Gamer Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  “I was out for a quiet afternoon slicing open basilisks and gathering healing essences when a mystical woman appeared.” The blue-armor-clad holy warrior pulled a large, clear gem from a pocket in his gold weave cloak. “She was the same one that led us to the lair of Helfur the Unmentionable and she gave me this and a warning.” He smiled at Gorag and explained, “I’ve been waiting for you to return from Hel to tell the story.”

  The wide-shouldered knight paused and the smile grew into a wide grin. “And by the way, if I am not there to heal, maybe you need to set a limit of no more than two rainbow dragons at a time,” he chided the thick-limbed fighter. “Getting torn to ribbons and doomed to Hel was not fun for you, but we all had to wait for you to get back.”

  Gorag had the decency to look embarrassed. Sure there had been three of the largest dragons in this world guarding the helmet. But he had seen only one when he charged into that cave. And he had almost gotten it, too.

  “We all know, if you agree, that somehow we have only a few more days left. And I for one really will be honked if we fail to defeat the Enry after spending eight months getting ready. That means that none of us can afford to be banished to Hel again. Agreed?” The paladin’s gaze was fixed on Gorag, who had probably died more times that the other three had all together.

  Gorag stared at the floor and his shoulders tightened. Since they were almost five feet across and were more heavily muscled than any normal human shoulders could possibly be, the sight of those cleanly etched muscles tightening in frustration was impressive.

  Arturus was pushing hard and beginning to sound negative. Trying to head off an argument, Erica quickly added, “Don’t forget, it might have been another pre-planned setup by them.” That was all they knew. That there was a “them” and they were in some way involved in the hero’s fate. “It would not be the first time that they made sure one of us was in Hel when they need someone there.”

  Gorag smiled gratefully and seemed to relax.

  “So how does the gem work and how will it enable us to destroy the Enry?” Maig quickly asked Arturus.

  “The gem is tuned to detect and point the way to the greatest evil within a day’s ride. Since we have spent the last months eradicating just about every major demon, pillaging dragon, and evil undead in the world of Aras, there is only one more evil left for the gem to react to—the Enry itself,” the Paladin explained.

  “Unless, of course, the whole thing is another set up by the Enry or thrown in by them just to drive us all crazy,” Gorag snapped, still feeling a little out of touch after his time in Hel and the paladin’s comments.

  “That would fit with the warning,” Arturus went on thoughtfully. “ ‘Time is short and hesitation means failure.’ ”

  “Do we have a choice?” Maig observed.“Either we use that honkin’ big gem or sit around here and slap goblins until we all find ourselves back in Hel permanently.”

  It was quickly agreed to take the chance that the gem was real and the mood improved. But there was a reason to unite and face their ultimate challenge. In the next few days they would triumph or not. One more trek into danger would be the culmination of their months of fighting, developing exotic skills, and gathering the most powerful magical items in the land.

  “Hel or Hero,” Maig stood and toasted with a jewel-laden cup of mead as a smile grew on every face.

  Gorag laughed and the sound shook the walls. One way or another they were going to Hel in style.

  “Lord of Hel, the transition went smoothly. Gorag is back and has rejoined the team,” the psychotechnician confirmed, looking up from his panel with a smile. It had started as a joke, and over the long, nervous months they had all begun using the nicknames a fascinated press had given them.

  Flight Commander Jeremy Berger acknowledged the report with a nod, but did not return the smile. That was not a surprise. The two men had worked together for almost ten years, and the tech had seen the Station Control Center’s leader smile maybe twice in all that time.

  Both knew why Berger was so somber and fanatically devoted to the project, but never spoke of it. Some pains are best left unmentioned.

  Relieved that the transition had gone smoothly, all the scientists in the large room checked their boards and then sat back and waited with a patience born from long months of practice.

  The massive iron gate slammed down again with such force that tiles clattered to the floor as they fell from the nearby walls. Gorag sagged against one of those walls and looked around the room. The entranceway to Enry’s tower was at least fifty steps across, the room’s ceiling not much closer than the intricate frescoes that covered the far wall. A blue light coming from no visible source filled the room. Also filling the room was frustration.

  Nothing they had been able to do had managed to keep open the thick, magically-protected door barring their way into this tower, Enry’s final hiding place. There was even the faint sound of laughter from far above them, likely coming from the Demon Lord himself. Gorag was just strong enough to lift the door, but as soon as it was open the dragon waiting just behind it attacked. For a third time the warrior had been forced to drop the iron barrier in order to defend himself from the dragon’s claws and bite. As he did the door had slammed down with unnatural speed. For the third time it had happened so quickly that he had not been able to hold it open long enough for even the wondrously quick Erica to slip past. Not to mention that this would likely strand her on the wrong side of the door and alone with a very large, very powerful killing machine.

  No spell by Maig or invocation from Arturus had been able to budge the portal or keep it open. Every time Gorag had heaved it up the creature waiting just beyond it had struck almost instantly. Arturus could heal the damage from one such blow, but a second would have quickly returned Gorag to Hel. He had no choice but to let the gray metal door slam shut once again.

  They had been stopped dead by the dragon and the iron portal for almost an entire day and there still seemed no solution. Splatters of blood on the wall reflected the ferocity with which they had taken out their frustration on the occasional monster that had wandered near.

  “Muscle, dumb muscle, is not going to be enough,” Arturus observed, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

  “Gonna pray it open?” the warrior snapped back.

  “Just observing that your technique here is no more valid than the equations in your eleven-dimension interpretation of string theory,” the paladin retorted.

  “Huh?” Erica wondered. It wasn’t that the strange words coming from the holy warrior made no sense, but what worried her was that they almost did. Somehow there seemed grave danger in that.

  “No time for philosophy, Arturus,” Maig hurriedly interrupted. “We have a mission to accomplish and the countdown is running . . .” His voice trailed off as his own words confused him further.

  They all knew that time was short, though none understood why or how they knew this. But the four were used to some of their world just not making sense. Things just were and life was too full to contemplate its strangeness. Though there had been considerable drunken, and occasionally bitter, discussions of why it seemed that no matter how powerful each of them became, there was always something just a little more powerful waiting to battle them. When they had first gathered, anything as powerful as the dragon beyond this door would have easily slaughtered them all with one swipe. Now they were annoyed that they could not get at it.

  Had there been time to contemplate this and other anomalies, the conversation might have raised some uncomfortable questions among the four heroes. But there never seemed to be time to speculate on Asan as a whole when so many local parts of the world seemed bent on tearing them apart with tooth, claw, and spell. Each time such a conversation started along these lines, Arturus noticed that fate intervened, normally in the most nasty or savage way possible. And this was the case again as two massively obese, armor-clad ogres strode through the door on the far side of the chamber, swinging man-sized c
lubs and screaming their challenge.

  One of those war cries turned to a scream of agony as Erica shadow walked behind one of the towering monsters, jumped over it from behind, and then tore it open from throat to waist with her vorpal daggers.

  Just as quickly the surviving ogre swung his club and caught the lithe rogue as she finished her kill. The weapon hit with a sickening thud that sent the small, point-eared assassin flying and near death.

  Enraged, Gorag bellowed his own challenge. But just as quickly Maig rushed over and gestured for the warrior to stay by the door. He hesitated, then obeyed. Meanwhile, Arturus chanted a life-saving rune song for Erica that filled the entranceway with a haunting, half-understood song.

  All of four feet tall and fifty kilos heavy, the tiny magician strode several steps in front of the fighter by the dragon’s door and very slowly and deliberately made a universally understood obscene gesture in the remaining ogre’s direction. At the same instant ice appeared near the magic user’s feet. In less than a second the shiny surface covered ten paces in every direction and Gorag planted himself carefully as it spread under him as well.

  Ogres are not bright, but they are touchy, and the snarl this one made as it rushed toward Maig was suitably inhuman. Each of the charging monster’s steps shook the floor as it ran. It was only a step away from the tiny challenger, club raised for a killing blow, when the little wizard vanished.

  The ogre tried to stop, visibly confused at the loss of its quarry. But the slippery ice remained, and instead it first slid rather than stopped to fall ignominiously onto its massive rear as its own momentum carried it forward. Just for good measure, Arturus’s chant became one of weakness and the large humanoid found it could do nothing but continue to slide toward Gorag.

  Strangely the warrior had not even drawn Demondoom. Instead, when the ogre was almost upon him, he bent and once more strained to open the heavy door. The ice stopped at the doorway, but that was enough. The moment the ogre slid under the now-open portal Gorag let it go. Its weight slammed down onto the two-ton monster, killing it instantly. For good measure the waiting dragon gobbled down the head of the already deceased ogre with a single bite.

  But what remained of the body of the ogre held the door up and with a battle cry Gorag dove through. The others followed, daggers and magic flying ahead of them. A searing blast of destruction emanated from Maig’s wand, distracting the dragon just as the big warrior charged. Before it looked back down he had jumped upward and decapitated the chewing giant with one swing.

  As the magical reptile’s head fell to the floor its jaws opened and the ogre’s head spilled out. The whole attack came so fast that it had never had a chance to swallow. The severed head spewed blood as it rolled across the floor and ended up at Erica’s feet.

  “Dammit. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of leather armor?” she complained with a grin. The others smiled back. The assault on Enry’s final hiding place had been bloody work, and already there was not a single handspan of her embroidered leather armor not already covered with blood or worse.

  Berger tried not to panic at the mention of string theory. There wasn’t enough time before the landing that they could lose the team on the way in. Only a few days of flight remained. But if HEL had failed, how would they get the team home? Still at this point, with the transmission delays involved, there wasn’t much more that they could do but wait and see if the speech detectors had picked up the anomaly and generated a distraction.

  Engineers and scientists all crowded around the biometric display showing the condition of each team member and worried. All the readouts were optimal. The gray-haired flight controller didn’t relax, but he did manage to look slightly less intense. Every board remained green, and the men and women at them willed they stay that way. No one wanted to contemplate a simulation failure at this point and the near certain death that would mean to the team on the return.

  Gorag’s back ached. They had spent the night, exhausted and wounded, barricaded in what appeared to be some sort of Arabian Nights-decorated harem, sans wives. Since they knew Enry was not human, they had all wondered what the room’s real function was. But a search had found nothing more that beds and baths. Unfortunately, the dainty beds had collapsed under the massive warrior’s bulk, and he had spent the night on the tiled floor.

  The warrior looked around and was surprised to see that the others seemed sore and tired, too. Normally they woke each morning fully healed and rested. Then he realized the difference. These were different parameters. Most missions they completed had lasted only one day. Yesterday was the second day they had spent slogging and slashing their way up Enry’s tower. Perhaps the lack of regeneration could be attributed to the fact that they had not yet completed their mission, though he knew they were nearing the final battle.

  Yeah, that sounded right, close to the end sounded just right. And there was only one more floor of the tower remaining above.

  With renewed optimism the warrior yawned and stretched, causing Maig to scuttle a few steps further away to avoid being squashed by Gorag’s massive fists.

  “I see you are finally awake,” the diminutive mage observed in a friendly tone. “Pity you humans traded strength for endurance.”

  “Enough of your gnomish bigotry, short stuff,” Erica quipped from behind a carved panel featuring mermaids and mermen doing embarrassing things only possible in water.

  “He’s close,” Arturus observed as he moved toward the door and began clearing away the couches they had blocked it with.

  Everyone felt a sense of urgency, but no one would admit it. Still, to the paladin’s dismay, not thinking about how some of their world didn’t seem to make sense was getting harder and harder for him to avoid.

  The hallway outside was still filled with slime from the legions of wyrms and giant spiders they had overcome the night before. The scraps of flesh and chitin were beginning to decay and the smell was disgusting.

  “Good thing we are out of food and didn’t breakfast.” Erica observed making a face at the putrid smell. She looked fresh and ready, having found a tub full of perfumed water and used it to clean both herself and her ornately decorated leather armor.

  “Which reminds me, I’m hungry,” Maig added trying to sound optimistic. “Let’s tank this guy and get back to the Unicorn.”

  “Look who wants to walk point today . . .” Gorag observed sarcastically. Being a wizard, Maig tended to stay toward the back on the march or in a fight.

  “Beauty before brains,” Maig gestured down the hall.

  Erica was just starting to think about how every time there was any unrest among the party something very unpleasant happened when the fireball cast by an insane adept went off, scorching them all and singeing her newly cleaned leathers. The rogue grimaced. An hour cleaning and one minute into the next day it was a mess again.

  The rogue lost the annoyed thought in the satisfaction of bounding down the hallway and slamming both blades into the throat of the spellcaster before he could conjure another attack. His blood was human and smelled of copper, but with a hint of brimstone. It splashed onto both of Erica’s sleeves. She mumbled her annoyance this time, not wanting to attract more trouble.

  This taste of combat seemed to focus them all on the task at hand. Somewhere close ahead was the Demon King Enry. They needed to destroy it to save this universe from a thousand years of evil domination. None of them had been sure how they knew it would be a thousand years, but it had sounded right. A millennia was long enough to ensure they realized the importance of the upcoming battle.

  “Sir, we are only a two hours from the end of the deceleration burn,” the technician observed to Berger. “Do you want us to start the transition?”

  “How long from start until they should be at full function?” the flight director snapped, never lifting his eyes from the stream of data on his workstation.

  “Based on our tests here, the tanks will need at most three hours to bring them fully around
after we start,” came the cautious answer. “Maybe a bit less, but I want to have a margin for error.”

  “And I want to be able to immerse them again. That means they need to be psychologically ready to go back under,” Berger replied in carefully level tones. “No one is going to get lost again on my watch.”

  Everyone knew better than to argue. Some had been there since the last mission and others just knew that his only son had been one of those lost.

  “Submerging the awareness of anyone as mentally strong as any member of this team is hard. It will go smoother, with less subconscious resistance, if they are successful this time,” the administrator explained, straining to sound reasonable.“The HEL system says they have reached the final scenario later then planned, but maybe not too late.” Then his voice hardened again. “And that is our best hope of getting them back alive and sane.”

  Berger paused and seemed to be staring off into space, which in a very real way he was. The aging flight commander then pronounced, “I am going to give it every chance and hope they win. We wait.”

  No one argued. No one needed to ask what would be the result if the four were defeated with no time left to try again. Everyone in the command center was painfully aware of that answer and just how fragile the sanity-preserving hold of their psychometric technology was.

  Enry was not just big, Gorag realized too late. He was also sneaky. As was befitting the Lord of All Evil, the combat began with a deception. The enormous demon vaguely resembled a gigantic lizard-man that had a squid for a head, crab claws for hands, and had been scaled up to about ten times the size of even Gorag. Even as he charged forward the warrior wondered how it ate with claws for hands. Then he realized the main component of its diet was likely overconfident warriors.