Rebirth Online 2

by Michael James Ploof

  “To drop the other guild down a level,” said Ember.

  “Well, they could have actually tried.”

  “I agree,” said Anna. “That castle was probably worth one, maybe two million gold. Not really worth knocking another guild down a notch.”

  “Yeah, well, the furries won,” I added. “And I bet that they’re already positioned at the Crimson Dragon stronghold.”

  No sooner had I said it than the smoldering image on the looking glass changed. Another castle appeared, this one sleek and elegant, with jutting towers that arched outward as they bloomed from the oval center keep. The fortress sat atop a tall butte and was surrounded by desert and rock formations that reminded me of those found in New Mexico.

  “That’s the Crimson Dragon stronghold in the Sands of Time!” said Anna.

  “And that’s the Purrrrsian Army!” Kit announced happily as she leapt onto my lap and clung to me quivering with anticipation.

  My eyes locked on the looking glass as dust began to waft up from the dry and cracked earth. The camera zoomed in on the disturbance, which was quickly descending upon the fortress. The Purrrrsian Army raced across the desert on raptor mounts the size of Clydesdale horses.

  The Crimson Dragons had begun to arrive back at their fortress from the graveyard, but they were too late to put up a proper defense. The raptors brought the furry army to the face of the butte, and the furries climbed up swiftly, digging in with their sharp claws. They overwhelmed the scrambling defenders with an attack that disorganized and decimated the Crimson Dragons. Ten minutes later, the tower belonged to the Purrrrsian Army.

  “Holy shit!” I said. “The furries dropped them two levels.”

  “That was crazy,” Trinity agreed wide-eyed.

  “The Crimson Dragons must be sooo pissed.” Ember said with a musical laugh.

  “Let’s go get that drink,” said Anna. “I want to see if the Crimson Dragons show their faces in Aeorock.

  We used our heartstones to portal to Aeorock and sought out our respective trainers. I had recently been trying to up my spell damage, so I spent the sixty attribute points I had gained from leveling twice on Arcane Knowledge and Spirit, bringing them both over 250.

  When I got to Cecilia’s place, I found my guildmates in a booth near the back of the pub. When Cecilia saw me, she sauntered over to us with a sly grin on her foxy face as her bushy tail swayed behind her.

  “You five look like you’ve been up to no good,” she said as she hip-bumped me and slid into the booth beside me. The booths were large, and the six of us fit comfortably enough. Anna scooted over to my left, while Trinity, Ember, and Kit sat across from us sipping their drinks.

  “We just defeated a nasty vampire and leveled,” Kit said happily. “Now we’re all in our twenties.”

  “Hmmm,” Cecilia’s purr was deep and musical. “You’re grinding right through the ranks I see.”

  “Hey Samson,” said an elf hunter who recognized me as he passed.

  I offered him a nod and a wave.

  Ever since making headlines, I was recognized all the time in public. People even wanted my autograph, so me and the ladies had mostly been laying low. The attention was wearing off, however, which was just fine with me.

  “The offer still stands, Cece,” I said. “Join Heavy Metal Thunder and pretty soon we’ll be taking on guilds like the Crimson Dragons.”

  “That was a hell of a battle, huh?” she said happily. “You should have heard it in here when it was playing live. We must have had 400 players hooting and hollering.”

  “Has anyone heard from The Crimson Dragons?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No one has seen them. They’re probably licking their wounds in a secondary hide-out.”

  “Attention citizens of Rebirth Online,” said a voice that I knew well.

  I turned to look at the many looking glasses that Cecilia had mounted throughout the pub, and on them I saw Dr. Marks. He stood in full priest robes against a nondescript background, looking directly at the camera. The crowd quickly quieted.

  “Rebirth Online is experiencing technical issues, and for everyone’s safety we at Horizon Corp suggest that everyone avoids conflict of any kind. For reasons that we have yet to discover, players are instantly dropping to level zero when they die in-game and are being sent directly to the Underworld. Furthermore, the bug is affecting everyone’s ability to log off. We expect to work out this bug in the next few hours, until then, we suggest that you get to a neutral zone immediately and await further instructions.”

  Chapter 2

  The message started over from the beginning, and a text version popped up on my interface at the same time. I acknowledged that I had read it and swiped it to the side.

  “This is crazy,” I said, sharing a mystified expression with my guildmates.

  The slow but steady murmur of the pub patrons changed from surprise to concern, as people began to confirm that they couldn’t log off.

  “People are dropping to level zero instantly?” said Kit with astonishment as she tapped at her own interface with frustration.

  “He said that they were trapped in the Underworld too,” said Ember. “I bet you the entire Crimson Dragon guild is trapped down there.”

  “And they’ve lost like 40 levels,” said Trinity.

  “That’s crazy.” Anna shook her head. “There’s no way that the programmers are going to make them start over.”

  “Well,” I said. “Whatever the reason, Dr. Marks says to lay low. I say we go chill at Tweak’s place until this all blows over.”

  “Good idea,” said Ember as she glanced around. “There are too many people here.”

  “You want to come?” I asked Cecilia.

  She surveyed her pub and nodded. “They can get along well enough without me for a while. Let’s go.”

  I found the talisman in my inventory that would bring me to Tweak’s place and allowed a moment for all my guildmates to each lay a hand on me. I enabled the talisman, and a heartbeat later we were standing in front of a rope ladder at the base of Tweak’s treehouse. I allowed the ladies to go first and followed them up about sixty feet to the bamboo pad in the trees.

  As soon as I reached the eastern deck, I knew that something was wrong. I didn’t see anything amiss, I just… felt it.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Ember, taking the words right out of my mouth.

  She held a hand up and indicated for us to stay back. A moment later she enabled her Shadow Step spell and became nearly invisible.

  I positioned my hands to begin conjuring a Fireball and moved in front of Anna and Kit as they buffed us all with wards and healing spells. Trinity held her ground in front of me, ready to pounce with Warrior’s Charge at the first sign of danger.

  Ember slipped through the beaded curtains, nearly invisible, and I held my breath and listened. The sounds of the jungle answered my auditory inquiry; the trill of a small animal warned of something in the trees nearby, heat bugs serenaded us with their maddening one-note song, birds of every size and variety sang their courtship songs in the surrounding canopy, and the occasional chomp of a lucky hunter’s jaws sounded, followed by the death mewl of some unfortunate creature of the jungle.

  From inside the house, I heard nothing.

  No, it was a sound deeper than nothing. It was empty, hollow, devoid of spirit or soul. I don’t know if it was the tension in the surrounding jungle, or the recent warning from Dr. Marks, but my spiritual hackles were on high alert.

  “All clear,” came Ember’s voice. “Sam, you’ve got to see this.”

  I followed Trinity through the beaded curtains and emerged into Tweak’s humble library, which, ironically, was full of tables and e-book readers. I passed the only true bound book and scanned the cover.

  The Shamanic Arts: A Guide to the Mystic Realm.

  We walked through the library and entered the eerily quiet sitting room. Off to the right was the kitchen, Tweak’s extensive virtual coffee collect
ion, and kabobs that were still steaming. I smelled chicken and onions, but the scent did nothing to lend color to the bleak atmosphere.

  Whatever had left this place so quiet had happened recently.

  I scanned the place and found the first dead purple monkey. It lay slumped against the kitchen island in a pool of blood. I found another dead monkey a few feet away, and then another, and another.

  “What the hell happened here?” I asked absently as I laid my eyes on two charred monkey corpses.

  “Tweak!” Cecilia called out. “Tweak, are you here?”

  My eyes followed her to Tweak’s computer room and my heart ached with fear that she might find what we all feared.

  “Oh, no…” she said from the threshold.

  I raced to her side and found what I feared. Tweak was sitting in his computer chair facing us, but he was holding his own head in his hands. Someone had shoved a flat screen monitor into his neck cavity, and the screen suddenly flickered to life as we all gathered around.

  Two eyes made entirely of fire opened on the screen where Tweak’s eyes might have been, and a smile of writhing flame greeted us.

  “See you in hell, Samson…”

  The screen and the flames blinked out, and I was left to stare blankly as my heart fluttered in my chest. I rubbed the sore spot; sometimes the game was too damn real.

  “What. The. Hell. Was. That?” said Kit.

  “Was it…” Anna whispered, and the name that she couldn’t say echoed in my mind.

  Kincaid...

  “No,” I said. “He’s...he’s in a coma. Besides, he’s not hooked up to the game.”

  Anna shivered, and I knew why. The voice had sounded like Kincaid.

  “Poor Tweak,” said Kit as she pushed past us and placed her hand on his leg. She glanced back at me teary-eyed. “His body didn’t fade. Is he...is he stuck in the Underworld like the others?”

  “Look,” said Ember. She snatched the necklace that Tweak was wearing and held up the GoPwn pendant.

  “Do you think he caught his killer on it?” Kit asked with hope veering on hysteria. Her tail was between her legs, and I knew that she was scared. But we had to get to the bottom of this.

  “Only one way to find out,” said Cecilia, taking the GoPwn and plugging it into one of the many ports on the stack beside the desk.

  She typed furiously on a nearby keyboard and tilted one of the screens our way.

  “This is twenty minutes ago,” she said as the video began to play.

  The angle was from Tweak’s point of view, and he looked to be running diagnostics on the device. He toyed with a couple of different filters for a few minutes, when there suddenly came a loud bang from somewhere in the treehouse. The angle shifted as Tweak got up and turned to the door. His monkey friends began screeching then, and Tweak rushed out of the computer room.

  “Holy shit!” said Trinity. “Sam, that’s you…”

  I stared at the video feed unable to believe what I was seeing. It was me, and Tweak’s confusion in the video matched my own.

  “Sam?” he said quizzically.

  On the screen, my doppelganger grinned wickedly and released a Magic Bolt that dropped Tweak to the floor. The camera was now aimed at the ceiling, and as my face came into view a chill ran down my spine.

  “See you in hell, Tweak,” the doppelganger said with a mischievous grin, before blasting him with another spell.

  Anna paused the image on my grinning face and glanced over at me with an apprehensive expression.

  “Someone set you up,” said Ember as she turned from the video feed and peered through the nearest window.

  “She’s right,” said Anna. “We should leave...now.”

  “Wait,” said Kit. She performed a resurrection spell on Tweak, but nothing happened.

  “It’s no use,” said Cecilia. “Tweak’s trapped in the Underworld like everyone else who’s died recently. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

  “We can find out who did this and get revenge,” said Trinity. “But first we’ve got to portal back to Aeorock and—”

  Something heavy landed on the roof of the treehouse, and we all rushed to the closest window to peer outside.

  “Shit,” I said as I saw more than a dozen dragons descending on our location.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Ember, pulling out her heartstone.

  We all followed her lead, but when I tried to enable the device, a message popped up in my field of view:

  Cannot use device when engaged in combat!

  A second later, a werelion burst through one of the doors leading out to the balcony, and behind him came six more warriors. My guildmates and I quickly took up defensive positions, and I noticed that more werelions were filling in behind us.

  “Stand down,” Cecilia told the werelions. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  The lead werelion was well over six feet tall, and like the others, he wore golden armor to match his gilded mane. His face was that of a lion, but his body was humanoid, and he stood tall on two legs. Thick dreadlocks bloomed from the top of his round head, giving him a distinctly Rasta look.

  “What this looks like,” he said eyeing our group slowly, “Is a murder scene.”

  “It is,” said Cecilia. “But we didn’t kill him. We’re Tweak’s friends.”

  “Tell that to the chief,” said the leader, before nodding for his men to take us.

  “Don’t fight,” Cecilia told us. “I know the chief, everything will be alright.”

  I didn’t like it, but we really had no choice. The girls looked to me for guidance as the werelions surrounded us, and I offered them a nod.

  “Do what they say.”

  The dragon-riding werelions took our weapons, packs, and enchanted jewelry and tied our hands behind our backs. Then they brought us outside, where a dozen dragons waited. After being roughly tossed across the saddles, we were whisked off to the werelion village.

  The village had been erected in the middle of a natural clearing on the banks of a raging river. A large slab of stone protruded from the earth opposite the river, creating a natural shelf that blocked out the sun as we descended. Beneath the slab was a large cave entrance and built around the mouth and leading to the river were dozens of bamboo domes.

  The werelions pulled us off the saddles with ease and unceremoniously deposited us in the dirt.

  “Hey!” said Trinity, which only got her a spear aimed at her face.

  “I demand to speak with the chief!” Cecilia yelled as bamboo cages began to lower from the thick canopy overhead.

  “The chief is busy,” said the leader of the dragon riders.

  “Come on,” I protested as I was dragged to one of the cages. “This isn’t necessary, we didn’t do anything.”

  My pleas went ignored and I was shoved into one of the cages. The door was slammed shut and locked with a spell word, and I was hoisted up into the trees. My guildmates and Cecilia were lifted as well, and we all shared frustrated glances as we swayed on creaky ropes.

  “Well this is just fucking great,” said Trinity as she slumped down.

  “Sit tight,” said Cecilia. “The chief will see us soon and we’ll clear our names.”

  “How?” I asked. “If they see the GoPwn feed we’re as good as dead.”

  “Do you think they’ll execute us?” Kit asked fearfully from the cage to my right.

  “Probably,” said Ember. “Then we’ll end up stuck in the Underworld like all the others.”

  “Quit trying to scare Kit,” said Trinity.

  “I’m not scared,” the cat woman said abashedly.

  “No one's getting executed,” Cecilia ensured us all. “Try and relax. The Chief will see us before you know it.”

  I sat back in my bamboo cage and watched the comings and goings of the werelion tribesmen below. Well, I shouldn’t say tribesmen, there were three times as many females moving about below, and more than half of the dragon riders had been femal
e.

  The night dragged by as we waited, and I spent my time mulling over the details of Tweak’s murder. Whoever had set me up had done a pretty good job, but what was their end game? Were they trying to get me and the girls killed? If so, why didn’t they just come after us themselves? It seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to set me up for murder if the end result was my demise. Maybe they were trying to tarnish my reputation by framing me for Tweak’s murder, or maybe they were just toying with me, trying to get me out of their way.

  But why?

  Until I knew who I was dealing with, I couldn’t begin to understand their motives. But one thing was clear, if we didn’t convince the chief of our innocence, then we were doomed.

  I couldn’t help but think the recent glitch that had people crashing to level zero and Tweak’s murder were related, and my mind kept drifting back to Kincaid. While I knew that it was impossible for him to be doing this, I didn’t put it past his angry former guildmates.

  The chief finally emerged from the mouth of the cave just before sunrise, and he took his sweet time striding across the village to the throne that awaited him. He was taller than most, with long black dreads, some beaded or wrapped in bright red, yellow, and green strips of cloth. He wore light golden armor that took on a deep red hue as the horizon burst with colors of sunrise. His dark eyes regarded us all fleetingly, and he waved a lazy hand toward the standing guards.

  Our cages were slowly lowered to the ground, but they stopped about five feet above it and the bottoms suddenly dropped out. Kit yipped as we fell to the ground, and Trinity mumbled curses under her breath as she stoically rose to her feet.

  The chief looked us over with a scowl. “The punishment for murder committed inside our territory is murder. How do you plead?”

  Chapter 3

  “We’re innocent, your highness,” I blurted. “Tweak was a friend of ours, why would we—.

  “You see the throne I’m sitting on?” the chief interrupted. “Many years ago, when I was a boy, powerful white men came with their powerful dragons. They came for our trees, they came for our water, they came for our females. My father and Chief, the Great Gong, took the counsel of the peaceful monks, and told the dragon men to go home, to leave us in peace. The next morning, he awoke to find that the dragon men had not heeded his words but had already claimed their first victim. They uprooted my father’s tree, planted for him by his father’s father on his day of birth. When the Great Gong saw this, he forgot the words of the peaceful monks. He saw in his mind’s eye what these white men would do to the land, to his father’s land, and he took action.”