyeing the inner wall that wrapped around behind- But a familiar voice floated up to him.
“How dare you hold us against our will!” a furious Ryea bellowed, narrowing the possibilities down considerably. “No, I’ll not wait patiently!” she continued.
Jack’s practiced eye traced the path of thickest roots before he stretched out his fingers and began climbing. It wasn’t a straight shot if he wanted to avoid shimmying over a potential occupant’s window. Additionally, parts of the leafy tendrils pulled away from the wall unless he moved quickly. Scaling vertical surfaces went smoothest when he shut off his brain to let his body think for him, and Jack found himself dangling from the correct glittering quartz ledge in half a minute.
Before just hopping in through the window and shouting ‘ta-da!’, he pulled his body up by his fingers and slowly peeked into the room.
Jip stood helpless near Ryea who was currently pounding her fist on the door, and the Dark Prism Haylee shifted her wide gray eyes directly to his. She rushed to the window and looked down on him.
“Is it clear?” he whispered.
She nodded then backed into the room as Jack pulled himself up. They were in a comfortable suite with a separate bedroom and living room, but his young advisor pointed a finger at the bottom of the door where Ryea still stood banging, oblivious to his presence.
It took a moment to understand the contraption wrapped around the bottom, but it was essentially a metal flap on hinges that reminded him of a car boot but for doorframes. The custom-made device was absolutely not a part of this building- or of this virtual world.
“Where is Lex?” Haylee whispered, grabbing his arm.
“She’s trapped too,” Jack said, feeling his soul twist in agony over not knowing- he shoved it all away again and stalked over to Jip and Ryea.