by Elliot Burns
Elena crossed the room. Her long legs meant she took big strides. When she stood near Jack, she was half a foot taller than him. She wore a white, tight robe with a hood. Loops were sewn into random parts of her attire, and they rattled whenever she moved. She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. It was a list of some sort.
“Let’s see,” she said, and began tracing her finger down the sheet. “There are some things I’m supposed to clarify. You aren’t dead. You aren’t ill. You haven’t slipped into a coma. Nobody is playing a joke on you. You haven’t got a mental illness. You haven’t taken hallucinogenic drugs. Nobody has hit you on the head.”
She went on and on for a full minute, reeling off the answers to questions Jack had in his head, but hadn’t said aloud. It was as though Elena had been asked them all before. Finally, she stopped.
“Is this a game?” he said. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Nothing about this is a game, Lord Halberd.”
“I think the lord needs a rest,” said Mav. “Come, why don’t you show me where your treasury is and you can have a good old snooze in there while I look around?”
“My treasury?” asked Jack.
Elena and Mav looked at each other. “I hope this one’s up to the task,” said the old man. “Last time Kral Ordag won, I spent a year in his dungeons.”
This was too much. It couldn’t be real, could it? The problem was that while one or two senses could be tricked, it was hard to fool them all. Not only did he see Elena and Mav and hear their voices, but he could smell a trace of perfume coming from the woman. He also felt a tightness in his own throat, a thirst that was building up in him and seemed too urgent to be fake.
“I need a drink,” he said.
Mav walked to the corner of the room. He moved a pile of rocks, then lifted out a sack he must have hidden there. He joined Jack and Elena again. As he did, he wandered a little too close to her pet, Blunt Fang. The creature slid one of its antennas over Mav’s face.
Mav jumped away, rubbing his skin. “That thing is as slimy as bog snail,” he said.
“They see with their eyes, but their primary experience of the world is through their antennae. He means no harm,” said Elena, and stroked one of Blunt Fang’s antennae.
Mav started to rummage through his sack. He pulled out a bunch of contraptions and laid them on the floor. After a while, it seemed that he’d pulled out more items than the sack could possibly have held. Finally, he lifted out a glass vial. Water swished inside it as he handed it over to jack.
“Thanks,” Jack said, his mouth watering at the prospect of a drink. Then he looked closer. There were beetles floating in the water.
“Don’t worry about those,” said Mav. “They’re purifiers. The swim through the water and eat parasites. I got them in the UIldoon Trench.”
Jack didn’t fancy the idea of swallowing bugs, but he was so parched that it seemed worth a try. Once, back home, an Asian food market had set up in the middle of town for a week. It had been one of the most eye-opening weeks of his life. While all his friends seemed suspicious, Jack tried all manner of exotic foods from pickled cockroach to grilled scorpion. He loved trying new things.
He shrugged his shoulders. “A drink’s a drink.” He unscrewed the lid and lifted it to his mouth.
Elena grabbed the vial off him, spilling water down his shirt. “You need to boil it, Lord,” she said. “You are new here, and the water will not agree with you.”
He’d never been on holiday abroad, but he’d heard stories from friends about how they’d drank tap water in a foreign country and then spent the next two days glued to the toilet. Jack supposed Elena was right. And this wasn’t just a foreign country; it was a foreign world. Who knew what the water here could do to him?
“Come on,” said Elena. “I’ll take you to the meeting chamber. There is a hearth where we can start a fire and boil the water.”
Elena set off, and Jack and Mav followed her. It was evident that Elena was no stranger to the castle. She led him through the passageways as though she’d walked through them a hundred times.
It seemed there were endless hallways with rooms connected to them. Most were bare, but as they passed different rooms and he glanced inside, he saw the odd table or chair. The place seemed like it had been deserted for a long time.
Every so often, he saw a sickle drawn on the castle walls. It wasn’t lost on him that the shape matched his birthmark. He wasn’t a believer in coincidence. Elena had called him Lord Halberd ever since she met him. It was like the castle was made for him.
“This my castle?” he asked.
“Just through here,” said Elena, ducking under a door arch that most people would walk through without trouble. “And I’ll answer your questions as best I can.”
She led him into a room that was larger than the one with the trap door. He couldn’t tell if they were on the east wing or west, but this room had three rectangular windows that looked out onto a lake. On either side of the lake was grassland, and a scattering of houses were built on it. Jack looked closely but couldn’t see any sign of movement.
“Oh, bloody stinking God’s arse,” said Mav, gritting his teeth and holding one hand in the other as though he was in pain.
“Are you okay?” asked Jack.
“Caught my thumb on a splinter.”
“A thief whose weakness is splinters,” said Elena, shaking her head. “What are you still doing here, anyway? Don’t you have tombs to raid?”
Mav gave her a dirty look. “I could ask you the same thing, Tacher.”
She folded her arms. “I am attached to the Halberd family. I have every right to be here.” Then she looked at Jack. “Don’t worry, I will have this gentleman taken away.”
Jack held up his hand. “Leave him. He helped me when the creatures attacked. He can stay a while. Besides, it looks like it’s getting dark outside.”
Mav laughed. “Sure it does, Lord Newfish. We’re getting into the first night cycle.”
“First night cycle?” asked Jack.
“Royaume has twelve hours of day, two hours of night, then six hours of day followed by fourteen hours of night,” said Mav.
“How the hell does that work?” asked Jack.
Elena went to speak, when Mav held up his hand. “I have this,” he said.
He put his hand to his chin and thought about it. After a turning the answer over in his mind for a few seconds, he delivered it to Jack.
“Well, it’s planets, and stuff.”
Elena sighed. “Two suns shine upon Royaume. They are twins, though they drift ever farther apart as time goes on. Some scholars believe that soon, Royaume’s second night cycle will be twenty hours, then twenty-five, then thirty, and so on.”
Physics, along with history, was one of the only classes Jack had the energy to give his attention to when Mum was having one her episodes. When she got bad it meant he got a few hours’ sleep at most, and that made it hard to concentrate in school. Not for physics though. He loved hearing about space, about the solar system and what might lie beyond it. He used to fantasize about what worlds waited in galaxies lightyears away. It was the idea of infinity that grabbed his attention. That if you travelled far enough, anything was possible.
Mav walked to the end of the room and knelt next to a fire place. In the centre of the room there was a table. It was made of stone that had been roughly cut into an oval shape. Something about it seemed ancient, as though it had been here for centuries. There were wooden chairs around it. At one end of the table there was a chair taller than the rest. Jack guessed that was the lord’s chair. His chair.
“You’re gonna have to explain all this to me,” he said. “Because I’m completely lost.”
“My head’s buggered too,” said Mav. He nodded at Jack’s t-shirt. “What’s that on your clothes? Is it your sigil?”
He was talking about the facehugger that advertised free hugs. Jack smiled. “No. Just a pet from back ho
me,” he said.
Mav grimaced. “And I thought Blunt Fang was ugly.”
Elena leant on a chair. She seemed tired, yet she didn’t sit down.
“Don’t stand on my account,” said Jack.
“I can’t sit until the lord has done so.”
“Come on,” said Jack. “Just park your ass.”
She shook her head. “Protocol decrees I have to wait for you.”
“What if I don’t want to sit down?” asked Jack.
“Then I won’t, either,” said Elena.
Judging by the way she leant on the chair, she was dead on her feet. He wondered what she’d been doing to make her so tired. Still, he felt bad, and didn’t want her to suffer for silly protocol. He walked across the room, dragged out his lord chair, and sat in it.
Over by the fire, Mav was arranging pieces of wood. He turned and looked at Jack. “You might want to think about spending some flek on water wells,” he said.
“Flek?”
“Don’t tell a lord how to spend his flek,” said Elena. Then she looked at Jack. “Don’t trust this man, Lord Halberd. I know him. Or know of him, at least. He was a hero in Lord Gowbert’s army, once. But now he’s a thief, and a drunk.”
The fire crackled in front of Mav. He pulled a saucepan out of his sack, tipped his beetle water into it, then set it to boil. That done, he faced Elena.
“I never steal anything. The things I take are relics, and I liberate them. Nobody has been in this place for over a decade.”
These two were going to be a problem, he decided. He hadn’t known them long, but already he realized that they were just too different from each other. Elena seemed studious and serious, while Mav was a thief. And Elena was right; the man was a drunk. Still, he didn’t need to see an argument right now. He needed answers.
“What’s flek?” he said, changing the subject.
“Bite my arse with Ordag’s teeth,” said Mav, shaking his head. “Is this Royaume’s new savior? He’s going to take some work.”
Elena gave him another of her famous dirty looks. “He’s new. He needs time to acclimatize.” Then, she faced Jack. “Flek is the currency of Royaume.”
“And when I found the door in the floor,” said Jack, asking each question as it occurred to him. “You seemed mad at me, Mav. Why?”
The old man shrugged. “I was saying that it was beginner’s luck that you found it. I didn’t know you were Lord Halberd.”
Jack settled back into his seat. Although it was made of wood, it was comfortable. It felt as though it was made just for him. This was getting too much now. He’d played along for a while, but he needed answers.
“Enough of this,” said Jack. Then it surprised him how loud and deep his voice sounded. It was though the acoustics of the room were specifically designed to amplify his voice. “Where am I really?”
“A castle,” said Elena.
“And where is the castle?”
“In Holuum, a district formerly under the authority of the deceased Kral Murdoch.”
He rubbed his head. “And where is Holuum, exactly?”
“In Royaume.”
He sensed he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Elena unless he phrased his questions carefully. It was as though she approached everything he said with the utmost logic.
“Heard it was a gruesome death,” said Mav. “They say Murdoch begged to be put out of his misery. Think of it; a big, mean old feller like that. Holuum needs to elect a new Kral now, you know. You should go for it.”
“It is too soon to take things like that into consideration,” said Elena.
“You’re telling me. Bet he doesn’t even know how to swing a sword, let alone command an army.”
“What’s a Kral?” asked Jack.
Elena settled into her seat. She sat in a curious way, crossing her legs underneath her and then resting her arms on her thighs as though she was getting ready to meditate.
“A Kral is a higher form of Lord. Royaume is split into six districts, each with several lords ruling their lands. Then, above the lords in each region is a single Kral, who they answer to.”
“You’ve got a lot of work to do before you’re ready to become Kral,” said Mav.
“Like what?”
“Have you visited your kingdom stone?” asked Elena.
He started to feel like he was hearing another language again. “Kingdom Stone?”
She nodded. “You came up the staircase, so I assumed you had been below, to the lord’s room. I cannot enter, so I can’t say exactly what it looks like, but I am sure you couldn’t miss it.”
He remembered the stone that had his birthmark on it. And then how it had flashed light, blinding him, and his uncle’s wrist band had burned into his skin.
“I saw it,” he said. “But it hasn’t exactly illuminated things for me.”
“Are you wearing the bracelet?”
Jack lifted his arm. “I wouldn’t say wearing it, exactly. More like, it’s living in my wrist.”
Mav reached into his sack and pulled out a dagger. Blunt Fang, placid until now, stood up and looked tense. “Don’t worry,” he told the creature.
He placed the dagger on the table and nodded at Jack. “Aim your bracelet at the dagger,” he said.
Both Elena and Mav stared at him now. He lifted his arm and aimed his wrist toward the dagger. As he did, text appeared in front of him. The words looked faint and see-through.
Steel dagger
Attack points: 5
Durability: 10/100
This was starting to get familiar. In every RPG he’d ever played, weapons and armor had stats like that. He wracked his brain and tried to remember if he’d gone to the mall and tried on one of the new VR headsets, but he couldn’t picture it. Where his memory of the last day should have been, there was just a blank space.
“Now point it at yourself,” said Elena.
His heart started to pound. This was getting stranger and stranger by the minute. He lifted his arm and turned his palm so that his wrist pointed at his own chest.
Lord Halberd
HP: 125 / 125
Combat (50): 5
Fear (50):2
Charisma (50): 5
Kingdom Stats
Flek – 246
Population – 24
Influence Points – 0
No Soldiers – 0
Leadership Stats
Warmonger – Level 0
Peacekeeper – Level 0
Tycoon – Level 0
People’s Leader – Level 0
Tyrant - Level 0
Power 1 –
Power 2 –
Power 3 –
Power 4 -
It was too much information to process at first. He found that if he moved his wrist, the text would zoom in or out where he chose. This gave him time to study what it said, but it was hard to know what to think.
Nobody was playing a trick on him. He accepted that now. And whether he was in a coma or had gone mad, it didn’t matter. The fact was that this was his realty now, and he had to deal with it. He’d figure out a way to leave, but he could only work with what he saw. Whether this was a projection of his mind or not, he had to cope.
The best way to do that would be to treat it as it seemed; as a game. He needed to use his knowledge of RPGs and adapt it to Royaume. That meant he needed to know two things; what were the rules of the game, and what was the end goal?
It was time to start from the top. The first section of the text concerned his own information. It listed his name as Lord Halberd. Well, that was consistent with what Elena insisted on calling him.
Next, he saw his own HP and combat numbers. These were simple enough; his HP decided how much damage he could take before…dying? Respawning? He’d need to find out.
The combat number was obviously a representation of his attack power, which was 5 out of a maximum of 50. What about the ‘fear’ stat? Was that some kind of combat modifier placed on him? He didn’t feel
scared. Confused, maybe, but not afraid. Finally, there was charisma. That one was self-explanatory. Although 5 out of 50 seemed a low representation of his charming self, he would find out how to increase it.
Next came the part that really interested him. These were his kingdom stats. Elena had already explained to him what flek was – it was the currency of Royaume. He assumed that if he was lord then he’d need to build and expand on his lands, and he’d need flek to do it.
“Population 24?” he said. “Does that mean people live near the castle?”
Elena nodded. “The Halberd lands extend beyond the lake. You’ll see some farmhouses, and near them are fields which your peasanty cultivate.”
Jack got up and walked to the window. As soon as he was on his feet, Elena shot up from her chair, almost tipping it over behind her.
“You don’t need to stand every time I do, Elena,” said Jack.
He looked out of the window. Although there was much greenery in the Halberd lands, the fields seemed empty. Try as he might, he couldn’t actually see any of his peasantry in or around the scattered houses. In the distance, jagged mountains seemed to hem in the land, making it look like they were trapped in a valley. There was something beautiful about Royaume, he decided. Maybe it was the green fields, or the unpolluted air.
“They don’t seem to be growing anything,” he said.
“There has just been a harvest,” answered Elena. “A meagre one, since they are only growing what they need to eat, with a small surplus besides. There hasn’t been a Lord Halberd here for 12 years, so they have been without direction.”
“What happened to the last one?”
At this, both Elena and Mav exchanged glances. Something passed between them, and Jack started to feel he was on the outside of a conspiracy.
“You know those Krals we told you about?” said Mav. “Well there’s one Kral in particular…”