by Vic Connor
“That is where Carral Town is!” Eirrac exclaimed.
“Then he’s hunting,” Sah whispered, his dark eyes sparkling with excitement.
“We’ll have to put a stop to it,” Aremos informed them gravely. “No doubt that’s what the phoenix had in mind. They’re forbidden from meddling in the world of man, but they can guide us—as has ever been their sacred duty. And it has brought us here to destroy that giant before it can wreck the city.”
“Well, then, what are we waiting for?” Eirrac asked.
“Indeed.” Aremos called his magic to his aid once more, depleting his magic bar by a few dozen points, and gestured with his hand as he gripped his staff tightly. A portal appeared, this one smaller, less stable than the Realm Gate, yet entirely under his control. “On we go,” he said, leading them inside.
The portal brought them a few hundred feet before the frost giant, standing in a deep valley along which an icy river snaked. All else was bare, just frozen rocks and deep snow. The giant spotted them and bellowed, raising its club and quickening its pace. No doubt it wants us as an appetizer, Aremos thought.
He will have no such satisfaction from Aremos the Great. He raised his staff. To his left, Asba lifted her bow and reached into her quiver. The enchanted arrows contained within were varied: some, she had found on her adventures, others she had by virtue of being in a warband with a battle mage and a rune-smith. She selected one of Eirrac’s fire arrows, carved with runes of conflagration. Nocking it to her string, she stood still, waiting for the giant to come into better range.
Such an arrow will wreak havoc with the monster, Aremos thought, nodding.
Meanwhile, Eirrac was checking her handheld autocannon, a heavy piece of steampunk gear available in some of the better dwarven foundries. Of course, she’d added some of her own modifications. She had equipped it with several runes of accuracy and penetration, alongside a particularly nasty rune that could be used only once per battle, causing every shot for a full ten seconds to scream through the air—terrifying everything within hearing distance and crumbling their resolve—before detonating on impact. The terror will be useless here, Aremos admitted to himself. Not much can make a giant turn and run from a fight. But a couple of exploding rounds into its face would do nicely, once it was within range.
The giant ran forward, ponderous and slow yet speeding up with every footfall. The hills shook, and the snow began to come loose, sliding down toward them.
When the massive creature was halfway across the valley, Sah gave a great howl, arching his back and baying to the sky. He had clearly chosen to go full-on beast mode, choosing a transformation that only experienced changelings could pull off. His back broadened, his muscles popped, and he grew taller until he towered over them all by a couple of feet. His legs melded together as his clothes fell away, and great, curved claws appeared at the ends of his fingers. Within seconds, the transformation was complete. He was ready for battle, a great gorgon with glowing eyes and snarling, dagger-like teeth.
“Let’s do this, then,” Aremos said, smiling, as the giant reached them. He drew his sword and cut a great slash through the air before him. As it arced, the frost giant’s chest opened, bloody and ragged. Next, Aremos pointed his staff in the monster’s direction and a great beam of light sprang out, hitting the giant full in the face and knocking it back slightly so that its thunderous charge was arrested.
While Aremos worked his magic, Eirrac began to crank the handle on her autocannon, shaking the valley with the roar of its barking muzzle. Bullets pinged into the frost giant’s stomach, across its shins, over its back as it turned from them, sheltering behind the thick, rocky armor of its skin. But it recovered quickly. The beast turned to them once more and raised its club high, ready to strike.
At once, Sah shot a beam from his eyes as Asba let loose a couple of flaming arrows, burning the giant. It howled in pain.
“Now, Eirrac!” Aremos shouted, and the dwarf invoked her weapon’s runes, a piercing shriek accompanying her bullets. As each shot landed, it exploded, distracting the giant while knocking its health bar down a considerable amount.
Sah took advantage of the distraction to leap forward, slithering quickly over to the monster. In his altered form, he came up to the giant’s waist. Aremos muttered a quick enchantment and a glowing sword appeared in Sah’s hand, made from purest flame. Sah lunged in, thrusting the burning weapon into the giant’s abdomen. A few dozen more points were knocked from the creature’s health bar.
But the giant was not done yet. It swung one great, gnarly fist, which connected with Sah and sent him flying. The gorgon landed, stunned, with most of his characteristics decreased and his health bar down by half. Aremos reacted quickly, muttering an incantation of protection until a magical barrier appeared around Sah. Nothing would get through the enchanted wall until Sah was back up and able to retreat.
The giant bellowed and puffed, breathing a blast of frosty air which wrapped around the three remaining members of the warband. They all lost a few points from their health bars and found themselves moving slowly, almost frozen in place. The giant laughed and kicked the ground, showering rocks over them. One hit Aremos painfully in the chest as another caught Asba on the head, stunning her and knocking her down.
“No,” Aremos said, and pointed his staff straight at the giant’s face, blasting it with a streak of lightning. “All together, now!” he shouted.
A crackling wall of fire leapt up around them, holding the giant at bay and, combined with his other active spells, taking a full twenty percent from Aremos’ magic bar. But he had a few potions left and he swigged one down now, increasing his power back to full. He began another spell as his remaining two companions rallied around him. They fired solidly, sending flaming arrows and piercing, hot lead straight into the giant’s massive face, neck, and shoulders.
Bright, yellow fireballs, at least a dozen, appeared around Aremos in a ruinous halo as he completed his spell. He pointed his sword at the giant and the flaming spheres flew in one long, dazzling line, catching the giant full in its face and knocking it to the floor. Its health bar collapsed into the red; it was too injured to stand without swaying.
“Let’s finish him!” Eirrac yelled. She threw her autocannon over her back and drew the axe from her belt. Its runes blazed as she held it, almost too bright to look upon. Likewise, Asba drew her long, curved elven blade and Aremos cast a charm over his sword, increasing its damage characteristic by a full thirty percent. At the same time, he felt his protective charm evaporate from around Sah. The gorgon was back on its … well, not its feet, but it was upright on its slithering tail and ready to charge.
“Now!” Asba shouted. The four of them ran toward the giant, their weapons glowing, their hearts wild, their attacks united. They finished the beast off quickly, cutting it to pieces as it struggled in vain to fight back, all thoughts of making its way to the town for a feast destroyed.
It was a good day, a mighty quest, Somera recalled. And they had all been rewarded with generous XP.
She looks around at her family, at the Bharatis, at Sameer, and she wishes wholeheartedly that she could speak to this boy about such things. She wishes she could speak to anybody, whoever, about them. But she knows she can’t: they are meaningless to outsiders. Until her brother next comes home, she won’t get the chance to speak to anybody, in person, about gaming. Even then, it won’t quite be in honesty: Altaf knows that she plays, he knows she has a warrior mage avatar she uses as escapism, but… He doesn’t know she is Aremos, the famous, the Great. Nobody in the world knows, outside of her own warband. And even they don’t truly know her, she has to admit—they have only ever met her online as Aremos. The idea that she’s really a young Pakistani girl called Somera is abstract to them.
So, it remains meaningless.
“What would you say your outlook on life is, Somera?” Mrs. Bharati asks her, speaking to her directly for the first time.
“My—?”
&nb
sp; “Your outlook on life,” Mrs. Bharati repeats, not unkindly.
“It’s a favorite question of my wife’s, I’m afraid,” Mr. Bharati says, smiling. “You will have to forgive her for asking such deep questions straight away.”
“Of course,” Somera replies. “There is nothing to forgive. I like the question, thank you, Mrs. Bharati.”
She sits quietly for a few seconds, gathering her thoughts while the Bharatis watch her. “I believe I’m very broad minded,” she mutters finally, speaking as if to no one in particular. “As much as anybody from this town can be… I don’t like to look down on others, like most people do. Not for what they are, anyway, maybe just for who they are. I don’t see life as being best served tied down, forced into something you don’t want, when there is so much more to it… I don’t see it best served by sadness, by shackles, by living side by side with someone who does not see you because of their own arrogance or hubris, I suppose.
“I think I believe in the self, above all. That’s my outlook on life. I value the self and anything that can give it expression, and I see anathema in anything or anybody who would look to tear it down, to dilute or smother it with their own smallness.”
She looks up, blushing, aware only in the last few seconds of what she has said.
Everybody stares at her, their mouths agape. Their own arrogance or hubris… What was she thinking, saying that? Mr. and Mrs. Bharati look offended, easily seeing that Somera is talking about their son—though, Somera thinks, she wishes the Bharatis knew that her feelings were not unique to Sameer, but were rather aimed at every silly boy she had met lately.
Sameer himself looks confused, as though he doesn’t know what this strange girl means, whether he should be offended or not, or whether indeed she’d said anything of note at all. Somera’s own mother’s face has gone red, and she now sits grinding her teeth and glaring at Somera with fury in her eyes. Strangely, though, Somera’s father looks entirely unruffled. He leans back in his chair with a twinkling in his eyes and an amused, wry smile on his face.
“Well…” Mrs. Bharati manages after a little while. “This has been lovely, but we had best be on. Lots to do, you know. We are very busy, we have ourselves to be getting on with, in this silly small town.” She looks to Somera’s mother. “I am sure you understand.”
“Yes, of course,” Somera’s mother says, looking crestfallen at yet another prospective son-in-law being whisked out of her life. “Thank you very much for coming, though, and please, you are always welcome.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Bharati mutters, scowling down at Somera as he stands. “A strange sort of welcome, one might say.”
In my defense, Somera thinks, I told the truth.
She does indeed see herself as having a broad perspective on life. Playing games has given this to her, along with so much more. She knows empathy, she has learned how wide the world truly is. Of course, the world of Arkhart is gloriously fictional, entirely fantastical, woven as it is from the stuff of fairy stories. But the people who inhabit Arkhart are completely real. Somera is from a mildly wealthy family who nevertheless live in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Pakistan, with no contact with anybody from outside of their own culture and their own bubble. It’s all too easy for people around here to live and die on this soil, she has seen, never knowing any other life or way of being. But Somera speaks to people from the rest of the world every single day. Her own warband comes from three separate continents. It makes scheduling tricky, admittedly, but she has learned a great deal through them about how other cultures operate.
More than just about anybody else in this little place, she often thinks.
Arkhart doesn’t know class, either. State of the art rigs are always astonishingly expensive, but you can get a model from three or four years back for next to nothing online, and they work well enough. Her own rig is a case in point. In this world, she gets to meet people from every social and economic rank and learn about their issues, their struggles, and their aspirations, just through simple, connected conversations spread out over campaigns and in chat rooms. That’s why she has stopped caring about the social status, the money, the breeding, as her mother once put it, of prospective suitors. None of the people in Arkhart are above or below her based on anything but how hard they fight and play, and she has never thought of anybody as a paindu, a simpleton or common village idiot, despite the way in which many in this town brand those of inferior classes.
She just can’t see herself spending her life with any of these silly boys. They are too wrapped up in what they can’t see through… The anger, slow to build and fast to be unleashed, and the unremitting, devastating race to prove yourself better than everybody, to make all others look like a paindu compared to you.
Enough, she thinks.
It is all rubbish and she wants none of it. She wants her world, where anybody talks to anybody and there is always a need for decisive action, a world unlaced from the small-town values with which she has to live her life—she wants Arkhart and nothing else.
Of course, Somera is too unconfrontational by nature to say much of this to anyone. Part of the reason she loves Aremos is that he can say these things, he can fight for what he sees as right and he can dismiss those in the wrong with a flick of his wrist and a muttered curse.
As she watches the Bharatis leaving, Somera wishes that Aremos was here. He could do just that, then: flick his wrist, gesture with his staff, incantate, and—poof! All would be gone, engulfed by a fireball or turned to stone or banished to another dimension.
But she has no such power and her parents are turning on her, her mother furious and her father looking amused, still, but also a little exasperated.
“Well, that is one more blown,” her mother hisses. “Are you happy with yourself, young lady?”
Her father understands her, in part at least, for all that he is frustrated by the situation. “Somera, darling, the right one is out there for you,” he tells her. “You’re a tricky fish, but there’s someone for everyone and plenty more fishes in the sea.”
She doesn’t tell him that she is not a fish, that she doesn’t want a fish, that she just wants to be free. His face is too kindly, his voice too soothing, and he’s trying too hard for her to say such things to him.
Her mother will not be placated, however. She slams about the house, cursing under her breath, glowering at everyone and periodically bursting out furiously, snapping and shouting at Somera. As a peace offering, Somera tidies away the cups and saucers. She puts them all onto a tray with the plates and the remaining sweets, and takes them into the kitchen where her mother is standing next to the maid, glaring out of the window as though challenging everything outside of her house.
“Mother, I tidied up…” Somera begins, but it is no good.
“You tidied up?” her mother growls, turning on her. The maid, who had been washing up, senses the change in the atmosphere. She bobs her head and leaves, practically running for the scullery.
Her mother’s face turns red and Somera knows a fight is coming. “Oh, so now you know how decent people behave, now you know how to be a good daughter,” her mother says. “Is everything forgiven now, then, because Somera jumped off her high bloody horse long enough to pick up a few dirty plates?”
“Mama, it’s not like—”
“Not like that,” her mother interjects, scornful and sarcastic. “It is never like that, not with Queen Somera. It is all innocence… I am misunderstood, I am too good for these perfectly respectable, good boys from good families, I am away with the bloody fairies so everyone else can go to hell—but it is not like that.” Her mother performs a cruel imitation of Somera’s voice. “Then what is it bloody like, young lady, that you feel able to drive away every good bloody boy we find you?”
Somera opens her mouth, hoping a good retort will come out, but her mother doesn’t give her the chance. “Do you know how bloody hard your father works to keep a roof over our heads and a degree of respect to our
names? We are well thought of amongst everyone we know, because he works so damn hard and because I raised—or I thought I had raised—our children to be good, respectable people. But no. Somera is unhappy and the rest of us can hang, is that it? Huh?”
Again, Somera tries to respond, but her mother has found her stride now, venting months of pent up aggression and frustration that Somera knows is centered, quite legitimately, around her.
Her mother points a finger, long and sharp, and walks over to Somera to jab her painfully in the chest. “You silly little girl, you have the world at your feet. When your father or I approach a good family—a well to do, reputable family—saying we have a daughter of marrying age and asking if their son might be interested, people bloody leap at the chance. This is the gift we have given you—the pick of all the bloody Prince Charmings you could bloody want, no? And what do you do?” With each sentence, another jab digs painfully into Somera’s bosom, hard enough that she knows there will be a bruise there later on.
“This! P’tchah!” her mother wails, miming spitting on the ground. “You spit all over it, because you are so bloody good that no man could ever win your heart.” Her eyes grow big and then narrow tightly, screwing up and fixing Somera into place. “Well, let me tell you a thing or two, miss. Let me bring you back—down—to—bloody—Earth!” Each word is a fresh prod, but as Somera backs away her mother follows, still glaring. “You are not so good, Somera. You are not the best catch. You are not so pretty, and you cannot bloody cook because you are so damned idle, shut up in your room all day. You are not charming and you are not witty.” Her mother bunches her shoulders, furious now. “You are a weird little thing and you will not do better than what your father and I work our arses off to get for you. Do you understand?”