Apostle of the Sleeping Gods

by Dan Sugralinov

“Hey!” Bomber protested.

  “I said if we really have to! Anyway. I say we practice tactics tomorrow. But let’s stay away from our Arena, so we don’t show our hand. Let’s go to the Battleground. They make match-ups from all around Dis, so we’ll be able to try out PVP teamplay in all kinds of different situations without worrying.”

  “Where though?” Infect spoke up.

  “To keep the audience low, I say we go ten on ten,” Crawler said. “How about Capture the Flag, guys? Alex?”

  “Alright,” I nodded. “Just one condition...”

  “What?” Crawler asked, on guard.

  “Tomorrow in school, Malik has to do the same idiotic dance he did today with the whole class watching. Like he first did in the dungeon, then again he got the new pants. If he was that happy for a blue, I’m afraid to give him anything better. He might hurt himself.”

  “He’ll even sing,” Bomber promised.

  Chapter 25. Battleground

  HEALTH CLASS WAS required, so Ms. Kalinovich or just Lena as she asked us to call her, was someone every upper classman at our school knew - and adored with abandon. I wasn’t an exception.

  It wasn’t just because she was, as far as our administration was concerned, our only source on the details of sexual life. Lena also had long legs, a good body and was stunningly pretty. Gossips (as a rule girls) spread rumors that she had undergone complete plastic surgery but, even if that was so, none of us saw anything wrong with that. Overall, that was probably why we all learned so much in her class. But one thing she said was stuck in my head.

  Sleep, Ms. Kalinovich told us, was the most important thing we could do to help our bodies grow and repair themselves. We grew in our sleep. Our cells were restored, and our brain erased unimportant information, restructuring the rest and defragmenting itself. Our dreams, Ms. Kalinovich said, came from that process and also reflected reality.

  But I no longer dreamed about reality, I dreamed of virtual worlds. And my brain clearly was playing scenes it wanted deleted: needlers, larvae in my body, squirming around under my skin... The nightmare where my ribcage exploded reminded me of a VR remake of the old movie Alien. I woke up around morning and patted all over my body to make sure it wasn’t real.

  AT gave a start at the bed. The catdog, able to sense my mood, came over to lick my hand. I stroked his ear and, without moving my hand from his big old head, fell back into a dream.

  A moment later, I was awoken again. At first by my alarm clock then, when I turned it off and fell back asleep, by mom.

  I pecked over my breakfast. Mom told me she had come to check when I went to bed and was pissed off to find my bed still empty at two o’clock in the morning and my VR pod still full of intragel. If I kept this up, she said, then... mom said a lot of things, but the main thrust was that my life would be getting nasty. And dad backed her up on that.

  On the way, I set the flying car to autopilot so I could get some sleep. In school, I tried to catch the tiniest winks of sleep between classes, and even Malik dancing on his hands couldn’t rouse me. Honestly, all my clanmates were in approximately the same state, so my suggestion that we meet in Dis a bit later this evening so we could take a nap was taken with great enthusiasm and understanding.

  “Some Awoken we are. We’re basically asleep,” Bomber quipped, giving a wide yawn.

  During one break, Eve unexpectedly walked up to me. Even in her school uniform, which was pretty prudish, her looks could kill. Tim could keep his eyes off her as he walked past, eventually running into the school principal.

  Eve didn’t react to the uptick in interest, though. She was either used to it or just didn’t notice. At any rate, she was acting much more confident than before, which was expressed in a direct question with no build-up whatsoever:

  “Hi, Alex! The New Year’s Dance is coming up. Wanna go with me?”

  “Uh... the Dance?”

  My thoughts were all confused: when was New Year’s? What day was it? Should I go to the dance or not waste my time? With Eve? Or Tissa?

  Eve must have noticed, because I didn’t get the chance to answer.

  “I see,” she nodded. “Okay.”

  O’Sullivan flitted off to a group of waiting girls, said something to them and they started smiling, shooting me gazes full of scorn. I had a flickering thought that Eve was becoming popular. I recalled just over a month earlier, when she timidly suggested we watch a video about the Mars Expedition together... We had both changed so much since then.

  The sleepy Awoken all flew to our respective houses in the same flying car. They told me about Battlegrounds and explained that they were totally different than the mob battles I was used to.

  “It’s very important to know the abilities of the classes you’re fighting against,” Bomber added. “It doesn’t matter how much you study, though. Until you fight a hundred battles against the same druid or shaman, you never know quite what to expect or when. So listen carefully for Ed’s commands.”

  Once again lamenting the high cost of signal amulets, he suddenly turned serious:

  “We’ll never make it in the Arena without communication. Five amulets are gonna cost us fifty thousand at least. If we can’t farm that up, let’s sell the ring.”

  Once home, I ate lunch with my parents, then headed to bed and gave a voice command to my home assistant. Many of them personified the appearance, names and voices of friends, family or movie stars. At Ed’s house, for example, a virtual image of his late mom kept house, and his father’s voice told fairy tales to his sister. But my parents had kept the default settings and genderless name of “O.”

  “O, night mode.”

  The windows went dark, becoming opaque. The assistant set the room to a comfortable temperature and put my bed into sleep mode, making it comfortable and pushing out pillows.

  “O, sleep mode. Wake me up at six...”

  * * *

  The Commonwealth military outpost was on the edge of the Tristad Environs, where it came up against the river lands of the murlocks. The outpost wasn’t subordinate to the Free City of Tristad, instead maintaining a presence of the overarching government. It was also the location of a stationary portal the Commonwealth could use to flood the area with troops in case of a serious threat.

  To get there, we first teleported to the Mountain Dams, where Bomber again failed to catch the Golden Fish, and from there we passed by all the same foraging spots, the Reeking Crypt and Packston’s Vineyards. And from there went on foot to the outpost. The mount didn’t drop, and the leprechaun was not there.

  We also took a spin past the Sarantapod Hive to see what things were like. There was a group of Axiom guys hanging out by the dungeon portal. We noticed them from a bit away, but kept our distance.

  “Maybe now you can tell us, Alex?” Tissa asked. “How are we gonna get in there?”

  “The less you know, the better you’ll sleep, Melissa,” I answered.

  I wasn’t teasing her, or anyone else. I just wasn’t totally sure of my idea yet, and I hadn’t gotten around to testing it out.

  We made it to the outpost without incident. My classmates, realizing how quickly and easily we could level, had stopped aggro’ing every little creature for drips of experience, but it still took us around an hour to get from the pond to our destination.

  The outpost had been designed by talented architects who took advantage of natural fortifications. A sentry shouted down to us from a tall stone tower:

  “Who are you, where are you from and what is your purpose?” he asked lazily, chewing a piece of grass.

  He didn’t see any of us as a threat. Who were we against his level fifty?

  “We’re visitors of Tristad. We want to train at the Battleground,” I answered.

  “Come in.”

  The gates between the prominent tower and tall cliff opened up.

  We found Nicholas Gumilevsky, Commonwealth Captain, on the second floor of the guard tower. The courageous warrior had a somewhat puffy fac
e, pear-shaped nose and fairly sharp wrinkles under his eyes. He looked tired, but perked up when he heard the purpose of our visit:

  “It’s encouraging to see that there are still warriors in Tristad! You’re our first volunteers of the day!”

  The guys had already told me that Battlegrounds weren’t all that popular in sandboxes: too much running around and wasted time and all you got were Badges of Honor. They awarded one for participation, three for a win and another three for being match MVP. You could also take a badge from a sworn enemy. No experience points, no loot, just miniscule crumbs of reputation points with Commonwealth factions. At the very least, that went for training grounds. At real ones, of course, the plusses were a bit more valuable, going right up to epic gladiator sets specially made for PVP. And the top Battleground league’s battles were broadcast the world over with an audience that could rival that of world soccer championships.

  In sandboxes, Badges of Honor were considered useless because you could only use them for temporary improvements and then only in Battlegrounds.

  So they were mostly just for fun. Or, very rarely, for training teamplay especially for dreamers who saw themselves as future battleground stars.

  “A random Battleground, or one in particular?” Gumilevsky asked.

  “Lisher Hollow, sir!” Bomber barked bravely, clicking the soles of his plate boots. “We want to practice teamwork and small-group tactics, sir! For the good of the Commonwealth! Sir!”

  His zeal made the captain’s eyes bulge in enthusiasm. He clicked his tongue and, removing his helmet, wiped sweat from his brow, patting Hung on the shoulder.

  “At ease, soldier! Excellent choice!” Gumilevsky approved. “Do you know the rules of this training zone?”

  “Yes we do, sir!”

  “Excellent! But still I have to tell you what they are. Let me be short: two teams of ten, each with a base, a small fortification, and deep inside of them is a flag. If you’re team red, it’s red, team blue, as luck would have it, gets a blue one. And please look at the map.” From a pile of scrolls, the captain unfailingly pulled out the right one and pointed around with his finger. “Distance between the bases is a thousand yards. The area is bounded by mountains on the sides. A river runs directly through the middle. Your mission is to steal the enemy flag and bring it back to your base. If you can do that, and your flag is still at your base, your team will get one point. The enemy flag is then returned to their base. The flag is also returned to base if someone is killed while in possession of it. Do you understand what you must do?”

  “Sir! Yes, sir!”

  “Do you all wish to take part?” Gumilevsky clarified.

  “We would like to register all as one group,” I answered.

  “Commendable,” the captain nodded. “Group leader must confirm registration...”

  He took out a metal ball with an internal glow and turned its two halves. Each spin changed its color and Gumilevsky stopped on lilac. After that, he stuck the artifact into the base of the portal circle.

  The passageway opened.

  “Good luck!” the captain wished us. “Don’t put the honorable Tristad to shame! Put more fire under your enemies’ feet, soldier!”

  * * *

  The Lisher Hollow location in the north of the Nameless Mountains was a training one: only members of light factions competed.

  Throughout Disgardium, there were all kinds of different Battlegrounds. Very many, in fact. But before level thirty, the devs had restricted access to the kinds of BG’s that gave truly significant rewards. And sandbox players never got up to thirty. Of course, for the same reason, everyone in training Battlegrounds was human. There were no other races in the sandboxes.

  Passing first through the portal, I found myself in a big room with damp stone walls. Near the back wall, there was a column with a blue flag on top. There were a couple of players hanging around, but first my attention was drawn by the huge letters of a message:

  Welcome to the Battleground, beginner!

  Scyth, your group has been assigned to team blue.

  Team Blue:

  Milord - Peterborough, human, level-19 Paladin, clan Sons of Anarchy

  Caramba - Peterborough, human, level-19 Grenadier, clan Sons of Anarchy

  Urbex - Ansan, human, level-19 Cutthroat

  Morty - Villereal, human, level-18 Hunter, clan Denise Le Bon’s Butt

  Vitalik - Lyubech, human, level-18 Warrior, clan Vitalik

  Scyth - Tristad, human, level-18 Archer, clan the Awoken

  Crawler - Tristad, human, level-16 Fire Mage, clan the Awoken

  Tissa - Tristad, human, level-16 Fire Mage, clan the Awoken

  Infect - Tristad, human, level-16 Thief, clan the Awoken

  Bomber - Tristad, human, level-16 Warrior, clan the Awoken

  Match will begin in: 02:07... 2:06... 2:05...

  The introductory text disappeared, but the timer remained. Two minutes to battle.

  “Damn, debuff!” Crawler whispered. “With our health cut, we won’t be able to fight too well...”

  Meanwhile, Milord, a heavyset irascible kid with a two-hander on his back, walked up to us. He raised his helmet visor, slid a gaze over our nicks, frowned and spat.

  “Aw crap!” he cursed. “We’re up shit’s creek. Half the team is scrubs and leechers and now the other half is noobs! Hey you!” he turned to me. “Scyth, you got any experience in Battlegrounds?”

  “Na, I’m a first timer,” I admitted.

  And what of it? I saw no reason to lie. Anyhow, he’d figure it out soon enough.

  “Ahem, ahem,” Crawler fake-coughed, drawing my attention. “Milord... nether! Anyway, Lord, we’ve been in BG’s[6] before, and this hollow most of all. Don’t pay any attention to our levels, they used to be higher.”

  “Well, well,” shot out Caramba, a broad-shouldered girl with a gnomish mobile cannon over her shoulder. “At least they know how to work together. I mean, right?”

  “Uh... yeah,” I answered vaguely.

  “Anyway, there’s no time,” Milord said sharply, “if any of you are like experienced, listen up: hold the underground tunnel. Defend the passage. If a bunch of them come at once, tell us right away! Me and Caramba will get the flags. The other three, Morty, Urbex and Vitalik, you guard the flag. There’s no sense holding the upper passage. Nobody ever runs through it in a big group. It’s too narrow and too long. It needs to be crawled through, and the three of you can take one enemy at a time. If they set up an ambush at our main entrance, Scyth and his group come at them from behind, everyone else from the front. All clear?”

  “Why are we gonna have a grenadier run after the flag, I don’t understand?” Urbex asked in surprise. “Her bazooka weighs a hundred pounds, and her speed is low. I could go in stealth while...”

  The timer reached its final seconds. The numbers grew larger and a dispassionate female voice made the countdown:

  “Three! Two! One! Fight!”

  Boomed out as if from a cannon. Capture the flag in the Battleground had begun.

  “Urbex, you come with us then,” Milord outsmarted her. “Me and Caramba will distract the defenders, you go in from above. If you turn off stealth...”

  “Don’t teach a teacher!” These words came from thin air, because the cutthroat was already hidden and the only reminder she was ever there was a transparent silhouette, visible only to allies.

  Cursing aloud, Lord ran off after Urbex and, after her, stomping her heavy boots, went Caramba.

  Morty the hunter stuck a Torch of Discovery into the wall, then started placing Ice Traps around the flag. Then, spider like, he threw out a grappling hook, stuck it in under the ceiling and climbed up the rope.

  Crawler nodded in approval as he watched:

  “Turning on Camouflage. From there he can use Slowing Shots to put the brakes on anyone coming for the warrior. Alright, after me!”

  Crawler ran toward the hole and we charged in behind. There we saw a dim tunnel that led d
ownward, wafting a warm, musty air.

  We went down until we were up to our knees in dirty water and walked through until we were beyond our little fortress. In the distance, on the backdrop of the setting sun, we could see an identical fortification surrounded by red stripes. Around the edges of the Battleground, there were inaccessible vertical cliffs.

  “That Lord is the noobass to end all noobasses,” Ed said. “And they aren’t gonna get the flag. Usually, a big group goes to capture, because usually there are at least five people on defense. And all our enemies are level nineteen. Basically, let’s not worry about the result. We’re just practicing fighting against players.”