“You don’t know how lucky you have it here,” Tabita said, finally. “How good it is here. And how little I really want to go back. But I have to.”
“Why?” Chase asked. And this was really what nagged at her. Thomasi had hinted at things, danced around them, and she needed the answer, if fate or whatever else out there was going to keep throwing her up against players. “Why do you have to go back?”
Silence for a bit longer. And for a minute, she thought Tabita wouldn’t answer. But eventually the dwarf chuckled. “What does it matter? You’ll deal with it or you won’t. This world? This world isn’t truly real. It’s a game we created. Nothing but a game.”
“What, like Chess or Seven-card Spatzle?” Chase shook her head. “That’s not making much sense.”
“No. Think of it like a dream, brought to life with magic. People from my world created this one. It’s a Hyper-Reality... no. How can I explain this?” Tabita rubbed her eyes. “We have machines in our heads, in my world. In the real world. They give us access to made-up dreams. Shared dreams. This is one of them.”
“Wait. Everything’s a dream?” Chase blinked and followed that to its logical conclusion. “I’m a dream?”
And the pieces of the puzzle slid together.
It explained so MUCH of the players’ behavior.
They acted as they wanted they did what they pleased, because to them it was nothing more than a dream. Just something to pass the time between wakefulness and slumber, with no real meaning or consequences, no matter what you did.
“And there’s the existential dread,” Tabita sighed. “Try to get over it quickly. We still need you to do things.”
“If it’s a dream...” Chase said, knowing that she probably wouldn’t sleep again for a few nights with all of the questions now chewing at her. “If it’s a dream, then why can’t you wake up?”
“That. That right there is the ten million dollar question,” Tabita said, sitting down on a log and kicking a goblin skull down the slope. “This isn’t the first game of its sort. It’s a cheap darknet feelie, an uncensored gray area sort of game, but even the cashgrab devs who made it weren’t dumb enough to turn off the safety protocols. You can’t! They’re literally wired into our heads!” She raised her hands and slapped them down on her meaty thighs. “The worst that could happen is that you’d get adware piped onto your retinal HUDs until you got a malware scrub! Hell, I’d just purchased advanced antiviral for that I expected that. But... well, it’s more than that.
“Things are more real now. Like ludicrously more real. Pain, I feel pain now. All the pain. Before it was muted feedback. Just annoyance, letting you know your character was in trouble. Now... it hurts. And I don’t know why.” Tabita’s voice dropped to a whisper, as she spoke the last words. “Nobody could code that. There are no receptors rigged up to even DO that sort of thing. And it’s more than that, there are details, insane details...” She reached down and scooped up something in the darkness. “This twig. Before when I picked up a stick, it would have the same basic shape. It would do that because the developers were lazy. But now each twig is different. Each twig is individual. Who would DO that? Who would waste the computing power to...” she shook her head. “It’s crazy. And I wonder if I’m the crazy one, maybe? I wonder if this is somehow another world, and not a dream, despite everything.” She turned to look at Chase, and her eyes were wide and wild in the moonlight. “And I need to go back, need to go back and see. I need to make sure that this is the dream, and the other world is the reality, because if I’m wrong or confused somehow then I’ve done some really, really horrible stuff and I don’t know how the hell I can live with myself.”
“It’s not you,” Mercutio said. “It’s the beast.”
“The beast that I wanted to be!” Tabita stood and glared at him until he lowered his eyes. “The beast that I made of myself,” Tabita finished, softly.
Chase swallowed. “How will the skin help you do that?” she asked.
“It might not. But it’s the best chance I have,” Tabita held up the fur. “I was killed and skinned in Arretzi just before the... whatever-the-hell-it-was happened. Call it the crash.”
“Okay... still not seeing how it will help you.”
“So you see the words, right? I’d be surprised if you didn’t, everyone can now.”
“THE words? Yes.” Chase frowned. “What do they have to do with this?”
“I’m getting to that!” Tabita snarled. “Players like me, we can see additional words. Including the patches. No, shut up, don’t ask. All you need to know is that the patches tell us when they affect our jobs. And the Loup-Garou job requirement got waived. Now you don’t need your skinsuit to change. Skinsuits are not supposed to be IN the game. But here it is...” she shook it. “And it still has magic within it! Just as I’d suspected!”
“Ah,” Chase said. It had magic within it because she’d had it enchanted.
“It’s a glitch,” Tabita continued, ignoring Chase’s response. “And if I do the right ritual and put it on, I just might glitch out of the game!” She stood, and her shoulders sagged, dragging the skin on the ground. “Might. Might is the keyword, here. It’s a long shot. I won’t lie.”
She looked up then, and her eyes were yellow and practically glowing in the moonlight. “That’s where you come in, Oracle. You divine me up a future where that happens and tell me how to get there. And Mercutio will make you the richest halven in this little fake Italy.”
“All right,” Chase said, holding out her hand for the skin. “Let me see what I can do.”
And she did. She pulled out her cards and did several readings; she studied Tabita’s palms; she lit candles and studied the patterns left in the smoke. And after Tabita and Mercutio started getting restless, she lay down for a Short Vision.
But what she saw made no sense at all.
A dark room, with green pillars, and numbers and pillars flickering by overhead. Werewolves in those green pillars, and Tabita in the center of it all, cutting, cutting, cutting at her skin. Chase looked away as the blood flowed, and her gaze went on endlessly, staring into a dark void.
It was a place not meant for sanity. It was a place that couldn’t be, and she didn’t know what it meant, and then the vision started to fade...
...No! She thought. And then she remembered she had a skill for this now.
“Focus Vision,” she thought, and her view snapped back to the room.
Then it pulled back, showing a cave lit by guttering fires, a throne room strung with thatch and bones and dead goblins all about. And a green light shone behind the throne; a doorway closing on the void, a hole in the world sealing... just as Mercutio went charging through it, leaving the goblin massacre behind and hurtling into the darkness.
That’s the room that Renny told me about! Chase thought. The core chamber.
Your Focus Vision skill is now level 2!
Your Short Vision skill is now level 9!
With a gasp, Chase sat up.
The moon was a lot higher in the sky than she remembered, and then two shapes blocked it, a squat silhouette and a tall, lanky one.
“Well?” Tabita asked.
“I know where you have to go to do the ritual,” Chase said. “The dungeon. The dungeon is the key. Well, any one would work, probably, but this one’s right here, and time is short.”
You are now a level 6 Medium!
CHA+5
LUCK+5
“What does the dungeon have to do with anything?” Tabita frowned.
But Mercutio’s eyes grew wide, white in the moonlight. “I’ve heard something about dungeons. That each one has a vault that’s between worlds...”
“That sure matches what I saw,” Chase said and explained her vision in detail.
“That’s it, that’s got to be it!” Tabita said. “It’s probably supposed to be a dev-only room, but... well, something’s wrong. So it’ll be a glitch on a glitch! That’s my best shot at getting home!”
“Did you see Mercutio there?” Tabita asked. “How MANY werewolves in pillars?”
“About six, and no, I didn’t see Mercutio there,” Chase admitted.
“All right. Then that settles it. Stay here.” Tabita pulled Mercutio to the side and spoke with him. He didn’t like what she had to say, and they argued for a time, breaking into low, guttural growls at one point. But finally he raised his head and howled, a long, high call that made Chase shudder to hear it.
The call was answered, from all around the forest. And inside of ten minutes, the pack had assembled again. After a brief bit, Tabita chose six of the pack, formed a party, and marched into the cave without a backward glance.
Chase read the anger and humiliation in Mercutio’s stance and said nothing.
But he must have read something in her body language, because he marched over and unceremoniously picked her up.
“Wait, what? Hey! Hold on!”
“If she succeeds, you go free and I’ll make you rich. If she fails or dies, you’ll die,” Mercutio said, his earlier civility gone. “Until then, you wait with us. And just so you don’t get any ideas...
Chase cried out as he pulled her silvered cards from her pocket, handling them deftly with gloved fingers. “I’ll be keeping these,” Mercutio finished.
“I wasn’t going to use them anyway!” she shouted. “I’m not insane! You’d pulverize me!”
“Keep remembering that, and you might just live through this after all.” Mercutio said. Then he turned, as something small pelted up the hill, something that crashed its way through the underbrush. “What? Tollen?”
“Torches! It’s an army!” Tollen Wheadle rumbled, still half-beast. “Coming from the road!”
And Chase exhaled with relief, staring out into the darkness and seeing faint pinpricks or light. The compass had done its job. The tracking spell led her ’allies’ straight to the werewolves.
Her relief died in her throat as Mercutio whirled at the sound... and though her charisma let her quickly rearrange her features, his perception was just too good. His eyes narrowed. “You. You did this.”
“How could I do this?” Chase protested, backing up. “I’ve been with you the whole time!”
“Yes. Yes you have...” he growled. “We’ve covered our tracks every time; we’ve made sure to turn the farmers whose lands we crossed, and we’ve avoided light and other things that would draw attention. The only difference is that you’re here.”
“Hey! Hold on!” Chase held up her hands. Her back hit the side of the cliff, and Mercutio stalked closer. “I’m trying to help you! I want gold and to get out of here. Do you honestly think that those people won’t murder me horribly as well? Silver arrows through the heart will kill me just as bad as they will you!”
He scrutinized her for a moment. “There’s a simple way to test this. Tollen, go take her out into the woods, down by the creek bend. If the hunters turn toward you, then kill her and return. If it stays after us, bring her along and hit them from the rear.”
Chase folded her arms. “This is a waste of time, but okay.”
“Girl, do you really think I need your agreement to do this? Do you think I care?” A hint of the beast crept into Mercutio’s voice, and she didn’t have to fake the fear that must have shown on her face.
“Come on then,” Tollen said, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her back so hard that she stumbled. “Let’s go!”
Chase weighed her options, glanced a final time at the Alpha’s face, and decided to let her fellow halven pull her away from the obviously angry and possibly-still-going-to-eat-her werewolf.
You are now a level 11 Halven!
AGL+4
CHA+4
CON+2
DEX+4
INT+2
LUCK+4
PER+2
STR+2
WILL+2
WIS+4
COOL +5
MENTAL FORTITUDE+5
Then it was down the hillside, through the trees, and Chase’s recently-improved agility let her move without stumbling too much as Tollen practically dragged her along. She knew better to complain, or look back, or do anything to make Mercutio change his mind. He could and would gut her right there and then, if he knew what she’d done.
And he’d almost guessed it, she thought, feeling sweat gather at the edges of her headscarf. With only the barest suspicion, he figured out that there was some sort of tracking effect in play. He just thought it was me and not the skin.
“You’re afraid,” Tollen whispered, as the silence of the dark forest was broken by distant gurgling. Water ahead, the creek most likely. “You’re afraid and I can smell it. Don’t be.” Tollen said. “I won’t kill you.”
“You won’t have to,” Chase said, putting confidence in her voice. “I’m not the one who drew them here.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
“Because I’m alone in the woods with a werewolf. And because you almost killed me earlier tonight, Tollen Wheadle, and I’m not sure why.” She stared at him, unable to see very much of him beyond a shadowed shape, in the darkness of the woods.
“That were... that were the beast,” Tollen said, his voice rising a bit. “It needed to feed. Needed to hunt. I took care of that after they took you. You got nothing to fear from me, Berrymore.”
“You killed someone,” Chase said and the words hung in the air as the water ran merrily, dark and hidden.
“They deserved it,” he said, but she caught the hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“Did you deserve it, when Tabita attacked you? When she burst out of the summerhouse at nightfall and tore into you?”
A hiss of indrawn breath. “How did you... no, it doesn’t matter. I’m stronger now. Better. Don’t have to hide in the woods to get away from stupid people who talk too much and won’t let me be. I can hide in plain sight, and ain’t none the wiser.”
“So long as you kill a few every month, that makes it all right?” Chase knew she was pushing her luck here, but this was Tollen Wheadle. She knew enough of his buttons and triggers to avoid them. And this was a vital chance to learn things that the other werewolves wouldn’t tell her. “Never mind that,” she said, as he growled. “What I can’t figure out is how you did it in the mansion. Or how Tabita killed Giuseppe, for that matter. There were supposed to be magical wards and guardians and things like that! Everyone told me about how magical the Verde family was, but that manor did NOT live up to its reputation.”
“Oh. That.” Tollen seemed to relax a bit, judging by how his shadow shifted. “It is pretty secure... but the Thieves’ Guild here cracked it decades ago. Mercutio paid them a wompload of gold for the pass phrases. After that, so long as we didn’t target any family, or go to the secure vaults there weren’t nothing the guardians could do and the watchers looked the other way.”
“She was never after Maddalena Verde.” Chase closed her eyes.
“Would have taken her if she could have. But the old biddy was supposed to be a Conjuror. Bad odds on a good night. And that weren’t a good night.”
“No.” Chase picked her way towards the water sound, stopped as she came to a break in the trees. Moonlight glimmered on the water.
Tollen moved up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched.
“Been thinking about it,” Tollen said.
“About what?”
“You and me.”
A trickle of unease crept down her spine, and she stepped back from him. “I don’t think we should have this conversation.”
“That’s the thing,” he said, stepping closer. “I think we should. I can’t look at you, I can’t smell you; I can’t hear you without thinking of meat, Chase Berrymore. Even with the kill I had, even with the beast sated... I want you. I want to sink my teeth into your throat and chew.”
It wasn’t what he was saying.
It was the fact that he was saying it matter-
of-factly, that he was saying it like the most natural thing in the world, that filled her with dread.
Chase started to run through her methods of stopping him from tearing her throat out, and came up short. There... weren’t many. And he was a Scout, with high, high perception. She mouthed, “Silent Activation, Foresight,” and let her ghost self try to deflect the conversation. She watched as he ignored her and his ghostly form stepped closer.
“Silent Activation, Foresight,” she muttered again and tried to bluster. It worked no better. And the pain in her chest rose, as paradox threatened.
But the third try, that was the charm.
“Is that what you told Friatta Costello?” Chase asked, standing her ground. “Is that what you did to her?”
Tollen flinched backward. She saw him slink back into the shadows, away from the open patch where the moonlight shone over the brook. “I didn’t mean to do that. That were a mistake.”
“Then why did you kill her?”
“They sent me! They sent me to find out who had ordered the skin! But she didn’t know.” He sighed. “I went in, pretended to be a customer looking for a new sheath. Tried to chat her up. Sending ME to chat someone up. Don’t know why they expected it to go well.”
Privately, Chase agreed. The loner Scout was one of the least charismatic people she’d known back in Bothernot. “And what happened, exactly?” Chase asked. She kept her voice gentle and neutral. No hint of judgment.
“She didn’t know. It was her mother did the work, back then. But her mother was dead. It was just her and her father, and she was lonely. And then she...” Tollen’s voice hitched in his throat. “She said she was lonely. That her father was dead drunk. Wouldn’t hear nothing. And she leaned into me, and her throat was right THERE.”
“Ah.” Chase said.
“It was indecent! Didn’t even know if I was married or not!” Tollen snarled. “She weren’t no good woman. Just a loose city trollop!”
“And now she’s dead,” Chase said.
“Which brings us back to you and me,” Tollen said and moved back into the light.
Damn him. Damn his single track mind... Chase took a deep breath. “There isn’t a you and a me.”
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