The Arena

by Drew Seren

  They better. He hadn’t even thought of that. What would he do if they didn’t want him having visitors when he woke up? It wasn’t like he’d been in a horrible accident and was going to emerge disfigured or anything. He was just stuck in his pod and it was protecting him from the wreckage of his house. But he was in the pod a lot longer than most people ever were. He wasn’t sure how long it would take before his muscles started to atrophy and things like that. He hoped it would be more than a week.

  Oh, your father just came back. We need to go to dinner. You take care and don’t die in that game. I’ll talk to you later. Mom.

  I’ll do my best. You guys have a good meal.

  We will. It’ll be better when you’re here to eat with us. Mom

  Your father says hi. Mom

  Tell Dad hi for me too

  Talk to you later. Mom.

  You bet. Horc hoped he wasn’t lying to his mother. The longer it took them to reach his pod, the more worried he became. There were too many unknowns, too many chances for something to go wrong. The text window faded and Horc kept his eyes closed, letting the easy movements of the carriage lull him to sleep. With any luck, he’d wake up, get the notification they’d exhumed his pod, and he was going to be able to rejoin the world of the living.

  8

  The slowing of the carriage brought Horc out of his slumber. It had been over a day, in-game, since he’d had any rest, and he was more tired than he expected. But everyone else had been able to get out of the game for a while and actually rest their bodies in real life. He didn’t have that luxury.

  “Looks like this is the end of the road for the moment,” Rick said. “I knew I probably couldn’t take you guys all the way, but I was at least able to knock a good chunk off your travels. I’ve got to go see what they’ve dug up on the AI.” He glanced at Greensleeves. “I’ll let you know what we found out. Since we can’t take the game down until Alan is out of his pod, if we have to tweak the AI, that’s going to take everyone working together.”

  Greensleeves nodded. “I understand. Thanks for the lift.”

  Rick pulled the team to a stop. “You guys try not to take on anything too far over your levels but have fun till we get everything worked out.”

  “Okay.” Greensleeves gave him a long look before jumping off the seat and landing in the sand the carriage’s wheels were sitting in. “Take care of yourself. I’m in a pod and it’ll keep me going. You’re not. You need sleep.”

  “Yes, mother.” Rick flashed him a bright smile and then he and the carriage faded away.

  After a moment of silence, Baladara started walking across the dunes. “I guess we keep going the direction we have been. One thing we need to tell these developers is more landmarks in the landscape, even in the deserts.”

  Tufkakes laughed. “I’m not sure Rick is going to want to give us rides again. We spent most of the time telling him what’s wrong with his game.”

  “Nah,” Greensleeves said. “He likes hearing what people think of his work. He doesn’t get to talk to players other than me very often. Plus, you guys told him a lot about what you liked too.”

  Horc yawned and rolled his shoulders. The game was real enough—he even felt like he had a slight crick in his neck from falling asleep in the carriage. “Sounds like I missed a bit.”

  Baladara shook her head. “Not really. We were just filling Rick in on what we thought the game should be like. I’ve never talked to a game designer before; that was interesting.”

  “Wait a minute, guys.” Tufkakes paused and looked around. “Is it just me, or is something shaking the ground?”

  Horc tried to feel what Tufkakes was talking about. There was a slight quivering sensation coming up through his feet and legs. “Yeah. Almost like there’s a train coming.”

  “Or a big rig,” Greensleeves said.

  Baladara’s eyes got big and she pointed over Horc’s shoulder. “Or a really big worm.” She started casting a spell, and her hands glowed red.

  Horc unslung his bow and reached for an arrow as he turned to see what she was pointing at. A huge worm rose out of the sand dune and towered over them.

  “All right, I’m not sure I like running with you guys,” Tufkakes complained as he pulled out daggers and began throwing them. “It’s giant shadow beasts and giant worms. Neither of which are fun.”

  Casting Flame on his Razor arrow, Horc got off his first attack and his wolf raced across the sand to hit the worm at the same time as the others’ attacks. “Can’t say I’d blame you. Things just seem to be getting harder.”

  “It’s that we’re in the middle of the desert and not on a road,” Baladara snapped as she started her next spell. “If we were on the road, we’d be fine, or at least run into fewer things. But someone’s husband had to drop us off in the middle of the wilderness and now we get to fight our way back to safety.”

  Greensleeves got his first spell off. “I’ll advise him of your displeasure at dropping us where he did. He might add a few monsters along the road to make things harder, if that’s how you like it.”

  “I don’t like things harder,” Baladara shouted as her spell left her fingers. “I think that’s your thing.”

  As Horc got off his second arrows, he looked at the worm and the red text above its head. Dunediver, Level 32. At least it didn’t have any stars next to its name. But their attacks didn’t seem to be having a ton of effect on it. After two rounds of solid hits, its health was barely affected.

  “Try concentrating our shots on its head,” Horc suggested as he pulled an Impact arrow and added Poison to it. Even if the damage-over-time spells weren’t instant hurt on the thing, it would add up and weaken it as stronger spells hit it.

  He managed to hit it in the center of the head. The worm straightened to its full height, a good ten to twelve feet, and an eerie scream came out of it. The hit dropped its health bar farther, but it still wasn’t even down a quarter of its points. If any of them had stumbled across it by themselves, it would’ve killed them quickly and then gone back to diving through the dunes.

  “Easier said than done, Ranger.” Tufkakes took off running, looking like he was trying to flank the beast, so he could attack it from behind.

  Baladara and Greensleeves’ next attacks were good head shots, doing more damage than the previous strikes had. The worm finally dropped to nearly a half and it dove into the sand.

  “Oh no you don’t.” Tufkakes jumped on it as it went past him. He drove his knives into the base of the worm’s skull. The hits were good and knocked it down to just below half health.

  Horc’s Poison arrow spell finished its cooldown, and he added it to the next Razor arrow he fired. With the worm thrashing, trying to get back into the dune, but acting like there was something wrong with it, he had trouble getting a good shot to the head. He slowed down. Focusing his shots, he managed to get another right near the tip of the thing’s head. If it had possessed eyes, he’d have fired at those, but it didn’t. The skin of its head looked just like the surface of the rest of its body, the same light brown as the sand dunes with only slight ripples on its hide.

  Tufkakes pulled out his daggers and hit the thing again. “I guess this is its back. Gotta love the extra damage from backstab.”

  The worm bucked, but somehow Tufkakes and the wolf held tight. It was down to a quarter health.

  Baladara hit it hard with a huge fireball, then dropped to her knees. “Man. Cover me for a second. I need a potion.” She pulled out a vial and downed it.

  Horc glanced at the party icons. Baladara’s health was fine, but her mana was drained and slowly coming back as the potion did its work. He continued his slower, more concentrated arrows. They damaged the thing a lot more than anything other than Tufkake’s attacks to the back of its head.

  Baladara stood and she and Greensleeves managed to get off good solid shots. The worm’s health bar started flashing orange.

  “A few more shots, guys. We’ve almost got this.” He let fly
another Flaming Impact arrow as Tufkakes scored another round of blows.

  The beast’s health bar flashed red right before the final attack from Baladara and Greensleeves. The worm shivered, then dropped to the sand.

  A gold aura surrounded Baladara and she cheered. “Level twenty. About damned time.”

  A similar aura surrounded Greensleeves. “I guess you don’t want to hear level twenty-two.”

  “Not right now, no.” Baladara sat in the sand and pulled out her flask.

  “Gotta hand it to these bigger, badder critters, they are worth more,” Tufkakes said as he set about looting the worm. “Hey Horc, you might want to skin this thing. Might help you advance your profession.”

  Horc walked over to where the Rogue was working on the worm. “Good point.” As soon as his coin purse chimed with loot, Horc pulled out his skinning knife and set to work. The worm was a lot like the snakes had been to skin but was a lot larger. He was thankful the game was just using bag slots and not weight. He had to struggle a bit to get the skin into his bag but felt like it was a pretty good haul. He’d find out when they got to the next vendor and he could sell it.

  “Okay, that might have been worth it,” Baladara said as she stood and walked over to the cooling carcass. “According to my display, this thing’s got some rare alchemical supplies in its gut. Leveling and rare crafting ingredients—yeah, that might be worth hard fights.”

  “Tell you what—next time, you can get up close and personal with the big bad monsters,” Tufkakes said. “In case you’ve never played one before, Rogues aren’t supposed to be front-line fighters. We need tanks.”

  “That’s who we’re going after,” Horc said as he cleaned his skinning blade off in the sand. “I don’t think any of us like having to go close quarters with these things.” He reached in his bag and pulled out a big chunk of meat for his wolf before he cast his healing spell. The wolf had taken the brunt of the worm’s attack and his health bar was down into the orange. Horc felt bad about not noticing that before. Sometimes there was just so much going on and he forgot things like that.

  “Good.” Tufkakes cleaned his blades before they disappeared into his belt and other places on his person. “The sooner we get the tanks back, the better I’ll feel about everything. I can get all sneaky and just backstab like a good Rogue’s supposed to.”

  “You’re doing a good job of that so far,” Greensleeves said. “Okay, I checked my map, and it looks like there’s a city not far away. Dustbinnia. It’s a neutral city, so none of us will have trouble getting in. We can sell a bit of stuff and see if we can figure out which way we need to go from there.”

  “Sounds good.” Horc stood and dusted off his leather pants. “Let’s try to remember to look around for an enchanter and see if we can bargain to get my axe re-enchanted.”

  “I guess you didn’t do that in Red Wind Terrace,” Baladara said. “I thought that was on the list for there.”

  “It was, but I forgot.” Horc hated having things like that slip his mind, but it was something he was prone to doing.

  “All right. Let’s see if we can get there without having to kill too many more of these things.” Tufkakes looked at Greensleeves. “Which way are we going?”

  “That way.” Greensleeves pointed off to the right, slightly away from the direction they’d been heading.

  “Then that way it is,” Horc said. With each step he took, he did his best to be aware of any kind of movement in the ground under him. As the party’s Ranger, he should’ve been the one to warm them of things like worms exploding out of the sand. A Rogue was supposed to warn of traps, not ambushes.

  9

  By the time they reached the gates of Dustbinnia, Horc’s arms hurt from the nearly constant fighting they’d endured. The Dunedivers had badgered them at nearly every sand dune they went over or around. But he had become fairly good at detecting their movements moments before they showed themselves, and the party was getting practiced at taking them out, even if the worms were a major battle each time. Horc had added to his levels and walked through the gates at level twenty-one. Tufkakes was level twenty-one, too, which irritated Baladara for some reason.

  The morning sun was already heating up the sands. As they entered the town, the temperature dropped dramatically.

  Horc glanced around. The adobe buildings all looked nearly the same. It was a larger settlement than Tragiczan had been, but not as large as either Red Wind Terrace or Stone Helm City. “Okay, why the cool down?”

  “Maybe a spell of some sort,” Baladara suggested, also glancing around. “But I’m not going to complain.”

  Greensleeves frowned. “And you shouldn’t. Theoretically since you’re just using VR helmet and gloves, you shouldn’t experience the heat like we were. I mean, damn. I’m from the South, and I know heat. People can say dry heat is easier to deal with than wet heat, but that was just a bit much.”

  “I’m with you there,” Tufkakes agreed, wiping his brow. “Luckily, or unluckily, Procyans don’t sweat. And I think panting is a bit undignified.”

  Horc wiped his own brow and was ready to find somewhere with a bit of air conditioning but didn’t want to say that and come across as a whiner.

  “Okay, quick stop at a vendor to unload stuff, then we’re off toward the coast,” Greensleeves said. “Hopefully things’ll be cooler when we reach it.”

  “We might want to find ways to protect ourselves from the sun,” Horc suggested. A lot of the people around them seemed to be wrapped up in what he would call ‘classic desert attire,’ with long flowing robes and head wraps to keep the sun off their skin. Some of them were so wrapped up, the only visible parts were their eyes. He figured that made life harder, but if it kept the person cooler, it might be worth trying out. “How much farther is it to the coast?”

  Greensleeves got the look that told Horc he was checking something in his interface. “Still a couple of hours. We’re almost three quarters of the way from Tragiczan, but Rick was driving us.”

  “Let’s just hope there’s a road so we don’t have to deal with those damned worms,” Tufkakes muttered. “Hey, I bet there’s a vendor over there.” He pointed to a large open area where people were setting up tents like they were prepping a morning market.

  “I wonder if there’s an armor, or weapon merchant, and barring that we’ll need to find the local smithy,” Baladara said. “’Cause I could use a bit of repairs; some of those worms scored some good hits on me.”

  Horc checked the status of his armor. It was fairly good. Since finding the ever-full quiver, he didn’t need to worry about getting arrows like he had just starting out, but his axe had a couple of new nicks in the edge he’d like to get ground out. “Let’s not forget the enchanter too.”

  “Right. It would be nice if that axe did cool stuff again,” said Greensleeves as he and Tufkakes led them toward the closest tent.

  The heavy robes made it impossible to identify all the various species around the makeshift market, but from their various sizes and shapes, Horc was fairly sure there were more species there than in any of the other towns he’d been in. There were only a few players, and he wondered if others were having trouble getting across the desert. Nearly everyone he spotted was an NPC. He knew that most players followed various quest chains to new locations in a game world. He wondered if other players just hadn’t gotten quests out that way, or if for some reason, they were being led somewhere by the game AI. But that didn’t make a lot of sense. Game AIs were there to make sure things went smoothly and that the NPCs acted the way they were supposed to. He didn’t like the idea of being led around by an AI; that made it sound creepy.

  In the market, they managed to take care of everything, except finding an enchanter. They did get a lead on that, and Horc led the way as they went down a flight of curving stone stairs into an underground chamber.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a heavy wooden door blocked their path. There were no obvious hinges to show them how to open th
e door.

  “Let me look at that,” Tufkakes pushed past Horc and the wolf to run his hands along the edges of the door. He pursed his lips and hummed. “Okay, step back.”

  They all did as he said and he studied the floor.

  “This is odd.” Tufkakes rubbed his chin.

  “What?” Horc asked. He really hoped they hadn’t reached a dead end and were going to have to go back to the market to get another lead.

  “It really looks like the door just disappears when it’s opened.” Tufkakes pointed at the floor. “The dust isn’t disturbed in any perceptible pattern that I can see.”

  “Maybe it’s a pocket door,” Baladara suggested. “We just need to find the right direction to push it, and it slides open.”

  Not wanting to waste more time than they had to. Horc stepped behind Tufkakes and knocked on the door. “Or we could try knocking and see if anyone answers.”

  Tufkakes huffed. “And where’s the fun in that?”

  Seconds later the door slid up into the ceiling with a soft whoosh.

  “Well, I guess that explains why there aren’t any scuff marks on the floor.” Greensleeves pushed Tufkakes and Baladara toward the opening.

  Before they could get through, a light blazed bright in the darkness on the other side of the door.

  “Stop. What do you want?” A deep voice boomed out of the center of the light.

  Horc blinked a couple of times before his eyes adjusted enough he could make out the diminutive figure in a long, light brown robe, standing there with its hands on its hips. The little guy didn’t look like he’d be much trouble, but Horc had played enough games to not judge a person’s ability to make trouble based on their stature.

  “Hello, we’re looking for an enchanter, and a vendor in the market sent us here.” Horc did his best to sound rough but not pushy. He worried if he came across as weak, the enchanter might jack up his prices, but worried if he was too tough, the guy might not want to deal with them.