Dead Man Gaming

by A. J. Markam

  Russell threw his hammer, which flew through the air and slammed into the energy shield.

  Although the impact knocked her back a couple of feet and she grunted, she didn’t seem to be any worse the wear this time around.

  Meanwhile, the hammer zipped back through the air to Russell.

  “He can throw things, and they go back to them?” I asked, amazed.

  “Just his hammer and his shield,” the orc said. “He ain’t a Jedi knight.”

  “No, I’m better! I’m like a combination of Thor and Captain America! And the Hulk, because I’m green and strong!” Russell yelled, posing like a pint-size body builder.

  “Actually, dude,” the orc called out, “you look like the Hulk’s dick fell off and he wrapped it up in tinfoil.”

  “And I’m comin’ to bugger you up the arse, fugly!” the goblin yelled cheerfully.

  “So what do you do?” I asked the orc.

  “I’m a damage dealer, too, but I’m a melee fighter.”

  “May Lay?”

  “Close up. Swords ‘n daggers ‘n shit. Jennifer’s a ranged fighter.”

  “Ranged?”

  “It’s like talking to a myna bird,” the orc laughed. “Melee, brawk! Ranged, brawk!”

  “Ranged as in distance,” the elf explained.

  I looked over at the troll. “And you heal everybody?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you a priest?”

  “No, I’m a druid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A mystical being who is one with the natural forces of nature.”

  “He can also turn into a cat,” the orc chuckled.

  “It’s a puma,” the troll said, not nearly as amused.

  “That sounds cool,” I said.

  “Show him!” the orc said.

  “I would prefer not to,” the troll answered.

  “Come on!”

  “Come on, pussy!”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Come on, pussy, pussy, pussy!” the goblin called out with a grin.

  Jennifer put her hands on her hips. “Guys – we talked about this – ”

  “What?” the goblin yelled. “All we’re doin’ is callin’ him a cat!”

  “Yeah, Miss HR,” the orc agreed, “all we’re doing is calling him a cat.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s all you meant by it,” the elf said sarcastically.

  The troll looked over at me. “And that is why I don’t like turning into a puma.”

  “Is there anything else you do?” I asked.

  “I have all sorts of different healing spells, plus a few damage spells, but mostly I just make sure everyone, including myself, stays alive.”

  “Cool.”

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Jennifer said.

  “I didn’t get to do my charge!” the goblin yelled.

  “No!” Jennifer shouted.

  Too late. The goblin was rushing through the wheat field as fast as I’d run with Fleet Foot.

  “Dammit!” Jennifer yelled, and cast a wall of ice.

  The goblin blasted through the foot-thick wall of ice like a softball through a stack of ice cubes, and both he and Jennifer went tumbling head over heels through the wheat.

  “DAMMIT, I told you that was it!” Jennifer yelled as she kicked the goblin off her.

  “That was awesome!” the goblin hooted as he ran away.

  Purple energy swirled through the air. “And now you can see why I’m such a valuable member of the party,” Richard the troll said. “Not because of monsters, but because several of us are idiots.”

  24

  Our quest took us back into the woods – although different woods than the ones I’d been in earlier. Along the foothills of the mountains, the fields of wheat and grass gave way to a forest of pines. It took us nearly an hour to reach it.

  “First thing I’m doing when I reach level 20 is getting a mount,” the orc groaned.

  “That’s the first thing we’re all doing,” Jennifer agreed.

  After another ten minutes of walking through the forest, we found ourselves on the outskirts of a massive estate tucked back amongst the trees and perched on the slope of the mountains. It was easily the biggest building I’d seen in the game so far – a gigantic mansion made of wood and stone that was at least four stories tall. It had to have been several hundred feet long. There were castle-like ramparts on the top, and creepy stone alcoves on the first floor.

  A lot more disturbing, though, were the dozens of ghosts floating through the courtyard.

  I’m not talking about ghosts of players who had died and were returning to their bodies, either (though I wouldn’t have been able to see them, come to think of it). These were full-on ghosts, with the ID tag ‘Specter’ in yellow above their heads.

  We all stood on the edge of the courtyard, looking around silently.

  “Well, this looks like a shitshow,” the orc grumbled.

  “You know what that means!” the goblin said happily. “Tons of treasure inside!”

  “We’re not getting any XP for just showing up, so obviously we need to go look for the dark elf inside the manor,” Jennifer said. “The good news is the specters aren’t hostile – yet.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because their names are in yellow. If they were hostile, they would all be red. Which means they probably won’t attack us unless we pick a fight with them.”

  “Or until the game decides it wants to bugger our entire day,” the troll added.

  “Or that,” Jennifer agreed.

  “Do our weapons even work on ghosts?” I asked.

  Jennifer gave me a weird look. “How many mobs have you fought so far, anyway?”

  “Bandits and spiders… and those star guys.”

  “Starlight Crusaders?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jennifer sighed. I could tell she wasn’t exactly happy that the latest addition to the team had such a limited background. “Yes, you can kill ghosts with conventional weapons.”

  “That’d be kind of cool, though, if you had to have special weapons to kill ghosts,” Slothfart enthused. “Ghost blades ‘n shit.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Jennifer warned.

  “What’s the plan?” the troll asked.

  Jennifer looked at me. “Actually… you’re a Rogue, so you have Stealth as one of your abilities, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why don’t you Stealth up and go and do some recon for us?”

  “Hey – good idea!” the orc said, and clapped me on the back. “I knew we brought you along for something!”

  “You guys are staying here?” I gulped.

  “Yeah – we don’t have Stealth, so we can’t come with you.”

  “So I should just… look around?”

  “It’ll be easy,” Jen reassured me. “Nobody will bother you while you’re in Stealth mode.”

  “I’ve, uh, noticed that if somebody attacks me, I can’t go invisible again. Do you know what that’s about?”

  “Yeah – when you’re in the middle of a fight, you can’t go back into Stealth until combat is over. Lots of abilities are like that. You have to kill the person and be out of danger before you can use the skill again.”

  “Oh…”

  “So just stay in Stealth, don’t bump into anybody, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a little unsure.

  They all stood around looking expectantly at me.

  “Well? Go on,” Jennifer said encouragingly.

  I thought Stealth and immediately disappeared.

  “Awesome!” the orc said. “Can’t even see you, dude!”

  “Cool,” I said, and immediately dropped out of Stealth as soon as I spoke.

  Jennifer closed her eyes as though she were in pain. “And don’t say anything, either… since you immediately give away your position when you do.”

  “Sorry,” I mum
bled, “I forgot.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled. “No worries. If you need to send us a message, you can always use the intergroup chat.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Just think Chat and the window will pop up.”

  I did as she said, and a window appeared with a floating keyboard in front of it.

  “You can dictate a message, but… don’t do that if you’re in Stealth mode in the middle of a roomful of monsters.”

  “A roomful of monsters?!” I asked in alarm.

  “It was a joke. There’s probably not going to be a roomful of monsters.”

  “Oh… okay.”

  “And if there is, don’t say anything. Just come back out and get us. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Alright – go get ‘em.”

  I dismissed the chat window, activated Stealth again, and set out for the mansion.

  As I walked amongst the ghosts, careful not to touch any of them, I felt really creeped out. They were all humans – or at least they looked human from what I could see of their pale, translucent features.

  I got through the crowd of specters successfully and entered one of the stone alcoves.

  The inside of the house was deserted. I walked down the paneled wooden hallways of the first floor. All around me, painted portraits of aristocrats hung on the walls, staring down at me spookily.

  I was about to climb the staircase to the second floor when I heard a muffled scream coming from somewhere beneath the floorboards.

  My heart froze in my chest.

  That didn’t sound good.

  But I reckoned I was in Stealth mode so I might as well go check it out.

  I walked along the empty hallways until I found a door with a set of stairs going down. There were torches in the passageway casting flickering light across the stone walls. I started down the steps, terror slowly building inside my chest.

  Once I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized I was in a dungeon. Torture devices filled the room: chains dangling from the ceilings, racks, stands full of sharp implements, and various structures that looked like they were designed for whipping people.

  A human jailer stood about ten feet away from me, a whip coiled at his side and an angry look on his face. He wore a ridiculous-looking pair of curly-toed shoes – the kind the elves wear in Santa’s workshop.

  All around us were stone cells, with different types of beings chained to the walls and slumped on the wooden floor. Dark elves made up the majority of prisoners, but there was also a red elf the same color as Arkova, and a goblin and a troll dressed in rags.

  “You fools better eat. The master has need of you,” the jailer chuckled cruelly, then left the room.

  One of the night elves had the name ‘Hadros’ and a golden ‘?’ hovering over his head.

  Yup, this was the guy.

  I walked over to his cell, made sure the jailer had actually left, and came out of Stealth.

  The dark elf looked up with a cry of surprise.

  I held a finger to my lips. “Shhh!”

  Suddenly ‘700 XP’ hovered in front of my face. I’d completed this portion of the quest all on my own!

  “Who are you?” the dark elf whispered as the ‘?’ above his head turned to a ‘!’

  “Your brother sent me.”

  “Vandriel?! Where is he?!”

  “Back on the farm. He sent me and my friends to come rescue you.” I looked around. “What’s going on?”

  “We have been taken hostage to feed the horrible appetites of the Borellians,” the dark elf moaned.

  “What are Borellians?”

  “Not what – who. They are the family who live here.”

  “They’re cannibals?!” I asked in horror.

  What kind of a quest had I stumbled into?!

  Then I remembered, Oh yeah… I’m a cannibal, too.

  Probably shouldn’t be TOO judgmental.

  Of course, I took no pleasure in eating people, so… a little different.

  “You have to get me out of here!” the dark elf pleaded. “You have to get us all out of here!”

  A window suddenly appeared:

  New quest: Free the Captives

  Free Hadros and the other prisoners from the Dungeon of Borellian Manor.

  900 XP

  Wow… the rewards were stepping up quite nicely…

  I hit ‘Accept’ and said, “Let me go get my friends. I’ll be right back.”

  “No – don’t leave me here!” the dark elf pleaded.

  “I’ll be right back, I promise!”

  I shifted back into Stealth mode and went over and hid in the corner in the shadows. I brought up the chat computer with a thought, and started typing out a message.

  However, I suck at typing. I never learned in high school, and six years without a cell phone in prison hadn’t done me any favors.

  Screw this, I thought. Typing out directions was going to take forever, so I just closed the chat window, activated Fleet Foot, and bolted up the stairs, through the house, and outside.

  I raced over to the group, who were all standing around talking at the edge of the courtyard.

  Six years in prison had taught me eavesdropping as a necessity for survival. Plus I was invisible and curious, so I came close enough to hear what they were saying.

  “Well, he got the next quest in the chain, so at least we know he’s not dead yet,” Slothfart said, then added, “Well, any more dead than he already is.”

  “He’ll be fine,” the troll said. “He’s in Stealth.”

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer said worriedly. “He doesn’t know any of the basic gaming stuff. I mean, who doesn’t know what a tank is?”

  “He’ll learn,” the troll said.

  “We’ll just level him up and it’ll be fine,” the orc said.

  “Plus we can do dungeons now!” the goblin said.

  The elf crossed her arms across her chest. “I don’t know. There’s something about him I don’t trust. Something he’s not telling us.”

  “Like what?” the goblin asked.

  “I don’t know… it’s just that his story about how he got the immersion pod, but he can’t tell us because of a nondisclosure agreement or something – it doesn’t make sense.”

  “He said that?” the orc asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, when I was talking to him alone. He made it sound like there was a court case or something he was involved with.”

  The group all looked at each other.

  “Okay, that is a little weird,” Slothfart conceded. “But we’re just gaming with the guy. It’s not like we’re trusting our bank accounts to him or anything.”

  Jennifer sighed. “I hope this wasn’t a mistake.”

  While on the one hand I was happy that the guys in the group all seemed willing to give me a chance, I was a little miffed that Jennifer didn’t have more faith in me.

  Of course, she was right. I was hiding something.

  And… I was eavesdropping on them.

  Not exactly the nicest thing to do to your new teammates.

  I didn’t want to admit it, though – “Hey, guys, I couldn’t help but sneak up and spy on you” – so I ran halfway back to the middle of the courtyard, turned around, and came out of Stealth as I was running up to them, like I’d just arrived.

  “Hey guys,” I called out as I ran across the courtyard.

  They all jumped like they hadn’t been expecting me.

  “Jeez, I think I just did a Hershey’s squirt,” the orc said.

  “What the hell, dude?” Jennifer said angrily – and probably a little guiltily. After all, she had just been badmouthing me a little. “You were supposed to text us.”

  “I can’t type. I tried, but it was just easier to run out here and tell you.”

  She sighed. “What did you find?”

  I started to give them the rundown about the dungeon, but she waved her hand impatiently.

  “We got the quest d
escription as soon as you talked to Hadros, so we know about the prisoners. But where is he, and are there any monsters on the way?”

  I told them no monsters except the jailor, and gave them directions to the stairs.

  “All right,” she said resolutely, “good job finding him. Let’s go rescue this guy.”

  We started off together as a group – but when we got halfway across the courtyard, a bloodcurdling scream rose up from inside the house.

  “INTRUDERS! KILL THEM!”

  All around us, every ghost’s yellow ID turned red – and the ones closest to us turned around and snarled.

  “Well, the game decided to bugger us,” the troll said matter-of-factly.

  The group immediately sprang into action. Russell yelled happily and launched himself into the nearest group of specters. Slothfart whipped out his orcish scimitar and begin slicing through the translucent figures closest to him. Jennifer threw up a shield and started firing off bolts of ice. And Richard sent out bolts of purple energy to everyone in the group – including me.

  Which I needed, because one hit from the nearest ghost cut my hit points by 25%.

  “Crap – Vicious strike! Backstab!” I screamed.

  I fought the nearest ghost as hard as I could, but I would’ve died within 10 seconds if it hadn’t been for Richard. He was working overtime flinging bolts of energy at me, then group-healing everybody else with massive, 20-foot-wide columns of purple.

  Meanwhile, a flurry of golden numbers was rising up all around me – 75 XP, 75 XP, 75 XP, over and over. When I killed my guy, I added to the overall number – but in the time it took me to kill one ghost, the others had killed at least five apiece.

  Suddenly, ‘Level 6’ appeared in glowing numbers, along with You have earned a new talent point!

  I had leveled up – and I hadn’t even done anything! This was AWESOME!

  Then it quickly went from awesome to shit.

  Two ghosts attacked me at once. I screamed like a seven-year-old girl again, then cried out, “Vicious Strike! Backstab!”

  “Could you perhaps think that inside your head instead of shouting it out?” Richard asked politely as he shot another cascade of purple energy into me. “It’s a bit distracting.”

  “Sorry!” I howled, then started screaming the words inside my head.

  My hit points were hovering just above the zero mark. Red haze obscured my vision as I pulled closer and closer to death. I kept fighting, but the ghost duo was kicking my ass.