A: First of all, you underestimate how bendy I am.
Maddie laughed and nearly spilled hot water all over the counter.
A: But no, you are correct, I would not fit without some kind of shrinking spell, and I don’t think you have one of those do you?
M: No. I think I have everything else BUT that, now that you mention it.
A: Of course you do. But since you don’t have that one, I had to go in another direction for this solution. I think that if I go in the front door with you and distract those guardians, then you can slip inside. They are elemental NPCs, and once they are far enough away from the entrance, they will disappear.
M: How do you figure that?
A: They are made of magic that is tied to the protection on the entrance to the burrow. Once they are away from the entrance, they no longer have a reason to exist, so they don’t.
Maddie took a sip of her tea and checked her laptop. The game had loaded, and there was already a voice chat invitation flashing. She clicked it, and the hum of Alex’s machine came through the speakers of her laptop.
“Hey, darlin',” he said, making her jump as his voice filled her kitchen. “Got your headphones on?”
“No, not yet.” She moved her tea to the table and pulled the laptop over to her. “They’re in the sitting room at my desk, and I don’t feel like getting them. This is fine. I can hear you all over my kitchen.”
Alex’s laughter through the speakers warmed her more than the swig of tea she had just swallowed. “I’m everywhere!” he said, and she joined him in the laugh. “You get your body back? Ready to try again?”Maddie scowled. In the game, when your avatar died, you had to wait for the body to return to your starting zone - one of Maddie’s least favorite things to do.
“Yeah, I’ve got her, and I’m already on the way out there.”
“Wait!” Alex’s voice was so loud that Maddie almost dropped her mug. “Meet me in the guild zone. I want to discuss strategy first.” Maddie sighed loudly as she turned her character around and ran back toward the place where Alex asked her to meet him. It was easier for her to imagine herself as Em when she had her headphones on - something about the hum of the refrigerator and the intermittent rattle in her radiator kept her rooted to her home here in the real world.
“Almost there.” She switched to the first-person view and saw Alex’s avatar leaning against a column in the guildhall as she entered the zone.
“There you are. Come ’ere and let me show you what I’m thinking,” Alex said as his avatar turned to face her. Come ‘ere. That was another one of the southern phrases he used that would make her melt a bit to hear. “Now open your map, but switch to group view.” She did as he asked, and the map appeared, annotated with notes. “See this?” A corner of the map near the burrow - which was still marked with the red X - lit up.
“Yep. That’s pretty close to the entrance, right?”
“Indeed. Now, we are going to try running at the entrance together, with me running a little ahead of you. Then when the guardians appear, I will turn and run toward that corner, giving you time to run inside and complete the mission.” Maddie studied the screen. “What’s wrong? I can hear your forehead wrinkling up from here.”
“Cheeky.” She tilted her head to the side as she looked at the distance between the red X and the place where Alex had his cursor. “I just don’t know if it is far enough to make them disappear, Alex. Do you think you can make them mad enough to follow you that they won’t just turn around as soon as my avatar’s foot crosses the threshold?”
“Again, you underestimate how bendy I am.” The map closed on her screen so that she could see his avatar doing one of the pre-programmed dances that could be activated with the right command. She laughed so hard that tears formed in her eyes. “There we are, that’s the sound I like to hear.”
“Fine. We can try it. What’s a little death between friends?”
“Em, there won’t be any death if you follow my plan.” Alex’s tone seemed to change on a dime; Maddie rolled her eyes. He could be so domineering when he wanted to be, and she thought on many occasions that she couldn’t tell if he took her rebellion as charming or infuriating. Moments like these reminded what she didn’t know about this man whispering in her ear every night, taking her on wild adventures - within her laptop, that is.
“Fine, following your plan. Got it.” Maddie punctuated her sentence by making her avatar give a cheeky salute and then held her breath until he chuckled in her ear.
“That bad, am I?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean, Alex.” She grinned as she began casting protective spells on his avatar, finishing up with a speed-enhancing spell that she cast on both of them. “Ready to go?”
“Let’s do this. Stay behind me.” Em took off following behind Lex as he ran toward the burrow. Just before he reached the entrance, the shadow guardians appeared again as they had when she made her attempt earlier.
“Watch out! They look meaner than last time!” she called out. Alex chuckled.
“They looked that way to me last time, but you just kept on running, twirling those tiny daggers,” he replied as Lex ran right up to them and then turned to his right, running away from the entrance. “Are they on me?”
“Yep! I’m going in,” Maddie replied as Em stepped through the opening of the burrow. Immediately the screen went dark as one would expect when plunging underground. Maddie kept Em running forward even though she couldn’t see anything around her - it would change when the avatar’s eyes adjusted. She could just make out torchlight ahead of her and headed in that direction.
“Are you running toward the torches?”
“Yes!” Maddie focused on the screen as Em’s eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and the scenery around her became visible.
“That’s the wrong way because -”
“I thought this burrow was empty, Alex?!?” Her screen was full of small green goblins, all grinning at her and brandishing weapons. Alex swore loudly, and Maddie rethought her decision not to use her headphones. His voice sounded far more disappointed in her than usual when it bounced off the tiled walls of her tiny kitchen.
“I’m on my way in, just let me finish off these guardians.” She could hear the combat music and sounds coming from his computer - he did not have an easy time of it - but on the tiny map in the corner of the screen, she could see when he entered the burrow.
“Straight ahead, down the path -”
“I know, my race can see in the dark in here.”
Maddie scowled as Em sank her dagger into the neck of another goblin. She had managed to dispatch three of the nasty little creatures in the time it took Alex to run Lex down to help her. “What is the target item in here, anyway? Better be something really good for all the trouble we are going through to get it.” Two more goblins fell as Em hit them with back to back blows, and then the rest of the horde seemed to all topple over and fall in unison. “Alex. Using magic like that is cheating, you know.”
“Because you wouldn’t have done that if the guardians had flattened me out there?”
Maddie fought the grin that soon spread across her face. “True. So anyway, the target?”
“It’s right up ahead.” Lex bounded away down a tunnel, and Em followed him, occasionally having to follow the trail of light he always left in his wake. Members of his race were covered with tattoos that glowed just like his eyes, so in a dark place, she could still see where he had just been.
“No, no, that’s fine, I don’t need to keep up with you,” she muttered as she had to turn Em around after missing a turn. The glowing trace was all that clued her in. “Alex, wait for me!”
“You’re doing fine, Em. Just keep following the trail.”
“Why won’t you tell me what we are headed toward?” Maddie sighed in exasperation as she again had to turn Em around due to a missed turn to the right. “I mean, for all I know, we could be headed back up to the surface. I have no idea where we ar
e, and the map doesn’t go this far down into the zone.”
“Nope, it doesn’t. Sharp left.”
“Alex!”
“Take the next right.”
Maddie skidded Em to a stop. “Nope, not till you tell me what we are after here.” She heard him swear again, then a popping sound through her laptop speakers, and he was just...gone. “Alex?” She looked out the kitchen window - sometimes storms blew in before she noticed, the perks of living on an island, she guessed - but the night was clear. She adjusted the volume on the laptop, and suddenly the ambient music from the game was blaring, so she turned it back down quickly. “Alex?” Maddie tapped the microphone button on the keyboard and watched as the mute symbol popped up and then disappeared again. “This isn’t funny, but FINE, I will take the next right.” She moved Em forward and down the corridor until the turn came into view and then took it.
Ahead of her was an open room and what looked like a mirror in the middle. It spanned the entire height of the room, from floor to ceiling. She approached it until she could see Em’s face reflected in the mirror - and took a second to be amazed, yet again, at her father’s friend and his technical ability. As she tilted her head to look closer at the image, Em also tilted her head as did her reflection. Maddie startled - she hadn’t given the avatar the command to tilt her head. She moved Em closer, looking at the reflection of the room in the mirror. Nothing seemed amiss until Em’s reflection faded, and Lex’s smiling face appeared. That was why he wasn’t on her map anymore.
“Is this a zone connection?” There was no answer through her speakers, but his avatar, Lex, nodded his head and held out a hand.
“Come ’ere.” Maddie closed her eyes as a few errant butterflies did backflips in her stomach.
“Dirty pool, old man,” she said, chuckling, and sent Em into the mirror.
Cold, unseen fingers closed around her wrist and jerked her forward, out of the kitchen chair. Maddie threw her other hand in front of her face to stop herself from slamming face-first into the table, but there was not a table there - only space. Everything went black for a moment, and she felt a freezing cold grip her from head to toe. She tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She closed her eyes and tried to pry the invisible fingers off her wrist as she felt herself falling. Her stomach flipped over just before she crashed into - something. She tensed, and then pain bloomed throughout her body as stars shot back and forth in front of her still-closed eyes.
“Em?” Maddie opened her eyes and immediately tried to scoot backward, but couldn’t move due to the white-hot pain radiating down her arms and legs. The face above her, inches from her own, wearing a mask of concern, was Lex’s face. Maddie forced her arms upward until she could see her hands - but they were Em’s hands. Pink fingernails that barely protruded from leather, fingerless gloves. Leather gauntlets that were tied onto her wrists with black laces. She could feel short sleeves against the skin of her arms, right where Em’s green tunic had the sleeves rolled up. “Em, are you all right?”
Two
“Alex, what is happening?” Maddie closed her eyes tightly, but upon opening them again, she still saw Lex’s face. The tattoos that lined his collarbone and rose up out of his tunic, curving around his neck and onto his jawline glowed faintly, turning from their usual blue to a reddish color - signifying that he was concerned or upset about something.
“Did you say Alex?” Lex reached out to touch the side of her face, and she pushed through the pain wracking her body to scoot away from him. “Em? Are you hurt?”
“Stop calling me Em! My name is…” She wracked her brain, but all she could come up with was Em. Em was her name. But she had been in the kitchen, with a cup of tea and no headphones. No - that was Maddie. Wrenching her head to the side, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her delicate features were twisted into a mask of horror as she touched the side of her face, ran her fingers painfully into her sienna hair, touched the pointed tips of her ears, and reached down to feel for the daggers that were strapped to her thighs - she was Em. She was in the game. Her stomach flipped, and she closed her eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again - and seeing the same things. “But how -?”
“You’ve never come through a barrier that roughly before, but I’m not sure why that time was so -”
“No.” She took a moment to listen to her own voice, relieved that it at least sounded the same. Tears formed in her eyes, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, wincing as the rough leather hand wraps that Em wore pressed into the delicate skin under her eyes. “I mean how did I get here. Alex...sorry, Lex, a moment ago I was in my kitchen - her kitchen, Maddie’s kitchen. I was Maddie.”
“Listen, Em, I don’t know who Maddie is, but -”
“Lies. Just stop it, stop it right now!” She rolled over on her side to try and push up on all fours as fresh pain rocketed up her spine. She took a deep breath and then slowly got to her feet. Lex took a step back as she covered her face with her hands for a moment, overcome by the smell of them, of leather and smoke, and - was that blood? “I must have fallen asleep, this has to be a dream.” She turned from him and fisted both of her hands by her sides as she looked back into the mirror. She could see her reflection - Em’s reflection - so she put her hands up, fingers spread wide, and walked toward the mirror. The glass came up under her fingers, cold and solid - unyielding. She slowly turned around and met Lex’s worried gaze. His tattoos were a bright red, illuminating his face in the darkened room. “I think it’s time you tell me the truth.”
Lex ran one of his massive tattooed hands over his face in frustration. Long black hair pulled in a tight ponytail crowned the top of his head, and his hand rested there for a moment as he considered her. “We don’t have time to talk now. Please, Em, help me retrieve this object, and I will tell you everything that you want to know, but we cannot take time to have a chat here. Please.”
He wasn’t going to let this go, clearly. She glanced back at her face one last time and thought about how often she wished that she could just wake up in Arcstone, free of her problems and the dreary nature of her real life. Could it be that her wish was granted? Without more information, there wasn’t much more she could do now but help him. If he left to finish the mission on his own, she might be stuck here forever. Her mouth pinched into a thin line as she looked back at her reflection - Em’s reflection. She was Em, and all she could do was work with Lex, for now, to finish the mission. Perhaps afterward, he could help her figure out what had happened. Maybe afterward, he could help her find a way back to her kitchen - a way back to Maddie, and to her life outside of the game. But did she really want to go back at all?
“So, will you help me?” Em found herself staring at Lex, fascinated to hear Alex’s voice to come out of this alien face that was looking at her intently. There was something about his eyes, though - despite the amber color or the fact that they seemed to have their own light source, casting a glow on her as she moved closer - they were friendly. Familiar. But of course they were - how long had she and Alex spent in the game world as Em and Lex? He was still Alex, just in this guise.
“Yes. But after that, will you help me figure out whatever this -” She spun in a circle, her arms out. “- is?”
“Whatever you need, Em, but we need to move now.” She nodded, and he held out his hand. A familiar gesture - how many times had she auto-followed him before, their avatar hands clasped together as they ran through zone after zone? She took his hand, startled by the strength and weight of it, the cool skin of his palm pressed against hers. Her musing was interrupted as he doubled down on his grip and started to run, pulling her along, stumbling behind him. She recovered almost automatically and fell into step behind him, tempted to close her eyes as she often did so many times before. Still, instead, she watched the tattoos on his arms seem to pulse as the rope-like muscles moved under his skin. He was a marvel - a cartoon avatar on her laptop screen come to life. Once this mission was over, she would h
ave to get a better look at him. For now, though, she followed, a smile spreading across her face as she watched him run.
Three
“You okay back there, Em?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.
“Yes, why?” She stumbled again as she avoided a large boulder. Lex was taller than she was and seemed to just step over it, but she had to swerve to avoid running right into it with her knees.
“Your fingers got really hot and kinda sweaty,” he replied. For a moment, he sounded like Alex, the many times he had tried to help her work through something going on in her real life. Small. Vulnerable. Unsure. “Are you still in pain? We can stop a moment for some healing if you need to?”
“That might not be a bad idea.” She pulled her hand back from his quickly, wiping it on her tunic sleeve as she reached into her satchel and pulled out her spellbook without even thinking about it. She paused and looked down - her spellbook was in her hands. It was real - she ran her fingers over the leather cover for a moment before opening it and thumbing through the pages to the section with healing magic. Concentrating for a moment before she spoke, Maddie read the words from the page in Em’s voice. As the magic poured out of her core and settled in her bones, her muscles, everywhere that she hurt to erase the pain, she took that moment to put Maddie away. She was Em now, and Em she would remain until she made it back home.
“Better?” Lex asked, impatience evident in his tone.
“Better.” She smiled up at him and noted the surprise on his tattooed face. There was little else to do but go along with the situation, so she put her book away and took his hand, squeezing it slightly. It was like squeezing a stone. He nodded in response and then took off again, running through the corridors, zig-zagging through twists and turns until they arrived at a stone door, bolted shut with a large padlock. Em let go of his hand and moved closer to the door, her hand outstretched toward the lock. She was about to touch it but was intercepted by Lex, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her backward. She fell away from the lock and right into his arms. “What the -?”
Rift Page 2