Side Quest

by Christopher Kerns

  Bad idea. Definitely a bad idea.

  He felt the rock behind him, searching for a handhold back up to the chute, but found nothing. No rope, no ladder, no chance. Tossing the torch over to his left hand, Mitch pulled out his pistol with his right.

  Guess I’m going to have to fight my way out. Three tunnels—which one’s it gonna be?

  If the game of DeadBlood had been designed anything like the Skirmish campaign levels Mitch knew so well, it would reward experienced players and punish new ones. The problem was, Mitch had no idea how this game worked, not yet, anyway. His eyes flicked between the tunnels as a section from his book, The Skirmish Manual: A Team-Based Approach, came to mind. In his research, Mitch had read up on the human behavior studies used to help shape game design over the past few decades. Games were designed to take advantage of evolutionary traits to encourage frequent play, find a balance of challenge and enjoyment, and keep the element of surprise. In addition to micro-transactions and badges to spark dopamine hits, there were thousands of small details that designers could leverage. For example, psychologists knew that humans prefer to enter buildings counter-clockwise—starting on the right-hand side and working their way left. No one knew why, but generations of shoppers had walked into grocery stores and airports designed to keep them happy and stress-free, right to left. Right on cue, Mitch’s brain was pulling him towards the tunnel on the right—he had no idea why, it just felt like the right decision. And that’s why he walked into the tunnel on the left.

  Suck it, millions of years of evolution.

  He pushed forward, studying each wooden beam dangling dangerously overhead and the chiseled patterns in the rock below. Any section of the wall with a hint of odd coloring—anything shining too bright—was carefully inspected, checking for passages or hidden mechanics. He searched nooks and corners and every odd looking rock, but step after step, all he found was more tunnel, more shallow water to slosh through, and more beams to duck under.

  “Really not enjoying the DeadBlood experience. Giving it a 2 out of 10, and that’s being generous. Would not play again.”

  He rounded a sharp corner and saw something new in the distance—light illuminating a makeshift altar at the far end of the tunnel. The tunnel ended at a T-intersection, with two corridors extended in either direction. At the crossroads, a statue of a woman stood about five feet tall, clad in mid-1800s dress, surrounded by candles. The figure was carved from deep black marble, its shine hitting Mitch right back in the eyes as he swung the torch back and forth. The statue stared him down—arms crossed and brow furrowed—over a pile of human bones at her feet and a bead of thick blood dripping from each eye.

  Must be the Baroness. She seems nice.

  He crept down the tunnel—the one to the left, again—gripping his pistol tight, waiting for action. He held his breath, jumping out from behind every rock with his pistol drawn and ready, each time finding no enemies hiding in the darkness. After a few more turns, the tunnel’s mouth opened wide, revealing a dirt platform overlooking a huge underground chamber. The cavern was massive—must have been four hundred feet across, deep as the day is long, with another tunnel lit with torches far on the other side. There was no path across, at least none that Mitch could see. The silence of the chamber overtook his brain—so still, so devoid of sound, it rose to fill his ears like a scream. He backtracked, trying the other tunnel, but somehow, after a series of turns, it led him right back to the same place.

  After a few minutes of staring into the abyss—weighing options and thinking back through the steps that had brought him here—Mitch settled on the only option he saw: jump for it. With no bridge, no rope, no nothing, what else could he do?

  “If this turns out to be a bug in the code, I’m gonna be pissed.” He paced back to the wall, sticking his pistol back in his belt, the torch still hot in his hand.

  Let’s do this.

  He ran like he’d stolen something, sprinting as fast as his dusty boots would allow. He planted a solid, perfectly placed foot at the edge of the drop, and flew through the air, kicking his legs like an Olympic long jumper. The torch flickered in his hand, fighting against the rush of wind, as he watched the tunnel on the far side grow closer. And closer. But yet so far.

  He began to sink a good twenty feet from the edge he so desperately wanted to grab, falling face-down into nothingness, swinging his arms into the blackness until the all-too-familiar words appeared, the words he was getting pretty goddamned tired of seeing.

  YOU HAVE DIED

  Mitch found himself rematerialized back in the graveyard, staring into the mouth of the Baroness Mines. His skeleton friend was sitting right where Mitch had left him—once again holding his torch, once again with a skull attached to his body.

  Mitch worked his way back down into the tunnels. He knew well enough that a learning curve was part of the deal with any new mission, but knowing sure didn’t make it any more fun. Games and players traded off unfair advantages as a sort of unspoken agreement The game knew things the player didn’t in the first couple of run-throughs, handing any player a serious disadvantage out of the gate. Surprise attacks and obstacles that appear out of nowhere. Bosses that could only be defeated with specific pressure points. But over time, in every game, that advantage shifts—as a player tries and fails, they learn the tricks and workings of the map, the opposing forces, and the best routes to take. They learn the mechanics of gameplay and fighting and weapon capabilities. But the game? The game stays the same. Any player worth his or her salt can find familiar grooves through repetition and patience. It takes time—and it can be a giant pain in the ass—but eventually, a player can earn the advantage.

  The problem was that Mitch didn’t feel like he was learning much down in the depths and darkness of the Baroness Mines. Each attempt at crossing the chasm ended with the same, predictable result. It didn’t matter if he tried jumping across the left side, or right side. Or if he tried getting a head start running through the tunnel to get as much speed as possible. With each effort, Mitch found himself far short of the goal. He knew he must be missing something, and that the clock was ticking.

  His tried to ignore his growing frustration and found his way back to the edge of the ravine, staring across at DeadBlood’s forbidden fruit—the mysterious tunnel on the other side. He checked his mission clock. Four and a half hours in, no Nefarious team members to show for it, and no idea about what to do next. A world he didn’t know, and a mission he didn’t ask for. He’d never wanted to be back in his crappy trailer more in his life.

  Mitch screamed, his voice echoing into the depths of the ravine, and threw his torch at the closest wall, letting it fly as fast as it would go, watching it sail end over end through the darkness. It landed with a thump of flames, still burning, smoke billowing up the side of the stone.

  And that’s when he saw it.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to catch his eye: a marking on the wall—a few feet across and painted a dusty white instead of the normal dark, flat gray of the rock. It wasn’t a neon sign with an arrow reading “Hey, asshole, over here,” but it was different, and that was enough for Mitch.

  He trotted over, holding the torch with his teeth, and jumped to reach up for the white marking. His fingers landed on a rock ledge and he held on tight, his feet now dangling a few feet in the air. From there he saw another white ledge, a few feet up and slightly to the right. And another. And another.

  He made his way across, hanging off the wall of the chamber, one handhold at a time, until he reached the far platform. After reaching the final off-color block, he dropped, finally feeling his boots hit the solid dirt floor of the other side. He took a moment to enjoy his victory, sitting and dangling his feet into the ravine, gazing into its nothingness. He watched as the top-right corner of his heads-up dinged with a fresh update.

  KARMA POINTS +100. NEW TOTAL: 999,985,374

  He waved off the status and stared back into the darkness of the ravine. “Don’t pa
t yourself on the back yet, asshole,” he whispered to himself. “Somebody’s in here, waiting for you. Time to go find them.”

  THIRTEEN

  A Gift Basket Full of Surprises

  WITH EACH TWIST and turn of the extended tunnel system, it seemed DeadBlood held a gift basket full of surprises waiting just for Mitch. After crossing the ravine, enemies had started to appear with each new room. First, Mitch encountered the creaky ghost of a long-gone cavalry soldier, whom he greeted and then promptly shot in the chest. A collection of undead pygmy bartenders each got theirs, as did a room full of bats ranging in size from baseballs to boulders. He followed the tunnels wherever they led, taking him into ancient underground workshops and over aggressively-sloped rock bridges, across frigid ice lakes and past rooms full of sleeping ghost snakes. After three tries at the mining cart junction, he knew exactly which trolley to ride down the rickety rails into the darkness, timed just perfectly to avoid the avalanche of broken rock at the end of the line.

  In other words, Mitch was starting to make this game his bitch.

  He’d crossed a makeshift wooden bridge and taken out the pack of giant wolves with a growing ease and a new hint of confidence. Mitch even started to mix up his attacks, greeting the pack leader with a solid combination of hand strikes before finishing him off with a single shot to the head. After the wolf’s gurgling, blood-spattered death, Mitch was rewarded with a handful of gold coins, a stamina potion, and something that looked like a black potato.

  His stats grew every few kills, and after winding his way through the maze of tunnels with a trail of corpses in his wake, his DeadBlood experience point total was at about halfway to leveling up. He was also racking up Karma points, adding over two thousand to his grand total. His biggest concern was his dwindling supply of ammunition, but he’d been lucky enough to find fresh boxes of shells in the loot from every other kill or so.

  “Well, well, well,” Mitch whispered to himself as he ripped off a skeleton’s leg and proceeded to beat it to death with its own appendage. “Look who learned how to play video games.”

  Pacing down a rocky slope to the landing below, Mitch curved his head around the corner to see a collection of armed, undead hooligans mulling about at the center of a circular room. A fire pit cast long shadows across the sand-painted floor, while a handful of slobbering, mange-infested bloodhounds stood at attention, on alert for whatever threat might lurk in the dark.

  Mitch crept in a few steps, duck-walking in a stealth crouch, and managed to silently take out the first two ghouls and the closest hound with a dagger he’d picked up a few kills back. With the rest of the group still completely unaware, Mitch mustered his virtual courage and sprang to a full extension, taking out the others with a mix of gunshots and slashes that would have made any digital steampunk cowboy protagonist proud.

  He felt a snag at his leg as his health indicator began to pulse red. He turned to find a stray hound chewing on his boot, snarling, clamping down tight with razor-sharp teeth. Mitch ended that problem with a single downward stab, feeling the feedback on his blade as it shattered bone and tore at muscle.

  A smile crept across his face as he admired the blade, now smeared with black blood and matter, flashing bright against the glow of the fire. He sheathed it, striking a pose.

  “This game ain’t so bad after all.”

  Spinning to locate the next room, Mitch quickly realized there wasn’t one to find. After a full search, he found only a solid wall—a curving, speckled face of rock that offered up no outlet other than the tunnel that had just brought him in. It was the end of the road. No more doors, no more passageways, just the thump of the wooden floor under his feet.

  “Guess I won’t get to meet the Bar—”

  With his next step, he heard a spring fly loose and the panicked squeak of rusty hinges flying into motion. He reached out for something, anything, to hold on to, but his fingers came up empty, just scratching at splintered boards. He fell, looking up to see the floor hanging loosely from the edges, split down the middle, leaving Mitch with no ledge to grasp. After a few seconds of free fall, he landed facedown on a slipping, sliding mess of cold, loose rock.

  He struggled to find his feet, but each push of his hands sunk him deeper into the pile, like slick, clinking metallic quicksand. He reached into the mound, pulling back two handfuls of the rock, trying to keep himself from sliding. As his fingers closed, he realized the rocks were formed more like circles, flat and solid. Like ... coins? He gazed into his palms, squinting at the reflection shining off the gold as it slipped through his fingers.

  Skirmish had a lot of things to offer, but treasure wasn’t one of them. The best loot back in his old game was stuff that made other stuff blow up—upgraded rocket launchers, ammunition when you needed it the most, that sort of thing. He’d never seen this much gold before, and as much as Mitch hated to admit it, there was a draw to it, even if it was useless to him back in Skirmish. It seemed that even virtual treasure could make any man’s eyes go wide, and he resisted all urges to fall into full-on daydream mode.

  He squirmed into a kneeling position to get his bearings, finding himself on top of an enormous pile of gold, trinkets, jewels, and other assorted treasures. King of the mountain in a world full of riches, all filling the center of a pit surrounded by walkways, fixed torches, and humongous carved figures frozen in place, posed as if they were fighting, squirming out of cracks in each wall. The walkways all led to the focal point—a rectangular platform lit with long rows of torches across multiple levels, like a theater stage, lit and empty, waiting for its star performer to emerge from behind the curtain. Scenes—finger-painted in dark red up and down the walls—told stories of headless men and menacing beasts that Mitch was pretty sure he didn’t want to stick around to hear. The bodies from the chamber above had joined him in his fall, some still rolling down the mound and resting at the base of the pit’s wall.

  It was right at that moment with Mitch noticed the smell.

  Not of corpses or blood or even the moldy corners of the graveyard above. No—this smell was different. It smells like ... the zoo? He was transported back to third grade, with cotton candy in one hand and a folded paper map in the other, walking down a gravel path, trying, for the life of him, to find the elephants. He remembered knowing that he’d found them way before he even saw them. It was the smell. The same smell that was filling this chamber—a sour, organic, thick smell that could have only been created by a beast way, way bigger than him.

  Mitch heard a huff and checked over his right shoulder. Hints of movement and the curves of muscled shoulders emerged from the darkness, followed by thick slides of heavy feet. Like someone dragging a body across a stone floor, the grit catching, piercing his eardrums. An indicator popped up on Mitch’s game view interface.

  NEW OPPONENT: OGRE BEAR

  “Ogre ... bear?” Mitch asked himself. Backing away from the noise, his feet stepping loose into the coins, he heard another huff from behind him. And then another from the right. Then from the left.

  The ogre bears stomped their way into the light, their forms bulging as they flexed and roared. Huge jaws, teeth dripping with saliva. The distant look in their eyes told Mitch that while they weren’t the smartest beasts in the land, they were still smart enough to know that Mitch had no business being anywhere near that treasure.

  He pulled out his pistol, its muzzle now looking like a peashooter next to the hulking masses of fur and teeth and anger stomping towards him. He fired at the closest bear, the bullet simply disappearing into its fur, never to be heard from again. The ogre bear didn’t even humor Mitch with a flinch.

  He holstered the pistol, knowing it was useless, and checked his inventory for anything else that might do the trick. Bears hate fire, right? I think that’s a thing. He bid goodbye to his torch and chucked it end-over-end, falling back into the gold pile as his footing gave way, watching the flame’s arc fly true, directly at his target.

  As the torch
approached, the ogre bear rose to its hind legs, bellowing a roar past a never-ending set of gleaming teeth and shaking Mitch’s soul to its core. The torch continued its flight, up and out of the pit. It fell gracefully, ending its life with a nothing-but-net shot right into the darkness of the bear’s wide-open mouth.

  Mitch pumped his fist and then quickly scrambled back up to the relative safety of the treasure pile’s center point. The bear fell back on all fours, cocking its head sideways. Shaking its head to each side, like a swimmer with water in his ear. A puff of smoke wafted from the bear’s mouth. Mitch watched carefully, ready to jump in either direction, expecting the bear to fall dead, crashing down into the pit.

  But things didn’t go down quite like that.

  The bear roared a new breath of life, belching out a steady river of fire, covering the center of the pit with a swirl of red and orange and smoke. Flames burned all around Mitch as the coins began to sizzle his boots, his health reading slowly ticking down, chunks at a time, as the seconds flew by.

  HEALTH: 81%

  HEALTH: 74%

  HEALTH: 63%

  Mitch scrambled down to the side of the pit, finding temporary shelter from the fire at the seam where the pile met the wall. He felt through the darkness, desperate to find a ladder or foothold of any kind, only to see another bear’s face peer over the edge. Its eyes went thin as it scowled and roared inches away from his face.

  Mitch ran like hell, rounding the circle into a new spray of fire from above. The other bears, it seemed, had taken a cue from bear number one, swallowing the fire now flying in every direction and igniting their own bellies, which was all just fucking fantastic.

  Mitch ran, fire raining down on him, chanting between steps.

  “This ... game ... is ... such ... bullshit ... this … game … is .. such … bullshit … ”