Continue Online (Part 5, Together)

by Stephan Morse

  My wife stepped up the ridge to get a slightly higher vantage point. Her head shook and lips tightened in a frown. “I’ll message Awesome Jr.; he can talk to his father. Hopefully they’re still down there somewhere.”

  “I bet those have something to do with it.” I pointed at four glowing buildings in the distance. Each one was roughly five stories tall but wider at the base, almost like domes. A dull red energy arced off their tops like sun flares. Behind those four buildings was the drop into the ocean. Wind howled along the cut-open forest.

  “Probably,” Xin responded while poking at an invisible keyboard. “But what?”

  One of the red domes flared with a brighter light. Red energy lashed into the town and sent debris from nearby buildings scattering.

  I closed my eyes to ping the area. Numerous dots were nearby. Most came from behind at the edge of my range. One hand went to [Morrigu’s Gift] in case of hostility. But with one glance, even I could tell the closest Traveler meant no harm.

  The rainbow-haired woman named Calamity panted heavily behind us. She tried to stand up but kept doubling over from being [Winded]. “Jesus. You two. Move. Fast.”

  Xin looked into space, then waved. I put up a finger to the heavily breathing female with axes and waited for my wife.

  “I’ve got something. Junior says his father’s pinned down by a large monster. Not a World Eater, but something else made of metal? The message is getting jumbled.”

  “The. Sage’s guardian.” Calamity kept moving closer while using her hands to brace on anything nearby. Finally, she slammed down onto the overlook and stared at the broken remains of her player city. “We almost had. Them.”

  “We need Dusk,” I said, then let out a deep breath. “And more cupcakes.”

  What I wanted wasn’t cupcakes or Dusk. I wanted more time with Xin to enjoy our happy married life together. Standing here overlooking a ruined town only helped cement the feeling that had grown in the last few days. Our virtual life was going to rapidly turn into a mess.

  But at least we faced it together. Well, us and a group of slowly arriving players.

  Session Ninety-Two

  The City of

  [ItRainsTooMuch]

  What had been peaceful-seeming floating energy above each building changed as we traveled through the town. One of the four went haywire. Calamity’s face turned white before she explained what it meant. The colors and violence of the energy would apparently increase the longer people fought the boss without dying.

  Fortunately, only one such building had shifted to a new orange color. The other three were a peaceful dull red that became easier to see as the sky darkened with heavy clouds. Xin and I marched forth while the former town members slowly followed.

  The town itself was ravaged from repeated attacks. I could players fighting amid formerly whole buildings everywhere. Sword marks, explosive scorches, vines the crumbled walls. Broken traps plus filled pitfalls littered the streets and areas between buildings. Near the center of their city, some buildings still stood tall. Zip lines came off three-story drops to the ground, along with beams passing overhead.

  “Was I wrong?” I mused while we dashed through the near ruins. My voice stayed low in order to avoid attracting attention from any [World Eater]s that might be around. Something had left small holes all over the buildings.

  “About what?” Xin asked, equally hushed.

  Other players tromped along behind us. They would attract danger, if any arrived. The town seemed empty aside from the increasing violent orange that flickered from the far left building.

  I hadn’t intended to utter the question out loud. There was no retracting the thought though, so I took a breath, then finished. “Wanting to enjoy our honeymoon. Was it wrong to spend time doing that instead of trying to find these keys sooner?”

  Ahead of us, the light of the active building shifted to an emerald green. The change distracted me. Xin paused too, and we both waited to see what the color change meant.

  “Phase three,” Dwight said loudly from behind us. “Someone in there is trying hard. It’ll get worse on four, and god help them if they make it to five.”

  I shook my head. We could have easily shown up sooner to form a better plan of attack. We might have been able to prevent this place from turning into a woodland version of [Haven Valley]’s absolute mess. I certainly felt guilty over the unintended consequence. How many digital beings could have been rescued by finding another key? A month of whiling away hours with Xin had passed in a blink while the game crumbled around us. It felt like we had been slow dancing in a burning building.

  “I’m a little biased, but no. I don’t think so,” Xin said quietly as we finally stopped our approach entirely. “If I understand right, the Voices could have sent anybody they chose after the last pieces, then any one of five people could have unlocked the gateway. They don’t need you that much, I think.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” I said while trying in to take everything.

  The edge of town opened into a clearing. Everything surrounding the four larger buildings looked to have been demolished, burned, or reduced to ash. Energy lashes spilled off the roof, then slammed into the ground like whips, or waves crashing aground.

  “I don’t know everything. I’m only human, Gee.” She winced, then looked away. “Mostly. I feel human.”

  “You’re alive, babe, don’t doubt that,” I said quietly, then tried to make a joke. “Even if you went from a sexy space pilot to a brooding necromancer.”

  Xin had taken a few more steps forward to look at the destructive scene in front of us. Three skeletons stood ready to defend us from the energy arcing off the dome. I wrapped my arms around her while keeping quiet.

  “Hey!” Xee shouted at us. “Hecate, Hermes, what the hell are you two doing?”

  She’d used our character names. The other Travelers probably had an [Identification] skill like mine.

  I let go of Xin, then turned to see this town’s leaders standing near each other. Despite their apparent feud earlier, they were comfortable enough to be close. Everyone else bunched in around them. They looked like a gaggle of fully grown schoolchildren afraid of shadows.

  “Jesus Christ. Haven’t you heard of sneaking?” the man next to her said. Dwight looked uncomfortable walking in all that plate. He had far more weight on him than I did, and it showed in his face and chubby fingers.

  “Really, idiot?” Xee said while shoving her hand in Dwight’s face. “Hey, we need to camp before trying to go in there! Some of our people are going to log out and handle real life. We can’t all be no-lifers like you.”

  The woman stomped closer to Xin and me, and Xin’s trio of skeletons approached her with large serrated blades. They stood between the sweating townsfolk and us. I put a hand calmly onto my wife’s shoulder, which caused a brief shuffle of bone. Xin’s robe rippled as she flinched.

  “It’s okay. They’re just tired,” I whispered to her.

  Scanning the crowd made the problem obvious. None of these people were high-end players. They were probably closer to what I would be without William Carver’s legacy, or being pushed by the Voices and Shazam. Average, confused, and probably scrambling for the [Save Yourself] feature.

  “If you want to take a break, you can. I’m going to go in there and hopefully find Awesome,” I said while lifting a hand toward the distance.

  One of the domes glowed a bright emerald intertwined with a new thread of deep violet. The colors had to signify something with the fight. I didn’t know what though, and I couldn’t see a simple way of walking in. The energy might have been a design to keep people back during the boss fight, but then why had the town been built close enough to suffer feedback?

  “In the dome is a broken Sage’s Guardian. It’s got to be fighting someone, but no one we know has ever beaten one. Our only saving grace is they’ve been bound to the domes,” Dwight said.

  That sent a line of possibilities through me. If those bos
ses were part of a legacy item or key, then beating them would be a good goal. Awesome hopefully was in there too, which meant he’d either stumbled into this place or had guidance.

  “You don’t need to go in, and fighting them is stupid,” Xee said. “They react to some trigger words, but that only makes the fight harder. This idiot kept hoping to find the right words and make them into mounts.”

  Dwight shuffled while saying, “You didn’t need to tell them that. And we don’t know if they’re going to steal them from us.”

  A few people behind him were rapidly typing words onto their personal interface keyboards. People’s eyes looked at nothing while reading, then others would respond with more air gestures. They were likely talking within the guild about us.

  “So why are you here?” Dwight puffed up and tried to look demanding.

  His eyes went wide and focused on something behind me. I shifted to one side and saw the dome. The earth trembled as the dome we had been headed toward shifted colors again. Green changed and contained a thread of purple, which lashed off against the ground. Dirt sprayed into the air, showering broken buildings with new decorations. I shook my head.

  “I’m here for a quest!” My voice barely made it past the sound of crashing. “And I don’t think there’s time to explain it!”

  “Phase four! Whoever’s in there is really pushing the guardians!” Calamity stood nearby with her two axes at the ready. She was one of the few people actively looking around besides me.

  “But there’re more domes!” I didn’t understand this boss event, and it appeared to be going downhill quickly. We had one going haywire, and I had a feeling the others would be worse.

  “Yeah! The fourth dome is half broken too! Those World Eaters destroyed one boss’s shackles, so we tried to manually lock it up! Two’s the one going haywire!” Xee shouted while pointing in turn at each building.

  I took a breath and readied myself. Sitting out here wouldn’t do any good.

  “Anything from Awesome?” I asked my wife.

  Her head shook while her eyebrows wrinkled together. Seeing her frown upset me. This place would only get worse.

  “You’ve got to stay here,” I told Xin while looking around.

  Xin ignored me. She normally did when I made that kind of statement. [World Eater]s were a threat to her entire existence. Like other Locals, she would lose pieces of herself upon being eaten, or pulled into their pits, or whatever gimmick the [World Eater] in question used.

  My chest heaved with a sigh, but I didn’t argue. She had given me an earful on the subject more than once over the last month. We were in this together, despite my preference.

  Travelers bunched up behind us. Some eyed the sky. A single clap of thunder preceded the sky letting down all the water it could carry. In unison, a dozen players opened huge slick-looking umbrellas. Xin and I just stared blankly at them.

  The weather was easy enough to ignore after our month of traveling. I scanned through the growing sheet of water to figure out this town. There had to be more to this stupid boss than four domes with big ugly monsters inside. For instance, where was all that power coming from? Continue Online had rules for its events, even if they made no sense at first.

  “What are those?” I pointed along the city roads. Covered up by rubble were large black bundles at least three feet thick.

  “Grounding wires, we think.” Xee pushed back a strand of clumpy, sweaty hair.

  “Did nobody tell him about the grounding wires?” The player with huge thick glasses threw up his hands. He grumbled while stomping large plastic boots, then he pointed at guild members. “We need to get them working again to drain the charges. We can avoid the fight that way.”

  “But then those things attack. It’s easier just to let the boss power down after the party inside is wiped,” the plate-wearing man said.

  “No, we can’t resurrect those with a third strike. So people we need may be gone from the game forever. And what about your Locals? You’re just going to let them die?” I ranted.

  Dwight annoyed me, and his casual disregard for other people’s lives only made my attitude worse. He only cared about these Sage’s guardian devices.

  “All the Locals left already. They packed up the minute the event started.” Calamity wrinkled her nose and looked around with me. She, unlike the others, was intent upon figuring out a way through this.

  I sat down on the dirt and started scrawling out the summoning circle for Dusk. Hours of practice had solidified my ability to form this circle without Continue Online holding my hand. We didn’t have time to waste and needed the extra manpower.

  Summoning Dusk had turned into a last resort of sorts. My hesitation involved worrying about the [World Eater]s. Even a [Messenger’s Pet] could be deleted in a scuffle gone wrong. I tried to protect Xin and Dusk, but they were strong-willed and didn’t care about my wants.

  The other Travelers kept conversing while I summoned Dusk by whispering, “How about a cake instead?”

  “If we get the lines connected, we can drain out the arcs.”

  TockDoc and four other players were hefting the large black cords into different positions. I stared at the lines briefly and could see them stretching from each dome toward the city’s center.

  “That will let us approach, or better yet, let those inside find a way to escape,” TockDoc said.

  Golden light flashed brightly in front of me. Two people dropped what they were doing and reached for weapons. As the glare faded, I saw both Xee and Dwight pointing crudely made weapons in my direction. It made me thank my lucky stars that William Carver had seen something in me. Not just because of Xin or [Morrigu’s Gift] being part of saving her.

  A panting [Messenger’s Pet] sat in front of me. He looked like a giant black cat whose tongue lolled out to one side. Wings and scales broke up the illusion of him being Mister Sniffles the Second. I rubbed under his chin and scratched the space above Dusk’s eyelids. He purred, then chirped once in happiness.

  “Cake comes after we get Awesome to safety. Do you think you can help with that?” I whispered then pointed toward the arcing dome.

  Dusk’s head tilted to one side. A single chirp escaped and his head bobbed in a nod. The small beast opened his mouth wide to yawn. I took that to mean yes and it was so easy he felt bored already. Being out in this weather was annoying. Dusk ran abnormally hot despite the chill of rain. Bits of steam floated off his dog-sized form.

  “There’s probably something to fight in there. A big monster who is killing Travelers.” I nodded as water dripped down my face.

  That perked him up. One ear tilted forward, and a thought bubble of question marks appeared up above him. I often worried that the [Messenger’s Pet] might be crazy, attacking rodents and [Leviathan]s with equal fervor.

  “But if you feel like you’re in danger, come back here. I’d rather have you safe,” I said.

  Dusk nodded. His body turned to face toward the dome. He ran forward while hopping. Each bound went farther than the last. His wings swept out to the side, batting at the electrified air. Moments later, he was sailing toward the haywire dome. I watched while trying not to bite my nails. The [Messenger’s Pet] dodged bolts of lightning like he knew where they would be ahead of time.

  A long sigh made it out of me. He should be safe enough. Going against those blasts would be better than fighting [World Eater]s. Worst-case scenario, he would end up back in the Voices’ realm. That was far better than risking deletion.

  Multiple Travelers stared at me in confusion. Dwight’s jaw moved up and down like a gaping fish’s, but no question actually came out.

  “Were these lines always here?” Xin clarified, “Before the city?”

  Her general nonchalance helped the others regain their wits. The man with seven layers of glasses nodded. He and a few others had kept working the entire time.

  “Yep,” TockDoc said while directing guild members around.

  Once recovered, they quickly worked
in unison, even those on autopilot. Clearly this task had been performed multiple times.

  As they connected the lines, electric arcs started to polarize. They traveled into the large black bundles and surged through. Purple and green energy passed through, changing color as it went. Travelers carrying the grounding wires would either drop the cord and wait for surges to pass, or ride out the bolts while grunting in mild pain.

  I glanced down and tried to understand. Those still working as the energy surged through wore rubber-looking boots. Heavy, thick, like oversized rain goulashes. They also shimmered with a nearly white blue.

  “Neat,” I said. Both the boots and entire process of connecting cables interested me.

  “We’ve done this a lot. By using the lines to drain energy, we can reset bosses. It helps when Dwight thinks he’s found some new trigger word.” TockDoc dropped the latest load and straightened his oversized glasses. “Too bad the trigger words only seem to enrage the creatures quicker.”

  “That still an oddly specific setup,” Xin said for us. “Is there one to each dome? Do they all come back to the same spot?”

  “That they do, but we haven’t figured out anything useful. We tried for something with the colors or looked for patterns, switches, books that explained anything. Whoever designed this was probably crazy,” he responded. “But it was convenient for power. We figured out a way to siphon off some of the drainage into enchantments for the city.”

  “Seriously, guys, stop telling them everything!” Dwight shouted. “We can’t trust them!”

  “You saw the quest, we’re all on it now. This is our task, a unique way to contribute for the event. Help out or shut up,” Xee said. Her body jangled from the mismatched assortment of gear.

  “Can you tell Awesome we’re going to try to cancel the event?” I frowned while trying to understand what was happening here. If we could get Awesome out of the boss fight or event going on, then maybe we could all regroup and find the actual key I’d been sent here for.