by Sam Ferguson
“There you have it,” Rojas said. “One last thing to discuss. Last week’s earthquake did significant damage to route 199 and our friends at the farmsteads west of here are still on evac. Keep in mind we can’t simply hike out of here as easily as we could have two years ago. We are very lucky we were allowed to stay. The possibility of what could be lost here in an earthquake or eruption is valuable enough to matter to the right people.” Professor Rojas locked eyes for a minute with Augustin, who nodded his agreement.
“Make sure you are prompt to tomorrow’s meeting. I have some exciting news to share, but I want to give you tonight to familiarize yourself with the world here. As Meredith pointed out, we do have a contract to fulfill, and I want to be sure we are delivering on our side of things before getting you too excited about the next phase of our research. Stay safe while on your sites, and make every minute count. Let me know if you need anything. My comm link with the city is still stable, so we have good updates from the local authorities. Let’s make history, people.”
Rojas and Meredith stopped moving as the others broke from the group. Brian figured they were likely messaging each other directly.
Mike started jumping on the tables again. Brian was about to say how silly Mike looked, but Barry beat him to it.
“There’s a better way to grind levels than jumping around,” Barry insisted. “Besides, you look ridiculous. Think of the NPCs in this world. You must look entirely out of place.”
Chris moved off a short way and his avatar cycled through various colors for his starting clothes; he shifted his height and weight and cycled through a few actions as well.
“Chris, you should do something,” Barry said. “Wait, are you trying to be a half-orc? You know that’s never going to work in a Terramyr world, right?”
Mike turned and fired a low-level lightning bolt at Barry.
Barry’s HP bar dropped a bit and smoke rose from his avatar.
“Oops, sorry. Didn’t see you there, Barry. You’re so good at sneaking around and all,” Mike teased.
Barry readied his fists and ran after Mike, but Mike easily outpaced him around the deck, leaping over tables.
Score one for Mike.
Brian laughed and would have stayed to enjoy the show, but he noticed Rhonda pick up a few objects from the table behind them and then move with a book in her hand to the top deck—he decided to follow her up onto the moonlight upper level.
She walked to the front of the ship and opened the book in the light of a lantern that was sitting on a crate. Knowing the types of items that usually showed up in an RPG, he wondered whether it was a skill book that provided a player with an instant boost to a certain skill, or perhaps one that taught the player a spell upon opening it. It was hard to tell if she was looking at her character inventory, or perhaps assigning a skill point.
He watched her for a moment. He wasn’t looking so much at her avatar as seeing past it and imagining her actually standing there with him on the deck of a ship with nothing but the starlight above them. An NPC carrying a lantern walked by.
“Seen any sharks?” the NPC asked.
Brian shook his head. “Nope,” he said.
“Well, you best keep yer eyes peeled. There’s been known to be worse things than sharks out here. The narrow stretch of sea here is treacherous, filled with rocks that can tear a ship apart and unnatural monsters that can swallow it whole!”
Brian laughed. He had always found that notion funny in games. “Why would a beast want to eat the ship? Do they need the fiber in their diet?”
The NPC frowned. The programming obviously couldn’t handle the improvised conversation. “You watch for the monsters!” The NPC turned and walked along the side of the ship, peering down over the railing and calling out warnings to others to watch for beasts.
Brian looked back to Rhonda and suddenly became embarrassingly aware that he was staring at her. Not a polite thing to do, even in a VR setting. Walking a little closer, he glanced at the cover of the book she was holding.
“Ah!” he exclaimed with recognition, “The Adventures of Phinean and Jaleal. That’s actually a Terramyr book! Funny to put the title on a game prop.” He smiled appreciatively.
“It’s not just an empty item,” Rhonda shook the open book as she nodded toward it, “it looks like a whole book. I flipped through about fifty pages before going back to the beginning to actually read. It looks good.”
“Wow, that’s unusual. I wonder how many of the actual books they’ve scattered around the world? That’s a nice detail.” She didn’t do more than nod vaguely as she continued to read. Brian stood there awkwardly for a moment and then cleared his throat to try again. “So, who do you think will die first?”
Rhonda’s avatar still held the book, but she didn’t need to close it for the comm system to work. The VR system worked in a way that very closely mimicked real live voices. Since only the two of them were on the deck within range of each other, their conversation would only broadcast to them. If someone joined later on then the system would loop them in, or if they all stood in close proximity as they had for Rojas’ roll call, then everyone would be able to take part.
The DM system was the only truly private communication system, as the smart voice system allowed anyone to eavesdrop if they had the right kind of sneaking skills or magical spells, but this was pretty secluded, given that they were in the beginning of the game and all of them were basically noobs.
“My money is on Meredith,” Rhonda said. “I looked at her character, and she doesn’t seem to have picked a specialty. She’s too broad.”
“Interesting,” Brian said. “I’m voting for Chris. He spends a lot of time on his appearance, but I think when it comes right down to it he’ll be too careless to get far without dying.”
“Or Barry,” Rhonda put in. “One of us might murder his character just to shut him up.”
They shared a laugh.
“This is the first game like this I’ve played. Does it usually take so long to interface with the system, or is it just because we’re testing a game that hasn’t been made commercially available yet?” Rhonda asked, placing the book she had been reading on a nearby crate.
“No, I think it has more to do with the neural link Meredith told us about in the chat system yesterday. This game is supposed to have a bundle of upgrades in terms of the immersive experience. The last Terramyr Online game was fine for visual and sound effects, but this version includes things like smells. That’s definitely new. And the ability to feel things, like the rough texture on this handrail,” Brian ran his hands across the wooden rail at the edge of the deck to demonstrate, “is a completely different level from before. The computer system needed time to… do its thing, so it could send the right information to our brains so we can smell and feel like this.” He was a little at a loss to explain what the computer had been scanning for, or how it was communicating these experiences to their brains, but he figured he’d gotten the point across.
“Does that mean we can feel uncomfortable things, like pain or cold?” Rhonda sounded a little nervous.
“Maybe a little, but nothing lasting. Just a taste of the experience to help us orient ourselves inside the world. I just spent the ten minutes before roll call getting beaten on, and each punch stung for a second, but I don’t feel any lingering effects. Is my face bruised?” He extended his face dramatically and turned it left and then right, giving her a good look.
“No, you look heroic and undamaged,” she laughed and patted his virtual cheek.
He knew she was referring to his character, but the compliment made his heart race all the same. Trying to quickly gather himself so the moment didn’t lapse into awkward silence, he weighed his options for the next thing to ask her. He wanted to make use of this rare opportunity to get to know Rhonda without any of the others around. Suddenly, a startled cry drifted to them on the night air.
“Off the port bow!” an NPC cried out.
A glowing spine
undulated through the water’s surface. Orange, hardened scales shone brightly against the dark sea. Spikes of glowing red bone rose from the creature’s back in five-foot intervals.
“Boss fight?” Rhonda asked. Her avatar put the book away and pulled out a crude crossbow.
“I’m guessing a tutorial or cut scene. No way we could take this on as level-one players.” Brian watched the NPCs scurry about the ship. Archers fired from crow’s nests atop the masts, while more lined the ship’s port side rail and fired into the water.
A horrid screech filled the air. The ship pitched to the side and the prow dipped toward the water as a massive tentacle wrapped around it. The glowing orange scales deflected NPC arrows as spikes fired out and struck several of the sailors. Their bodies dropped to the deck.
[ESCAPE TO THE LIFE RAFTS!]
“Well, I guess that answers that!” Brian said. “Time to find the life rafts.” Rhonda and Brian rushed for the back of the ship. Mike, Augustin, and Barry emerged from the lower holds in time to join them as they sprinted across the slippery deck.
The ship pitched to the other side as a second tentacle crashed over the middle of the ship.
[DUCK!]
Everyone in the party successfully saw the warning except for Mike. Brian slid under the tentacle, but Mike took some HP damage as he smacked into the glowing scales.
“Freaking fire kraken!” Mike shouted. “I’ve only seen one of these in the Terramyr books before. This is awesome!”
“Little less talking, more running,” Barry shouted.
The tentacle slithered away, and a gargantuan face rose from the depths behind the ship. It opened a fang-filled mouth that was twenty feet wide and stuck out a purple tongue.
“It’s going to shoot fire!” Mike shouted.
[DODGE LEFT!]
Everyone followed the prompt this time, dodging a massive stream of fire that struck the center of the top deck.
“What about the others?” Augustin called out. “Do we need to go back for them?”
“Every man for himself!” Barry shouted.
“Typical,” Rhonda said.
“Don’t worry, I’ve played every Terramyr Online game there is,” Mike called out. “The party always gets through the opening scenes intact no matter what. They’ll spawn at the save point after all of this if they don’t finish the tutorial parts.”
“You guys really do play a lot of these,” Rhonda said.
“Read all the Terramyr books too,” Mike said.
[JUMP!]
Everyone but Mike made the jump as a thinner tentacle swept across the deck. Mike’s character was knocked back and he lost about a third of his HP, but he was still in the game.
“Careful, Mike, or you’ll be one that doesn’t make it,” Barry called out.
Barry was the farthest along, dodging crates and fireballs as the fire kraken ravaged the ship. As they neared the captain’s quarters, the doors exploded open and out came an impossibly, heavily muscled man holding the largest crossbow-like contraption Brian had ever seen.
“An Aegis launcher!” Mike squealed with delight.
The captain pointed at them and thumbed to the rear of the ship. “Get to the rafts! I’ll handle this.” Taking four steps forward, the captain leveled his contraption at the fire kraken as its face circled around the port side. The captain fired a barrage of bolts in rapid succession—twenty or thirty missiles launching in a matter of seconds. Brian turned to watch as the bolts streaked blue through the night sky and struck the fire kraken’s right eye and several more went into the creature’s open mouth.
The monster’s eye popped, spilling green and brown sludge over a pair of sailors who instantly howled in pain as their bodies began to whither and smoke.
The kraken’s fire went out, but as was the case with any large animal, the wound served only to increase the danger.
A tentacle came down hard on the captain, crushing the man through the first two decks and ripping the siding. Dark sea water spilled in from the sides.
“Go! Go! Go!” sailors were shouting.
“Abandon ship!”
The NPC with the lantern came sprinting by, looking at Brian just long enough to shout, “I told you there were monsters in these waters!”
A bony spike flew through the air, drilled through the lantern holder, and carried his screaming body overboard.
Brian felt his heartbeat quicken. He redoubled his pace, seeing his friends were nearly at the raft that had a yellow arrow blinking over it. Apparently the game wanted them on a specific craft to escape. As Brian reached it, Barry shouting for him to hurry up as the arrow began blinking faster and faster, a tentacle rose up from the water and batted a raft filled with NPCs. The bodies flew everywhere as the wood splintered.
Brian leapt into the raft just as the winch holding their escape vessel in place squeaked and groaned.
A heavy, low rumbling sounded from the middle of the ship. The prow dipped deeper into the water, and then the back half of the ship snapped free right at the spot where the fire kraken had crushed the captain. The group jolted and barely managed to stay inside their longboat as one of the NPCs with them tipped overboard.
Brian looked down into the water and saw the fire kraken swimming quickly through the water, gulping down NPCs several at a time as they tried to swim away.
As the rear of the ship crashed back into the sea, the winch securing their lifeboat snapped, and they dropped several feet before splashing into the water.
An NPC named Carodeen turned around from the front of their ship. “Hold on!” The tall elf held out both hands and all at once a silvery blue sphere appeared around them. It stabilized their craft in the water and shielded them from a passing tentacle. The scaly limb smacked into the sphere and pushed them away from the fast-sinking ship.
Brian took in the scene with a mix of excitement and awe. The sphere emitted enough light to get a better view of the fire kraken as it coursed through the seas. Beyond its massive body were the telltale fins of sharks picking off any that had managed to swim beyond the fire kraken’s grasp.
“Brutal,” Rhonda commented.
“I need you all to row!” Carodeen shouted. His eyes now glowed white as he focused his magic. “Row!”
[GRAB AN OAR!]
Everyone in the group reached down and grabbed an oar.
“We need a rhythm!” Barry shouted. “I’ll count out one, two, one, two!”
[Barry is going to say he was a champion rower now, watch—Kolvurin] Brian laughed and nodded his agreement.
“Come on—one, two, one, two!” Barry commanded. “I was captain of the rowing team in high school. We took second at state! I can get us through this.”
“The captain?” Rhonda said. “Do you mean the coxswain? You don’t really have the right build for that…”
All the guys laughed but Barry.
“No; I was part of a coxless four, and we had our own command structure, that’s why we did so well.”
“You were on a what four?” Mike drawled, and all the guys laughed again.
“Come on, one, two!” Barry ignored the comment and began urging them on.
A mass of orange scales dove under the lifeboat.
“Hold on!” Carodeen called out.
A pair of tentacles slammed into the sphere from behind, sending them careening through the water. It was no use trying to row then. One of the unused oars snapped under the weight while everyone else held their oars up out of the water until they slowed down. The surface went still as they came to a near dead stop in the water some fifty yards away from where they had been hit.
“Let’s row!” Barry shouted. “Come on, to the shore.”
“We won’t make it,” Carodeen said sullenly, his glowing eyes looking at the water around them.
A few large bubbles surfaced, followed by a few smaller ones. Then a foam rose to the surface, hitting the sphere and sliding out around the edges. Mike leaned over the side and looked down.<
br />
“No way!” he shouted. “We’re gonna get chomped!”
“ROW!” Barry shouted.
Brian and the others looked over the side. It was mesmerizing. A massive, gaping maw filled with fangs was coming at them with such incredible force it almost occurred in slow motion. It was silent for several seconds, and then a terrible, thunderous crash erupted around them as the mouth enveloped their small lifeboat. It rose up until it was nearly thirty feet above them, and then the fangs snapped shut as easily as a bear trap.
Carodeen’s sphere was the only light in the closed mouth. It reflected off of wet, pink cheek tissue as the grotesque tongue moved them toward the throat.
“I’ll do what I can,” Carodeen said.
The sphere protected the craft and the group as a second set of jaws near the back of the mouth clamped down with fangs about half as long as the set near the mouth’s opening.
“Dual jaws!” Mike shouted. “Wicked!”
“The better to eat you with, my dear,” Augustin quipped.
“Look at how they all angle toward the throat,” Rhonda commented. “So the prey can’t escape the mouth even if it survives the first set of jaws.”
A terrible sound like nails across the top of a car screeched over the sphere as the second jaws closed in and fiercely tried to grind their way through the magic.
“I can’t hold it much longer!” the elf shouted.
The sphere pitched toward the throat and nearly touched the creature’s esophagus before Carodeen let out a feral yell.
Brian turned back around to see the elf now floating above the boat, close to the center of the sphere. His hands were encircled in a strange white flame as lightning streaked out from his fingers, exiting the sphere and planting into the soft flesh inside the fire kraken’s mouth. The sphere, armed with its octopus-like lightning limbs, climbed upward. Lightning tentacles zapped and singed the tender flesh, forcing the fire kraken to open its second jaw and allow the craft to move closer to the exit.