The Marches of Edonis

by G. R. Cooper

  Wulfgar then began to run, even though his terror stricken mind was screaming against it, up the stairs. Toward the sound. His legs propelled him while his conscious thought pleaded to leave, to wake - anything except what he was doing. He was drawn in, forward, against every fiber of his will; compelled to confront the unnameable horror that awaited him.

  He careened, out of control, down an interminable hallway; swinging his arms through eons worth of spider webs that tried to bar his path. As he neared the end of the hall, his feet finally gave out and he fell to his knees in front of a closed doorway. Panting, he looked down to the floor in front of the door and saw Shannon. She was splayed, on her back, maggots crawling from a hole in the side of her head.

  As he looked, in horror, her eyes opened, staring directly into his.

  He woke, shaking. Covered in sweat.

  Morning light shone through the shuttered windows.

  Wulfgar looked around the town square. Though near a peak directly to the east, the valley they were in was high enough that the morning sun shone around it and into the village. To the north of the tavern, a row of buildings stretched on a line from east to west. A tailor was just opening his store for the morning, before the blacksmith next to it. A little church butted up against the shops - on the opposite end of the square from the tavern - and Wulfgar made mental note to bind at it before doing anything else. Just in case.

  To the southwest, beyond the tavern's stable, stood the mill; its waterwheel creaking louder than the early morning birds. Wulfgar stretched, then felt Bear nudge up against him, moving around him until he was between the dog and the tavern. Wulfgar looked back to the inn.

  RaNay and Schwartz were coming out of the front door. She smiled as she saw Wulfgar.

  "Good morning," she said while scratching the tiger behind one of its ears. The cat projected an aloofness that Wulfgar could feel Bear trying to emulate; but Wulfgar could tell that the tiger had the dog's full attention.

  Wulfgar nodded and smiled in return.

  "It was nice to meet you, and thanks for adding me to your group, uh ..."

  "Wulfgar."

  She smiled again, "Wulfgar. Again, thanks and it was nice to meet you." She began walking into the square.

  "Wait! You're leaving?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  Wulfgar wracked his brain, trying to think of a reason to keep her in the village. His major concern - one that Clive had pounded into him when Duncan had first brought Shannon permanently into the Omegaverse - was that she wasn't complete. The recording that Duncan's helmet had made of Shannon's consciousness hadn't been enough, Clive had claimed, to ensure that Shannon wouldn't have a complete psychotic break when she'd been recreated.

  He thought back to when he had pressed the button on the device that had brought her back. He'd been in a world that had been formed to mirror a nightmare that Clive had implanted in Duncan's dreams. The eerie, haunted antebellum mansion in a lonely Virginia hollow he'd dreamt of yet again the night before. When he'd brought back Shannon, that was her first view, her earliest memory of her new existence. And the first thing she'd done was to grab a rock and plant it upside his skull, knocking him out as she made her frantic escape into this realm. He had no idea of what a nightmare that must have been.

  He recalled and replayed the conversation between himself and Clive in the outer Omegaverse, perfectly remembered in his now photographic memory.

  "What in the hell were you thinking?" Clive said.

  "I don't know," Duncan was nonplussed. "I just ... missed her."

  Clive seemed to soften, but only a little.

  "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

  "No." Duncan thought that answer was obvious.

  "That's obvious. You couldn't." Clive walked to the window wall, looking out into space. He continued speaking as Duncan followed, folding himself into the couch. Bear curled into a ball of fur on the floor behind him, the floor that was on a level with the top of the sunken couch. He seemed to sense the magnitude of the discussion and rested his snout on Duncan's shoulder.

  "You brought a consciousness back to life under just about the worst possible conditions. We have thousands of years experience, and that's in your glacial timescale, bringing entities back. We have a process. It has to be done just right."

  He turned to look at Duncan.

  "And even then it's a shock to the system. When you realized that you could bring her back, why didn't you call me?"

  Duncan just shrugged. He honestly hadn't thought of that option until just then.

  "I know, I fucked up," said Duncan pitifully.

  "Yes, you did. The question now is, what are you going to do to fix it?"

  "Fix it?"

  "That's right. How are you going to save your friend?"

  "I don't understand."

  "I know that. Again, you couldn't. Shannon was thrown into a alien, to her, world. Left to fend entirely for herself."

  "What happened to her?"

  "I don't know."

  "How is that possible," Duncan asked, shocked. "You're in charge of that world."

  "I am, and while I have a great deal of power there, I'm not omniscient. I study the world and its inhabitants, but my observations can only happen at the macro level. Individuals, well, I have less power to know about any specific individual in that kingdom than I do here," Clive waved his arms to encompass the Omegaverse.

  "The studies I read are just numbers. Just trends. I know what humans are doing in the kingdom, but I don't know what any specific individual human is doing."

  Clive's voice softened.

  "Duncan, I know you care for your friend. She might be doing fine, but I doubt it. I wouldn't have approved of her being brought back based on the recording you had. There wasn't enough information."

  "What will that do?"

  "Any number of things," Clive shrugged. "She might be fine, as I said, or the shock might have sent her over the edge. Her psyche is just as liable to be shocked into madness in this place as when she was alive."

  "Tell me, when she hit you, was that normal? Normal behavior for her?"

  "Shannon wouldn't hurt a fly. Literally. If she'd found a bug in her apartment, she'd have found a way to get it outside," said Duncan, "she adopted every single stray animal she could find. Hell, once she stopped her car on a busy highway just to grab a turtle that had wandered into traffic. No, that was not a normal reaction."

  "Unfortunately, that might have been a very normal reaction for the portion of Shannon that you brought back."

  Duncan looked to Clive, worried. He reached behind and scratched Bear's massive head. He could hear the thump on the mahogany floor as his tail began to wag.

  "What do I do?" he asked plaintively.

  "Find her and if she needs it, help her."

  "That means disconnecting. Going into the Omegaverse permanently."

  Clive just continued to look at him.

  "There are some things I need to take care of first."

  Clive nodded, "I understand. But you need to understand that every day here for you is a much longer time for Shannon, and she's now in a world that rewards effort with greater and greater power."

  He stood, looking down at Duncan.

  "And next time, she might have something much, much more powerful to hit you with than a rock."

  And now, here she was, a good ten levels above him in skill and in control of a tiger that looked like it could not only make quick work of Wulfgar and Bear, but could probably go back into the inn and take out Tim the troll, who still stood where Wulfgar had left him when they'd arrived.

  I mean, she seems fine. But how close to going off the deep end could she be? Especially once she finds out who I am?

  She smiled up at him, a questioning look planted on her face. She waited for him to provide her with a reason to stay.

  He couldn't think of anything.

  Except the truth.

  He swallowed. Gulped.

&nbs
p; "RaNay," he began, "It's me. Duncan." He whispered, "Shannon, it's me. Duncan Sheriden."

  Her mouth dropped. She didn't say anything, just stared at him.

  "It's me," he repeated. He looked at her imploringly. "It really is."

  A wave of confusion washed over her face.

  "Dunc?"

  He nodded, smiled softly.

  "What the living fuck are you doing here?"

  "I came to find you. To help you."

  "What? Why?"

  "Look," he began, "We have a lot to talk about. A lot to catch up on." He smiled at her, "Please don't leave. Not yet," he pleaded.

  Wulfgar leaned back onto his arms, stretched behind him as he sat on the peak of a small hillock overlooking Marchstone. RaNay sat near him, her legs curled beneath and to the side. Schwartz sat a little down the hill, pointedly ignoring them. Bear sat near Wulfgar, downwind from the tiger and pretending to ignore the cat. Wulfgar chuckled as a light breeze brought the tiger's smell on the wind and Bear snorted a little, taking in the scent.

  He looked back over the village below and to the pass beyond. The tower where they'd found the orcs thrust upward lonely between the two mountain ranges that otherwise encircled the valley they were in. The long, broad valley that made up most of Clive's kingdom of Heim lay beyond, hazy in the distance. Wulfgar pondered momentarily how perfectly situated this little hamlet was, high in an easily defended alpine pass.

  RaNay brought him back to the present.

  "So, really, what the hell are you doing here?" She frowned at him.

  Wulfgar looked deeply into her eyes. He couldn't detect anything of an imbalance within them. As far as he could tell, she was the same old Shannon. Happy. Caring. She betrayed nothing of the worries he'd had, the concerns voiced by Clive, about her rebirth.

  "Well," he began, "the last time I saw you was," he paused, looking for the right word, "worrying. To say the least."

  "I know. And I'm sorry. It was a bit disconcerting. You know the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt you." She smiled. He nodded.

  "I know, and it was stupid of me to have brought you back like I did."

  She shook her head.

  "Not at all. I mean, really, was there a better way that you could have? Maybe. But it turned out for the best." She smiled, "Once I got into Clive's office, he explained everything. Calmed me down."

  "Wait. What?" Wulfgar's jaw dropped.

  "Yeah, after I knocked you out and ran into that house, I found myself in King Clive's palace. He explained to me what had happened, how you had brought me back, where I was. Everything." She smiled, "I mean, how many of us got a personal introduction into this world from the King?"

  Wulfgar's mind raced. Clive had told him nothing of this. Given the time dilation between the worlds, her introduction would have happened - would have been completed - entirely within the time that he'd lain unconscious. Why, then, had Clive not only neglected to reassure him that Shannon was fine, but to actively push him to enter - permanently - into this world to find her. Why had he?

  Things started to fall into place. Questions started to be answered. As those answers came to him, he started to get angry.

  He began to explain to Shannon his side of her story. How they'd been manipulated by Clive and the reasons that Wulfgar thought for it. He told her everything - how Clive was really an alien xenoanthropologist, studying humans, and that many of the AI within the Omegaverse, especially the Arn and the Canis Arcturus, were also aliens. He told her that whatever Clive had told her of the reasons she'd been reborn in this world, it was because she was a part of an alien science experiment.

  He described for her how the helmet that the players wore in the Omegaverse recorded an imprint of them, allowing them - their memories, their personalities - to be recreated digitally. How he had used the device that Clive had given him in order to bring her back as well as separate himself from his physical body.

  "Whoah. Stop right fucking there," she waved her hands, interrupting him. "Are you telling me that you're dead too?"

  He nodded, "If not, I soon will be. My body, if it's still alive, is probably sleeping in my bed. I mean, how else could I be here with you?"

  "I hadn't thought it through," she frowned. Then she tensed, "You asshole!" she screamed, growling at him. "Why the hell would you commit suicide?"

  "I, uh," he began, nonplussed. Her eyes blazed, but in fury not insanity.

  "You asshole," she repeated, shaking her head. She began to cry. "Why?"

  "I thought you needed me," he said softly, weakly. Even to him the reason sounded indefensible.

  "How could you leave everything behind? Even if I did need you," she shook her head, "which I don't, how dare you put that onto me?"

  His jaw just dropped. He shook his head, unable to think of anything to say. He'd never been sure how she'd react once they finally met, but this wasn't on the list of possibilities he'd ever imagined.

  "Look," he said, trying to calm her, "I understand, but it's not as clear cut as all of that. Clive really laid a guilt trip on me. He hounded me about you, about how you were all alone, about how you were probably lost, confused, mentally unbalanced. And," he waved his hands, "to be fair, Clive had access to my personality. A direct line. Hell, he implanted nightmares, literally, into my sleep, for fuck's sake." He remembered the dream from the previous night - the same dream that Clive had admitted to implanting within his subconscious.

  Did he do it again? Last night? he thought, Or was this a regular dream?

  He began to feel that he couldn't even trust his own subconscious mind. He felt a fury begin to rise within himself.

  "He wasn't fighting fair," Wulfgar continued. "He knew just which buttons to press in order to get me to do exactly what he wanted me to. So," he shrugged, "you should really be mad at him, not me."

  "My anger is big enough to handle both of you, thanks."

  "OK, fine. I get that. I understand. But, really, what are we going to do now?"

  Shannon - RaNay - looked into the sky, wiping tears from her eyes.

  "First," she began, "do we tell the other players about this?"

  "What good would it do? For them to know? I mean, they understand that they're dead, that they're living in a game world now. But, that realization comes with a certain stability. The game rules should be set, written in stone, right?"

  "Should be," she countered, "but aren't. This shit with the quests and resurrections? How can we explain that? We're all being manipulated." She frowned, "I mean, we both got this same damn quest that brings us here at the same time. You got it hand delivered by the king, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Why? Why would he want us both here, to meet. He had to know that we'd figure out what was going on. That what he was doing wasn't obtuse anymore. He had to know we might spill the beans to everyone else."

  "But we have no proof. Only our words. Hell," he laughed lightly, "can you imagine if we just started telling people the truth? That they're pawns in an interstellar, interspecies, game? And that you and I are at the center of that game, an experiment? Who'd believe us?"

  "They'd think we're nuts, for sure," she agreed.

  "No," he shook his head, "No good can come from that. But we do know. What can we do?" he asked rhetorically. "We can use our knowledge to fight back." He looked down into RaNay's eyes. "I don't know about you, but I'm not planning on being a pawn any more. I think we ought to use our knowledge."

  "They're doing all of this as an experiment," he reiterated, "to find out what they can about human nature. I think we should let our natural inclinations toward this situation drive our actions."

  "I'm pissed," frowned RaNay.

  "Me too. Very. I say that we give Clive a good little lesson in what it means to piss off humans."

  Wulfgar began to think about the beginning, when Clive had first begun to trap him into coming into this world. How they'd all been lies - or, at best, half truths. Lies by omission. He'd been led to believe that Shannon
was lost, at least spiritually, and that she needed his help. Maybe Clive had been telling the truth about not knowing what had become of her - at least after she'd left his office.

  He looked to RaNay. She had called Bear to her and held his head in her hands, looking into his eyes. The dog's tail wagged fiercely, brushing the tall grass behind, as she whispered to him.

  "What did Clive tell you? About this world? When you were in his office ..."

  She raised an index finger, asking him to wait, as she continued to cup Bear's head, whispering softly to him. After a few moments, her words ended and Bear rolled over on his back in front of her.

  "RaNay is offering Bear to you. Do you accept?"

  Shocked, Wulfgar responded.

  Yes.

  "Bear (Level 2) now belongs to you."

  Wulfgar looked up at RaNay, one eyebrow raised in question.

  "Now he's really tamed," she smiled. "It's a damn good thing you ran into me before another tamer." She rubbed Bear's belly. "He was really easy. Any low level tamer probably could have succeeded in taming him."

  "And then?"

  She shrugged.

  "And then, he wouldn't have been yours any more. He would have had to follow whatever orders that the tamer had given him. Including leaving you. And while there are lots of dogs in this world, all I've ever seen or heard of are generic mutts. A purebred would've been on any tamers list."

  "And now?"

  She smiled, "Now he's yours. Forever. No tamer, whatever level, can take him from you. You can also command him, I mean, as far as his skills go. And when he levels up, you can choose what skills to take."

  He brought up Bear's character sheet and read, smiling as he went through the new, to him, information about his faithful companion.

  Bernese Mountain Dog:

  Level 2:

  STR: 20

  INT: 04

  AGI: 10

  HP: 30

  AC: 2 (Fur)

  STA: 12

  ALI: Neutral