I waited for him to continue, but after about ten seconds Kit yelled, “Then what happened?”
“He and his warriors killed every last dragon rider, and we took the dragons for ourselves,” said the Chief.
“What’s your story got to do with us?” Ember asked.
The chief ignored her and stared at me with a mix of disgust and anger. “You are a rich white man, Samson Sullivan, and rich white men get what they want no matter the cost. You frequented Tweak’s treehouse. Now he is dead, and it is you I find at the scene.”
“What?” I said. “You think that I killed Tweak for his treehouse? What is this, third grade. And just because I’m white doesn’t mean that I’m some kind of greedy asshole.”
The chief eyed me dangerously and gestured to the female witch-doctor beside him. She produced a mirror from her pocket and handed it to him.
“Explain this,” he said cryptically as he turned the mirror around. On it, the footage from Tweak’s GoPwn was playing on a loop, showing my grinning face over and over.
“Someone is setting me up,” I said.
“Chief Marley, please,” said Cecilia. “You know me. You know that Tweak was...is a good friend of mine. Sam is a good man. You must be aware of what he did for this world only a week ago. He saved us from Kincaid. That’s got to be worth something.”
“I am aware of his accolades,” said the chief. “But that does not make him immune to justice.”
“Come on,” I said a little too aggressively. Spears were promptly aimed at my face, and I put up defensive hands and stepped back. “I’m sorry, but you must know that there are many trinkets and spells that can change a person’s appearance. That person on the video feed isn’t me.”
“Prove it,” he said.
I shook my head and looked to Cecilia for guidance.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the chief cut her off.
“I have heard enough. I will make my decision by tomorrow morning,” he said with a growl.
“Wait!” I yelled and took a step forward.
A spear handle to the gut promptly took my breath away, and the cage that I had fallen through was lowered once again. The girls pitched a fit when the guards tried to get them back in their cages, but without our weapons and with the mana drain shackles on our wrists we were helpless.
“Hey!” I yelled at one of the female guards roughing up Kit. “Leave her alone!”
That got me a spear shaft to the temple, and when I woke up, I found myself once again swaying in the cage high above the ground.
“Sam? Are you alright?” Cecilia asked when I opened my eyes with a groan.
“No,” I said as I blinked away the blood that had seeped into my eye.
“What are we going to do?” Kit asked frettingly.
“We’re going to get the hell out of here is what we’re going to do,” Ember whispered conspiratorially.
I pulled myself to my feet, which was hard given the swaying of the cage and the dizziness that still plagued me from the blow to the head.
“What are you doing?” Cecilia asked Ember.
I saw her working something in her hands, and upon closer inspection, I determined it to be a small blade. Where she had been keeping it, I could only guess.
“I’m getting us the hell out of here,” Ember said as she sawed at the ropes binding her wrists.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Anna. “Those are enchanted--”
Too late.
An electrical surge suddenly coursed through Ember, leaving her rigid. When it finally subsided, she dropped the blade and fell in a heap to the bottom of her cage.
“Ember!” Kit yelled.
“You alright?” I asked the dazed drow assassin.
“No,” she groaned.
“Nobody else try anything stupid,” Cecilia warned. “The chief will hang us for sure if we try to escape. Just sit tight, I think there’s a good chance that he’ll decide to let us go.”
“A good chance?” said Ember. “Are you nuts? You saw how he looked at us. We’re screwed.”
“Are we going to end up stuck in the Underworld?” Kit asked.
“If we do, then at least we’ll be together,” I reminded her.
She nodded and blinked away tears.
The sweltering day dragged by, and at some point in my fretting I fell asleep. The swaying of the cage woke me shortly before dawn, and I realized that we were being lowered once more. This time we were ready for the bottoms to drop out, and when we landed, we were greeted with a dozen spears aimed at out chests.
The chief sat upon his throne and gave a great, growling yawn. “I have come to a decision,” he said sleepily.
I glanced at Anna to my right and Cecilia to my left, then back to the chief, hoping that the word ‘innocent’ came out of his mouth.
“I find you all guilty of murder--”
“That’s bullshit!” Ember yelled.
The witchdoctor beside the chief growled and shot her hand forward. A heartbeat later, Ember’s protests became muffled as a gag suddenly appeared in her mouth.
“Please,” I pleaded. “You’ve got the wrong--”
A gag suddenly appeared in my mouth as well, and the chief waved us away.
We were led to a large cage, but this one was not meant to hold us prisoner, it was an elevator lift that brought us to the top of one of the tallest trees in the jungle. The guards led us from the lift to a wide branch that stretched more than fifty feet out over the distant ground below. I glanced over the side and soon wished that I hadn’t; the drop was at least one-hundred feet.
Six nooses awaited our necks, and though we tried to fight the guards, the ropes were put around our necks and pulled tight. The chief stepped off the lift a moment later and strode out onto the wide branch as the guards kept us at bay with their jagged spears.
“Any last words?” the chief asked with a smirk, but my mouth was gagged, and my protests came out as an incoherent muffle.
Drums began to echo from the nearby branches, and the chief lifted his hand. I tried to ease the girls’ fear with a reassuring look, but their wide eyes showed that I was failing.
I mentally prepared myself for death by hanging and closed my eyes. I expected to be pushed off the branch at any moment, to plummet nearly one-hundred feet and have my neck snapped by the rope, but for many long moments nothing happened.
A cry suddenly tore me from my grizzly ponderings, and I opened my eyes. Again, the noise sounded, and I finally found its owner. A little purple monkey was struggling to climb up to the branch that we stood on. Dried blood was caked into the purple fur on the side of its head, and its right arm appeared to be broken. Nonetheless, it made it up and scampered over to the chief.
“Wait,” the chief told his guards.
The monkey pointed at us, then off into the distance, before going off with a frantic string of monkey talk. The chief apparently understood the little purple dude, for he glanced back at us pensively.
“Are you sure?” he asked the monkey.
A nod and a screech.
A rumbling purr rattled around in the chief’s throat, and he turned to the guards. “Untie them. It appears that they are indeed innocent.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and Kit squealed happily. The guards removed the nooses, untied our wrists, and pulled out the gags.
“Thanks, little dude,” I said to the monkey.
“What did he say?” Cecilia asked the chief.
“He says that you are innocent, that the man who killed Tweak was an imposter that appeared from the shadows,” said the chief.
“We told you we were innocent,” said Kit, offering the chief the evil-eye.
“Yes, I apologize. Please, let me make it up to you.”
“How exactly do you intend to do that?” Ember asked.
“Come, dine with me, and let us see if we can get to the bottom of this,” the chief offered.
We had all been strung up in cages all night, and asid
e from being thirsty as hell, we were starving. A table was set at the center of the village, and we gorged ourselves on grilled meat, fruit, and nuts as the chief spoke with the purple monkey.
“What’s he saying?” I asked the chief.
“Little Tookaka here says that his friends who died with Tweak have not returned from the spirit realm either,” said the chief.
“Wait, NPCs are becoming trapped in the Underworld as well?” Anna asked.
“Correct,” the chief said with a solemn nod.
“Does Tookaka know if it was an NPC who killed Tweak?” I asked.
The chief glanced at the monkey, but Tookaka shrugged.
“Whoever it was,” said the chief, “They were trying to frame you for your friend’s murder.”
“How did you know that something was amiss at Tweak’s in the first place?” Cecilia asked.
The chief pulled a pendant from beneath his armor. “Tweak and I have been friends for some time, and I gave him the twin to this pendant in case he ever found himself in trouble in my jungle.”
“Whoever set us up must have known that we were headed to Tweak’s place,” said Trinity.
“And if they knew where we were then, it stands to reason that they know where we are now,” I added.
Kit glanced around at the surrounding jungle warily.
“Fret not,” said the Chief. “You are safe here, and I will do everything in my power to assist you in finding Tweak’s killer. Tell me, do you have any enemies, anyone who would want you dead?”
“Kincaid’s former guildmates were pretty pissed about what happened,” I said. “My guess is that it was them.”
“But I thought they were banned from the game,” said Kit.
“That’s not likely to stop them from creating new avatars,” said Cecilia.
“Even if they did get back in, there’s no way they could have already reached a high enough level to kill Tweak,” said Ember.
“Good point,” said Trinity.
“Well,” said Cecilia. “We’re not going to find out anything hanging out in the jungle all day. We need to get back to Aeorock if we’re going to find some answers.”
Chapter 4
We bade the chief and the villagers farewell, and as soon as I stepped through the portal to Aeorock, I knew that something was terribly wrong. The dwarven halls smelled of burned flesh, sweat, and blood. The mood of the NPC guards that rushed about was dour, and the haunted eyes of the real-world players gravitated downward. The usually boisterous crowds in the busy halls spoke in tired groans or hushed whispers.
“What the hell happened here?” I wondered aloud.
“Look!” said Kit as we came to stand before Cecilia’s pub.
The looking glass above the entrance was replaying footage of the night before, and in it a horde of undead monsters was attacking a mountain stronghold.
“Holy shit,” I said as I realized the location. “That was here. Just outside the doors.”
Cecilia led us into the quiet pub and gestured one of her waitresses over to her. A cute deer-furry hurried over to us and gave Cecilia an urgent hug.
“Oh my god, Cece. I’m so glad that you’re safe,” the young furry said with teary eyes.
“Bambi, what the hell is going on?” Cecilia asked.
“Last night the undead marched from the valley below and began attacking Aeorock. Oh, Cece, it was terrible. There was all manner of undead zombies, dragons and bat-like beings too! They came, and they came, and they just kept coming. We tried to hold them back, but they were just too many, and when one of our people died in the fight, they too rose from the dead and moved against us. So many people died...and now they’re all trapped in the Underworld, just like the rest of us are going to be.”
Bambi gripped Cecilia’s arms tight and looked us all in the eyes one at a time. “They’re going to come back tonight, and they’re going to kill us all.”
“Well,” I said with a small grin. “At least we’ll all still be together.”
Bambi looked at me incredulously. “Are you seriously joking about this? The Underworld is basically, um, hell!”
“I thought that there was a whole group of players that tried to get to level zero on purpose. Aren’t they like crazy BDSM peeps?” I said half-jokingly.
“The Underworld is a place of pain and torture,” said Bambi.
“Yeah, but if we all end up there then what’s the worry? We can kick all the weirdo perverts’ asses and take over the Underworld ourselves.”
“It’s not like that, Sam,” said Cecilia. “In the Underworld, magic doesn’t work, and everyone is basically helpless.”
“Where’d you hear that?” said Trinity.
“I try to stay on top of the gamer boards,” Cecilia explained lazily.
My respect for the Underworld, and indeed my fear of it had become keener with every word that Cecilia spoke. I hadn’t known the place was that bad, and I really hadn’t been worrying that much about going there. I’d figured that the programmers would figure out the glitch soon enough, and then even Tweak would be reborn and restored to his level.
“I need to go talk to the doctor,” I told the girls. “You girls hanging out here for a while?”
“We shouldn’t split up,” Kit said as she pulled herself close to me and dug her claws into my robes.
I carefully detached her from me and smiled. “I’ll just be around the corner.”
“Come back soon,” said Cecilia. “I’m curious to hear what the doctor says.”
I left with a nod and hooked a right out the door. The streets were quiet and solemn, so it wasn’t hard to find a dark corner to try and contact Dr. Marks in private. With a tap and a few swipes of my interface I brought up the icon to contact the doctor personally, then I waited. I expected him to come up on the emergency video feed, but I was surprised a few minutes later by a tap on the shoulder.
I turned with the beginnings of a Fireball sparking between my hands, then let out a sigh of relief when I recognized Dr. Marks. He grinned at me from behind the high, white collar of his robes.
“You’re jumpy,” he said matter-of-factly. I got the impression that I had interrupted important work and decided to make it quick.
“Doc, what the hell’s going on? Tweak was murdered, and I was framed. My girls and I were almost hung by the Lion Zion Tribe.” I glanced around at the alley we stood in. “Does this have something to do with Kincaid’s old guildmates?”
The doctor frowned, and his eyes told me that I had hit the nail on the head.
“Doc?” I said against his silence.
“We don’t know how the hell this happened, Sam, and listen to me, this is top secret. The only reason that I’m telling you is because I think you’re a major target.” He looked to the end of the alley suddenly, and I looked as well.
We waited and listened.
After about ten seconds the doctor looked me in the eyes again. “Sam, somehow Arthur Gaines’s consciousness has been transferred to Rebirth Online.”
“What? That’s crazy,” I said skeptically.
“Crazy, but true. Arthur Gaines is nowhere near an access point in the real world. He’s in a deep coma. But somehow his consciousness was transferred to the Rebirth Online Underworld when you defeated him. He defeated the Lord of the Underworld in under a week Sam.”
“Wait a minute, did you say that he’s the lord of the fucking Underworld?”
“It looks that way. And we believe that he’s behind the instant zero glitch that everyone who dies in game is experiencing.”
“He can’t escape the Underworld, so he’s bringing everyone else to him,” I realized.
“Exactly,” said the doctor.
“But can’t the programmers step in and do something? I mean Jesus, Doc, if this kind of shit keeps up, Rebirth Online is going to get shut down.”
“Corporate doesn’t want to do anything that might injure Arthur in the real world. They’re afraid that any attempt to defeat hi
m would be basically deleting him. He’s not a real player, he’s not quite an NPC. He’s something new.”
“So, what are you saying? Rebirth Online just becomes Kincaid World? What about all the players who can’t log off?”
“We’re working on it, Sam, but you’ve got to understand that this might be it. Corporate is considering pulling everyone’s plug and leaving Kincaid in here in his own NPC world. Until we understand the link between Arthur Gaines and the new Kincaid, our hands are tied.”
“This is crazy.”
Dr. Marks offered a sympathetic nod. “Listen, Sam. Between you and me, there might be a way to trap Kincaid in a--”
A sword suddenly burst through his chest, cutting right through his magical armor and speckling me with blood. Dr. Marks gripped my robes as his eyes grew wide with surprise and terror.
“Sam…” Blood poured out of his mouth. “You’ve got to trap--”
The sword suddenly sliced up through his chest and neck, splitting his head. He fell over in a bloody heap, and his assailant was exposed. A short, lean goblin assassin glared at me with green-black eyes. Snot hung from his long, crooked nose, slowly dripping on his matte leather armor.
When the sword burst through the doctor’s chest, I had instinctively begun the hand gestures to produce a Magic Bolt, and a heartbeat after seeing the assassin’s smug face, I unleashed my spell.
The streaking blue bolt of energy screamed out of my palm and slammed into his chest with enough force to pick him up off his feet and deposit him fifteen feet away near the alley opening. I raced after the goblin and brought up my fire shield as I went. The spell destroyed his armor’s magic resistance, so I wasted no time in conjuring a Fireball and thrusting it out ahead of me. But the goblin produced his own shield by enabling an enchanted bracer, and after deflecting my spell, he leapt to his feet to meet my charge.
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