by S. W. Clarke
Galen nodded. “Wilt Waters, age twenty-two, a real guy. He likes to point his arrows at girls cooking a rabbit.”
“That’s right, Cole,” Wilt said. “Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t be if you were in this tree. But you aren’t.”
Something swelled in Veda’s chest. Cutthroats, Amy had called them. But she'd been wrong: Eli wasn't like that. “We don't want to fight you,” she called. She was speaking before she even knew what she said. “We’re trying to find the orc stronghold.”
They paused; a few more needles drifted to the ground.
“Orc stronghold?” said Sarai.
Wilt rasped something incomprehensible, but it sounded like dissension. Veda nudged Galen with her hand, lifted her chin in the direction of the tree. He followed her eyes to the spot where she knew they sat. Run? she mouthed, flicking her fingers to indicate that the three of them should scatter.
He offered a small, almost imperceptible shake of the head. Three, he mouthed. It wasn’t just Sarai and Wilt in the trees—someone else was with them. And then his eyes flicked to to his left.
“Sarai Waters,” Eli’s voice belled out through the forest, “we talked for an hour on the transport. I know you grew up on the reclaimed west coast, that you just learned how to ride the interloop. I shared my peanuts with you. Do you know how valuable train snacks are?”
Silence stretched through the trees, and then the sound of a crossbow loading. “Peanuts are peanuts,” said Wilt.
“Stop,” came a baritone. Galen was right: this was the third speaking. “Let them go.”
Galen’s hand swiped at Veda’s wrist. Now—now he was telling her to run. Before she could, an arrow sailed from between the branches and Galen barreled into her, knocking them both over. She landed next to the skinned rabbit, one black eye staring back at her. The arrow’s head ate crisply into the ground where she’d stood.
Over his shoulder, Veda spotted Eli running like a deer into the trees. So that was how she’d managed to evade death by orcs and players.
“Come on,” Galen said, and another arrow flew as he pulled her up by the shoulders. He ran them in the opposite direction, one arm slung around her as she stumbled over her own feet. As it turned out, being bum-rushed by a full-grown man was disorienting on another level.
He ran them in the direction they’d already come. “Wait,” she said. Behind them, more arrows sang, Sarai and Wilt yelling. She looked back. “Eli.”
“She’s fast. She’ll be okay,” he said. But Veda could hear the uncertainty in his own words.
They were passing trees he had marked with the tip of his sword earlier in the day. “This is the wrong way,” she said.
“The orcs will come,” Galen said, not slowing. “We have to stick to familiar ground.”
They ran until Veda’s throat was chafed, and when they heard the orcs in the woods, he pushed her to run harder.
That was how they came to the cave.
They had run so far that they were nearly back to the orcs’ temporary campsite. The sun fell low, pale light slanting several feet into the cave that had emerged from nowhere at the map’s edge, dug out of a small hill; even so, Galen stood at the entrance with his arms folded. “It wasn’t there before,” he said.
Veda had already stepped into the darkness, her eyes closing to scent, to feel the air. “The first time we were running. The second time it was night.”
“You don’t think the way it just popped up here is spooky?”
“It’s not obvious—better for us to hide,” she said. “I don’t smell anything off here.”
Galen came closer. “No bears or yetis?”
Veda turned. “Yetis?”
“Starter zone creatures, mostly. They’re perfect for a new player to level up on. They don’t usually carry weapons, they’re bipedal, so they aren’t very fast…” He stopped; she was staring at his mouth with childlike incomprehension. “Okay, I trust you. We don’t have many choices anyway.” As he said it, a cry rang out in the almost-night: low, guttural, orcish, muted by the trees.
Trust. That was for regulars—not dupes. In Veda’s world, the question of trust was never raised: it was assumed that she would do as expected, and that some of the other, less docile models—the security admins, for instance, Prairie’s ilk—were to be watched closely for defiance.
The concept started a seed in her chest, a small bloom. She started into the cave, but Galen’s hand went out to stay her. He slid his kite shield onto his left forearm and unsheathed his sword. “Let’s just take it slow.”
And so she took it slow, her staff in both hands as they walked. Beyond the threshold, she scented moss, wetness, and something unfamiliar. Maybe the cave did hold a bear or yeti.
But that wasn’t what frightened her. It was all that lay behind them.
In a moment, they were beyond the sun’s reach. “Can you see?” Galen asked.
She squinted past his shoulder; she could—just barely. “Only a few feet.” The ceiling was lined in hanging moss that she reached to with her fingertips. The growth was cold, wet; she grasped a handful of it, yanked it down to smell. It was fragrant, not unpleasant. A prompt appeared in her interface:
ITEM: Cave Moss
QUALITY: Common
STATS: None.
EFFECTS: Unknown effect upon ingestion or application to the skin.
“Is this what you meant by foraging?” she said, lifting the moss out to Galen.
Even in the darkness, she sensed his repulsion. He stepped away, turned back toward the cave’s interior. “Yeah, and the second rule of foraging is to keep everything cold, wet and inedible to yourself.”
She smelled it again; her instincts told her it wasn’t harmful, but she would have to find out later. Veda shoved the handful into the pocket of her shirt, stepped around Galen. “I’ll lead.”
She didn’t know why she’d said it; her whole body thrilled with adrenaline, the fear of this enclosed space. Which was strange, since she’d lived her entire life in the dark, enclosed space of her head. But the mind was a powerful thing, and before she started forward, she closed her eyes.
Listen, Veda. It was Prairie’s low alto speaking to her as she had always done in bad situations. God, she missed her. Pay attention. You don’t need working eyes to see what’s around you. Veda listened. In the perfect dark, her habits in life returned to her. Her foot slid across the stone, attenuating to the slickness. She clicked with her tongue, once, twice.
“What are you doing?” Galen asked.
She didn’t answer. His voice, louder than her fingers, echoed only about six feet. There was a bend up ahead.
“Hold my shoulder,” she said, and she started forward with her clicking tongue. She came to the turn easy, her fingertips just touching the rock. A prompt appeared in her interface:
SKILL IMPROVED: Perception, Lvl. 3.
Her ace-in-the-hole skill. Like a switch flicked, everything came a little clearer, a little brighter. Her body felt less like a tense animal’s, more her own. She could see further now.
After the turn she spied a long stretch of tunnel. She took short steps for Galen, listening to the echoes. Veda stopped. “Do you hear that?”
He paused. “Water?”
She nodded, brought them a few steps closer. The liquid sound came unobstructed, like a clear space between the water’s rushing and their ears. That was when she stopped hard. Galen bumped into her, and Veda’s hands flew to the walls for balance. Small stones rolled away from her feet, fell and fell, plunked far below.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t move.” She lifted one foot, pressed it through the air before her, searching for ground—but there was none. It was as she’d thought.
Veda stared at the floor, so dark that blackness only gave way to more blackness. But she could make out a hole. She leaned over the precipice, and after a time she distinguished the water’s movement. It was a long, long way down—a very wide underground stream.
She could tell Galen they could stop here for the night. They didn’t have to press deeper in—this was probably far enough to keep them hidden. But she suspected now there were secrets to this world, and she felt sure this cave was a key to them.
She took quick breaths, pressing her fingers into the walls. Veda could see where the ground resumed beyond the gap. It was only about three feet. She was tall, had long legs. But if she fell—well, those legs would be in a thousand pieces.
She needed a running start. “Galen,” she said, turning, “we’re going to jump across this gap. I’ll go, and then you. It’s not too big, about four feet. And once I’m on the other side, I’ll tell you exactly how far. You can listen to my voice.”
“We could just stop here,” he said, a little breathless, and she recognized her own logic of a moment before. “It’s far enough in.”
“We need to go further.”
“Why?”
“If there’s an underground river here, then there’s more to this world than we thought. What if razing the orc stronghold isn’t the goal?”
He was breathing too fast. She knew he already felt the pain of missing the jump, the long fall and impact. Her hand went to his shoulder. “It’s not far,” she said, and before she could overthink it, she backed up. Now that she had seen it, she couldn’t unsee where the floor fell away and returned on the other side. She leaned her body forward and kicked off, pushing her hands against the wall for momentum. She was nearly at full pelt by the time her foot touched the edge, and then she leapt—heard the water clearly beneath her—and landed with so much force that she nearly went to her knees.
A prompt blinked in the corner of her interface:
STAT GAINED: +1 to dexterity.
She straightened, clapping her hands free of dust. “Hey, if you don’t die you can look forward to a stat-up.”
“Wonderful,” she heard him murmur. His steps on the other side sounded mincing, like he was pacing.
“Just step up to the gap, mark where it is. Listen for my voice,” she said. She could see the barest hint of his form moving with painful slowness up to the edge until his foot slid over the gap, pebbles dislodging. “Right there.”
And before she could say anything else, he pressed both hands into the tunnel’s walls and leveraged himself up and over. She threw herself against the wall as he landed well past the hole, rolling head over feet.
She breathed out, both hands still braced behind her. “That’s one way.”
He stood, brushed dirt from himself. “If I’d waited any longer, I would have spent the night over there.”
Veda smiled. He knew when he was afraid, and he was brave anyway. She was beginning to understand why Prairie had liked him.
Ahead, the cave sloped gradually down. She took the lead, removing more moss from the ceiling as they went, and after twenty minutes they came slow and careful to a circular room. Her enhanced perception—now up to 4—allowed Veda to see the multiple branching tunnels that led off, each identical.
“I can see my feet now,” Galen said. “I just gained level two in perception.”
“We’re in a big room with tunnels extending off.” She traced around the edges of the space, making a full circle. “There are four branches. I can’t tell the difference between any of them.”
Veda crossed to where Galen stood at the room’s center and sat on her haunches.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Waiting.”
He squatted next to her. “For what? A breeze?”
She smiled. “I don’t think any of these tunnels has a breeze. And if one did, we’re only going further in, not out.”
He was silent next to her, and for a time they just listened: to the stream behind, to the sounds of the cave system, to their own breaths.
Veda observed one tunnel, and then the next, and the next, turning on her haunches. “These seem carved.”
“By orcs?”
“It’s possible. Not likely. Did you notice they’re all equidistant?”
“I can tell that my shoes are sort of brown,” he offered.
She smiled, but she was already deep inside her mind. The composition of the world, the map Eli had drawn in the dirt. Something was surfacing, an understanding she couldn’t quite grasp the edges of, until—
It came to her all at once, so fast she could hardly get the words out evenly. “It’s a compass. The map is a perfect circle. The stream crosses at the center, east to west. We were in the southwest quadrant, and we just barely crossed into the northwest. These tunnels are compass points.”
Galen said nothing for a time. She let him digest it all. “A compass always points north,” he said slowly. “So which tunnel is north?”
She pressed her fingers to her eyes. They had entered the cave near the south point of the compass and followed it straight in. They’d turned left and walked in a nearly straight line, which took them east.
She opened her eyes, lifted her hand to the tunnel on her right. “That’s east.” Her hand shot in front of her, fingers directed toward the darkness of the tunnel’s mouth. “That’s north.”
Galen stood. “Okay,” he said. “If you’re wrong, I’m assuming we’ll end up in hell.”
She stood with him. “Something like that,” she said, but her voice came out too high and strained to pull off the deadpan. She was nervous.
It’s okay, came Prairie’s voice. Follow your instincts.
Veda’s hand went to Galen’s. “This way.”
Ten
The tunnel ran pencil-straight and oddly warm. At four perception, Veda could make out at least ten feet ahead, which didn’t do her much good: she saw more cave, straight on and on. They had been walking most of an hour.
“It’s supposed to be cold underground,” she said. It was the first time she had spoken in a good twenty minutes, and her voice came as a jarring echo even to her own ears.
Galen no longer needed to rely on her shoulder, so he walked alongside. He didn’t speak. She was used to this by now—that things percolated inside him and the words came out when they were ready.
“Maybe there are thermal springs down here,” she said. “Do you think?”
Galen stopped. “Veda,” he said, “about your—”
“Hold on. Look at this.” She had taken a few steps ahead, was now stopped with her face to the wall. Her fingers reached out.
“What is it?”
“There are etchings here,” she said, her finger sliding over the stone. She couldn’t see it clearly enough, but she could follow the shapes. Her eyes closed as she did so. “This is a person.”
“An orc?”
“No—taller, slimmer.” Her finger slid up and down the lines. She moved on to another of the drawings. “They carry bows.”
“We’ve only seen orcs in this world.”
“Maybe orcs had dreams of humans.”
“I can’t imagine an orc drawing,” he said.
“Nor can I.” It was an old voice that spoke, an elderly woman’s gravel. And with it, a white flash—a torch, illuminating them both. Veda and Galen both set arms to their faces, averting their eyes. What Veda had seen in the single glimpse before her pupils objected wasn’t an orc.
“It’s we elves who drew,” the woman said. “Or, I should say, draw. These are mine, after all, and I’m not dead. You can put away that sword, little knight. And your staff, girl.”
Galen’s blade slid across the leather of his sheath as he settled it. Veda brought the staff to her side.
The elf swung the torch, taking in each of their faces. Veda blinked hard as her eyes adjusted. She had never heard of an old elf before, not in books or stories. They were something like immortals, always youthful. But this one had the white hair and the wrinkles of age. And as her eyes flashed in the torchlight—
Veda gasped. “You’re blind.”
She had never seen a blind person. T
he eyes had gone milky and sightless.
“I’m not blind,” the woman said. “I can see you very well, Miss Red. It’s just that my eyes don’t work.” As she glanced between them, she let a laugh. It was harder, coarser than what Veda had imagined an elvish laugh would be. “And you two will be as well, if you spend long enough down here.”
“Elves live underground?” Galen said.
The woman let another laugh, but this one was so tinged with bitterness she spat at the end. “It’s not a yes or no, little knight. It’s much more than that.”
A sudden feeling rose in Veda for the old elf, and the woman’s eyes jerked to her. “An empath,” she pronounced.
Veda just stared. She knew the word was meant for her, and something about it resonated inside her like a plucked string.
“The cave would only have one such as you. Come on, then,” she said, and swung around, her rag of a shawl sweeping over the stone.
Galen met eyes with Veda.
“I have no idea,” she said, “but she didn’t try to kill us, which is more than I can say for any orc and most humans we’ve met.”
The woman’s laugh echoed ahead of them. “That’s rich—you think I, an old elf, could kill the two of you. Well, you’re not wrong, human. Let that stand for itself, and follow the light.”
And so they did.
The elf lifted a curtain, bore them into a chamber of light. The two humans shielded their eyes, and Veda saw they stood on thatch carpeting. It spread circular around the edges of the room, which was—aside from the flat floor—a dome.
“Here are two short-lived,” the elf called, and footsteps sounded from elsewhere. Veda tried to lift her unadjusted eyes, could not. Beside her, Galen’s head was also inclined to avoid the bright light. “And they’ve been wandering down here long enough they’re ground worshippers.”
The elf returned to them with two cups carved from stone. She handed one to Veda, who finally understood the source of the warmth: a fireplace, boiling stew at the far end of the room. That meant—