Aes was rebuilding the fire when she reappeared. He gave his improvised spit a half-turn; the hare was almost ready. Standing up, he reached out and picked up another piece of wood.
This time he saw her arrive. Right in front of him there was a soundless explosion of light that faded to reveal Darla. He took one look at her and surged forward in time to catch her before her legs gave out. “What happened to you? Come and sit by the fire.”
She didn't argue, but allowed him to lead her over to Cheiron's herb-grinding rock. He waited until she had settled herself next to the bowl-like depression in the half-buried boulder before he said anything.
He could feel her trembling against him. “Would you like some rabbit?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I can't eat. My avatar is just a drawing in the sand, remember?” Then she actually noticed the hare on the spit over the campfire. Her eyes widened. “How did you manage to skin a rabbit?”
Aes smiled. “Well, catching it was the hard part. It's been years since I last hunted on Pelion with Cheiron. It would have been handy to have his bow, but I managed to make some of the snares he taught me. For the skinning I had your throwing knife.” He reached out and pulled the spit out from the rocks that held it over the fire, grimacing.
“What I mean is, it was just a drawing of a rabbit. There was no need for it to have bones or muscles. You shouldn't have been able to change it in any way, let along remove its skin and internal organs.”
“Luckily, the rabbit didn't know that.”
He set the impaled rabbit next to the bowl-like depression in the rock and looked at his hand, wincing. There was a small flash of green light around it. The wrinkles in his forehead smoothed. He exhaled and wiped his hand in the depression, then rubbed his thumb and fingers over the cooling meat.
Looking up, he saw her puzzled expression. “Sea salt. I found one of Cheiron's old jars and brought up some water to dry in the sun.” He picked up a green leaf and used it to hold the stick while he took a bite out of the meat.
While he chewed he thought about her. Something had just frightened her badly, that was obvious. Whatever it was, she was still thinking about it. “Are you sure you don't want some of the rabbit?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Completely sure.”
He took another bite. She kept staring at him as if she had never seen a man eat rabbit before. He stopped when he was halfway finished and put the rest down on the rock, in case she changed her mind. “Are you ready to talk about it?”
Light exploded and faded. A man had appeared near the cave. He was wearing a chiton and golden sandals. He looked about the same age as Darla, with blonde hair and blue eyes. “I see you found him again,” he said to Darla.
She jumped to her feet and glared at the newcomer. “Farker, don't ever ask me for a favor again!”
An eyebrow lifted. “Good to see you too, Darla. Hello, you must be Aes. I'm Farker. I've been meaning to talk to you.”
Aes regarded him. His stomach rumbled again, so he picked up the stick and took another bite of the rabbit. “Are you from the same world as Darla?” he asked calmly.
“Yes,” said Farker, watching him eat the rabbit, his expression unreadable. He turned to Darla. “Did you find the anomaly?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You might say that. Has Finder told you about Karl and Rachel yet?”
“Who? Told me what about them?”
“He ate them, Farker. Went all vore right in front of me. I don't know what the hell you have going on in Egypt but you better log them out, right now!”
Farker frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Darla sagged back down on the rock and took a deep breath. She let it out in a sigh. “Karl and Rachel, I don't know their last names. Call the Finder, and log them out, then we can talk about it.”
Farker raised an eyebrow. “I'll be right back,” he said, and vanished.
As soon as he disappeared Aes turned to look at her. “What was all that about?”
“Hang on,” she told him. “I don't want to have to tell the story twice. He'll be back in a minute, and I'll bet he'll be willing to listen, for a change.”
Nor was she wrong. In less than a minute Farker reappeared, looking grim. “That's what I was afraid of,” he said. “Two more, just like the first two. What do you mean 'ate them'?”
She got to her feet again, glaring. “What first two? Did you know that was going to happen? You sent me in there knowing that?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “All I knew was that Bjorn and Talia Abernathy's avatars disappeared and we can't log them out. Haven't been able to locate them in the system.”
“Well,” she said, “I think I know why.” Without preamble, she launched into a compact description of what she had seen in Realm of Egypt. “...and then he started coming for me and I freaked,” she finished. “I transited here just in time. I'm telling you, Farker, I've fought orcs, dragons, dinosaurs and god knows what else in PanGames; nothing's ever fazed me before. This guy called Am-heh was off the scale. I didn't even stop to think after he ate their avatars. I just ran.”
“This isn't good,” Farker mused. “If he'd stabbed them or shot them and the game decided their avatar health had dropped to zero, they'd just teleport to a hospital and continue playing. But he swallows them, which makes them disappear without reducing their health. The system has nowhere to display their avatars. They're in limbo: not logged out, and not anywhere in the Realm or anywhere else. The fucker's found a loophole in the game logic.”
Aes listened to all of this, trying to make sense of it. “The other anomaly is a monster?”
“Whatever he is, he's like the opposite of you,” Darla said. “That man Karl called him 'Am-heh'. Karl was some kind of Egyptologist; he said he'd come to Realm of Egypt as a review consultant, correcting some errors in historical accuracy.”
Farker's face went blank for a minute. Whatever he was doing, this time he didn't disappear. “I found him in Triskelion's list of NPCs. Am-heh, the Devourer of Millions. He's a minor Underworld god, or at least he was supposed to be, until he decided to start walking around topside eating tourists.”
Gamers and Gods: AES Page 33