Forsaken

by Cebelius

He came across bodies, so many bodies. Most of them were hobgoblins. Those reminded him somewhat of the one that came to him, but she wasn't one of them. There were other females, but none was her. He'd know her. The thought of her made his lips curl with hatred. He hoped she was still alive. He wanted to kill her himself for what she'd done to him.

  She'll still be around when I'm ready. This game would be fucked if it didn't give me the chance to hunt THAT evil bitch down.

  All of the goblins had squat bodies and pot bellies, with long noses and longer, floppy ears. The hobgoblins looked like grown men and women with almost human faces, though their ears were still long, arcing out from the sides of their heads.

  With no better ideas and no weapons that gave him any confidence in winning an encounter, he simply followed the trail of bodies. It took him down several floors, and he marveled at just how many corpses there were. Whoever that Russian and his pet monster were, they must be super high-level to have done all this damage. The hallways stank of offal and blood, but Abram didn't mind that a bit. He was used to the first, and took visceral satisfaction in the second. After what these fuckers had done to him — at least in the backstory of this game — he was perfectly happy to use their brutally murdered corpses as his trail of breadcrumbs out of here.

  At last, he came to another dead end.

  In front of him was a platform of rock with the shattered remains of a siege engine on it, along with some destroyed statues. Beyond that? Nothing. Literally nothing but a vast, empty space. Somewhere out in the dark, he heard the roaring of what sounded like a waterfall.

  Abram moved to the edge and looked down, but there was nothing to see there either, save evidence that at one time there had been a bridge of stone here. The marks indicating the break looked new, and given the destruction on the platform it was a good bet the adventuring party that had freed him had also been the ones to wreck the bridge.

  Well ... fuck. NOW what? If this is where those guys came from, doesn't that mean THIS is the way out? Or was?

  He stood for a moment, dumbfounded. How was he supposed to get out of here?

  As he thought, Abram glanced up, and saw even more nothing.

  To his vague surprise, his agoraphobia kicked in. Without thinking, he shuffled back until he was underneath the arch of stone he'd come through to get out onto the platform.

  Okay, that's fucked. This game is TOO real, he thought, and again tried to summon some menu so he could fiddle with the settings. How was he supposed to play a game that was so realistic he couldn't actually LEAVE the dungeon?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of innumerable feet behind him. Goblins. More than a few, and headed his way.

  Probably running from the REAL adventurers, straight toward the noob.

  The problem was, they were too close for him to sneak back to one of the side passages. He glanced out at the blank nothing above him, shivered, then forced himself to remember that this was just a game, and he was safe inside his own apartment.

  He took a step out, and then to one side, but there wasn't much space between the curvature of the arch and the edge of the platform to hide behind.

  It turned out to be a futile effort anyway, as he heard a screech behind him.

  "There! Get him or Mor kills us!"

  In a panic, Abram took two stumbling steps as he tried to turn and bring up his knife, but wound up tripping over a lump of stone from one of the broken statues. The rock turned under his foot. He lost his balance, fell backward, and plunged straight into the abyss.

  Abram opened his mouth to scream, then closed it, along with his eyes. He was going to die.

  His last thought as he dropped — with the screaming of the goblins fading behind him — was, Wow, I think this is the quickest I've ever died in an adventure game before. I didn't even make it through the fucking prologue.

  FML.

  2

  The Celestial Court

  Doors a hundred feet tall stood closed before her, elegantly graven with images of the cosmology, the wheel, and the realms. Extravagantly ornamented with gold leaf, gems, and other more exotic metals, the doors glittered in the light of masterfully decorated paper lanterns hung from fixtures at intervals that were themselves priceless works of art.

  The hallway she had passed through to reach this portal was well-lit and richly accoutered. Every surface bespoke power and wealth beyond the dreams of most.

  Yet the witness to all this grandeur sat before the doors and absently tipped her head down, grooming her right forelimb absently as she waited, bored.

  At length, the sonorous sound of a gong echoed through the hall, and the doors began to ponderously open, swinging apart on silent hinges to reveal an even more resplendent hallway beyond.

  She waited until the entry was completely open. The idea that she should rush never occurred to her. She had been summoned. That did not mean she was a slave, to scurry about and cringe at the thought of a master's displeasure. She owed her presence to a willing alliance, not bondage.

  Besides, she had been made to wait. She would, therefore, go in her own time.

  When the doors were open and all was silent and still once more, she stood and ambled forward, her many tails whisking behind her. She looked neither left nor right. She had been here many times, and was not the least bit curious about the many wonders there to be seen, some of which could strike lesser creatures blind by virtue of their sheer radiant beauty.

  None of that was of any consequence.

  Her eyes remained fixed on the most resplendent feature in the room, but even the sight of the Vermillion Bird did not hurry her steps. She would rush when she pleased, and for no other reason.

  At length she came to stand before the dais atop which Zhu Que perched, resplendent in her myriad flame. After a moment, she sat, and resumed her grooming. Zhu Que would speak when she was ready, and neither woman was in any real hurry.

  "I have a task — one that will interest you," Zhu Que said at last, tilting her head to look down at the figure below.

  "Who is he?" she asked, still bored.

  "He has many names, but his tracks are deep and blood-spattered. A template. Seek him. Find him. Deal with him. He has roused the holy man in the far north. Soon there will be incursions into my empire. My diviners say the death toll will be high. This man is responsible. I want him punished. There is an order, a divine balance, to life on Celestine. This man has tipped that balance. Such a sin is not to go without suitable punishment. You are perfect for such a task."

  "A template?"

  For the first time since arriving at the palace, she was interested. It had been a long time since she had the pleasure of playing with a man from the middle kingdom. Di Xin had been fun, but that had been ever so long ago.

  Despite herself, she began to salivate ... just a little.

  "Where?"

  "I do not know. Auguries began to fail when he vanished into the Wildervast, but there is a way to guess. Great events follow this man, and the next great event is prophesied to take place in Svartheim. Go there ..."

  Zhu Que trailed off, her head cocking slightly before adding, "If it pleases you."

  She thought for a moment, then stood, turned, and walked away, her many tails flicking behind her in absent contentment.

  The ancient nine-tailed fox was not yet excited. She had been disappointed too often. But where templates were concerned there was always room to hope.

  She stopped just beyond the doors and sat, grooming idly as she waited for them to close behind her. It would be insulting if anyone else passed a portal that had been opened for her.

  As she waited, her expectations began to rise. A template, here, on Celestine. Surviving against the odds, striving to achieve great things. And she would be there when it all came crashing down. It was a thrilling prospect.

  If his steps are not yet truly drenched in blood, they WILL be. Oh. They will be.

  Once the door shut and the sound of the gong fad
ed away into stillness once more, she shifted into a humanoid form, her divine beauty a match for any of Zhu Que's trinkets or baubles.

  A jade cheongsam with golden accents and filigree graced her nubile body. Olive complected, her face was perfectly symmetrical and so beautiful that more than a few artists had ended their lives knowing their craft could never capture her radiance. Lustrous white hair wove itself into an elegant braided coil atop her head, pinned with jade and flanked by vulpine ears.

  Her tails weaving in contentment behind her, with beauty more than sufficient to topple empires, the greatest nine-tailed fox demon of them all, Daji sauntered from the hall of Zhu Que's palace.

  As she walked, she spoke words that seemed to hang in the air around her, glittering with power. When she finished, speaking the word of her destination, those glittering words flew forward, spinning and crackling with ever-increasing radiance until with the boom of a thunderclap, they sundered space to show her a gaping wound in the side of a distant mountain.

  Blood stained the rocks and flies buzzed amid a carnage as she stepped through, but she was not bothered. Flies would not dare interfere with her, and with a wave and a spoken word, the charnel stench fled her nostrils.

  Daji paused, glancing around with the critical eye of an artist examining the work of a hated rival. The bodies strewn about were those of hobs, goblins, and even a pair of hulking male mountain trolls. The manner of their death suggested several different methods of execution. Many had been hewn apart, others had been smashed, still others expertly slain with precision strikes.

  She glanced around with disdain as she considered her options. It was painfully obvious that her quarry had been here, and not long since. Perhaps only a few hours. Certainly not more than a day.

  She spoke, feeling a slight drain as she wove a spell of divination that would have required ritual magic for mortals to accomplish. With an airy wave she spun, releasing her will into the air around her as she stepped daintily to a nearby low crenelated wall. There she took a seat, folding one leg over another and threading her fingers together over her knee as she watched her magic work.

  The air shimmered, then the battle's activity played through her awareness in a burst of action. She waited, then reversed the flow of her mind's eye when there were only a pair of goblins and a lone hob before the cave mouth.

  She watched keenly as the template and his coterie advanced up the mountain trail, then judged their skills as the fighting began. The images were eerily silent as combat raged. Daji had no desire to inflict the sounds of crude battle on her beautiful ears. Certain screams pleased her, but not these.

  She learned much of her quarry as the combat played out, licked her lips in unconscious eagerness when she first saw the template. No shrinking violet this, but a battle-hardened man heavy with muscle and skilled ... supremely skilled, though the double-bitted ax he wielded was a crude implement fit for hewing lumber, not men or monsters.

  He was no legend, not yet. But might very well become one. He was competent ... deadly. Some of his companions were even more so.

  What she saw was not what she had hoped to see. The template fought with studied calm. There was no bloodlust in his eyes, only grim fortitude. He was obviously not a man greatly moved by the passions.

  This displeased Daji, who was nothing if not a passionate creature herself.

  He was also not the type of man she was accustomed to. She had never seen a template with this man's tanned complexion, nor his round eyes, the color of which was an unnatural light gray-green. His nose was large and crooked — obviously broken at least once — and Daji's lips wrinkled with distaste. The man was ugly — a brute. There wasn't a noble bone in his body. His hands were calloused, his knuckles had a thickness to them that suggested he was a pugilist.

  Daji did not look forward to the no-doubt bestial lovemaking of which this primitive creature was capable. There would be no finesse in this man's erotic attention. Still, it would be pleasing to bring such a mighty bastion of resolve down. Such men were unfit to rule, and she had been sent to ensure he never came into the power he might otherwise attain.

  Her questions answered, Daji banished the memory battle with a wave of her hand and leapt from the rock, sauntering into the cleft in the mountainside without a care in the world.

  She was still interested, but her hopes had been tempered somewhat. This would be no easy conquest ... yet that might make putting up with such a rude figure of a man worthwhile.

  After the demon fox entered the cleft that would lead down into Svartheim, silence reigned save for the incessant drone of flies. The relative quiet persisted for long minutes, then the scene before the entrance abruptly shifted as the magic blanketing the area was dispelled.

  Gone were the corpses, the flies, even the blood. Instead, the walls surrounding the entrance to the dungeon were manned by statues of hobgoblins in various attitudes of wariness or surprise, though the arms and armor worn by the statuary were real.

  The courtyard beyond was littered with more statues and their broken remains, making it obvious that what Daji witnessed had been no true account of recent events.

  One final detail revealed by the change was a hut unlike any other.

  It had a living grass roof and drooping vines over otherwise prosaic windows set as though they were the eyes of a face. Even the eaves that overhung the doorway resembled a beak.

  The foundation of the house was supported by a pair of massive, muscular chicken legs.

  Those legs flexed as the house shifted and stood. A moment later it began to stride away across the blank plateau, beyond a second set of walls also littered with stone statues, and down a winding mountain path.

  Nothing living remained to hear the mad cackling of a witch on the alpine winds.

  When the hut was gone and the laughter faded, only the lonely mountain wind was left to be heard. It moaned steadily past the statues and broken stone that were the true remains of the defenders slaughtered to gain entrance into Svartheim.

  3

  She Who Offers Sorrow

  Abram sat at his desk, looking at the shades.

  The lights were off, the room was ready, but did he really want to play again? His experiences had been so real. And not at all pleasant. He'd genuinely felt as though he'd been trapped … and violated.

  For years.

  He'd never heard of any kind of game that could actually implant memories, but this one seemed to.

  The experience he'd been promised was supposed to be dark and erotic ... but his memories of the time he'd been chained to that table, fed shit and endlessly raped had hardly been the latter, nor was it what any sane person would want, even for an intro to be improved upon. Just what kind of game was this?

  He sat staring at the strange VR shades for a long moment in relative silence, listening to the hum of his servers.

  Is it sad that even as horrible as that was ... I can't think of another game I'd rather play? It was so immersive ... maybe I'm just a closet masochist.

  He frowned at the thought, then dismissed it as he picked up the shades and put them on.

  Abram woke, and immediately realized that the game had either chosen to start him somewhere else, or he hadn't actually died when he'd fallen off that broken bridge.

  As the seconds passed he felt confirmed in the second option. Dull pain still radiated from the wounds left behind by his manacles. He could still see the sores that ringed them.

  They'd been cleaned though, and after a sniff he was both surprised and relieved to discover he no longer stank of his own excrement.

  While his wrists and ankles were still raw, the pain was much less than he expected. His joints ached, but there was no new damage.

  That's odd. Usually when you fall from a very great height, shit breaks when you land, even if you land in water.

  That thought sent a shiver through him, and he caught a whiff of fire and heard roaring flames, but the sensations faded when he focused on them.


  Well, however far under the ground I was to begin with, I'm waaay deeper now.

  There seemed to be a weight to the air, along with an almost uncanny stillness. Abram found it oddly comforting. Tilting his head, he listened. The dark pressed in warm and close around him, like a mother's hug.

  Far away he heard a drop of water. His ears had become sharp during his time with the goblins, and as he listened further he heard ripples nearby. His hand shifted to seek the water as he realized how thirsty he was, only to recognize that he was surrounded by warmth rather than stone.

  Not warm darkness. Warm ... skin?

  "He wakes."

  The voice was low, melodious, and feminine. Abram froze.

  Until now he'd been entirely focused on himself, but as he took in his surroundings, he realized that he lay on a broad expanse of bare flesh. He had no idea of the skin tone because his dark sight gave him no hint of color. What he saw, combined with the fact that the voice had been vast despite sounding like a low murmur, was more than enough to convince him that he may have fallen from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

  Instead of answering immediately, he explored what his other senses told him about his new circumstances. His sense of touch spoke of warm, bare flesh against his own. His sense of hearing gave him another drop of distant water and then — as that sound settled — the beating of a heavy heart. He could not smell himself anymore, leaving him with the conclusion that he'd been bathed. That more than anything else left him feeling cautiously optimistic.

  "Do not fear, little Midgardian. You are safe for the moment."

  Abram opened his mouth, then closed it again. Did he dare speak?

  It's just a game, he reminded himself. It was amazing how realistic it was, and he'd forgotten for a moment that everything he'd supposedly 'been through' was just a time-compressed memory the game had somehow shoe-horned into his brain.