by Natalie Grey
“Yes, I just said it.” Dan raised his eyebrows. “So, what do we do?”
There was a long pause while Dhruv looked into the middle distance with a surly expression. Then he smiled.
“We do what Harry would do,” he said.
Harry stared at the webpage, unblinking. It had been twenty minutes since the servers went down, and it might be hours.
But if he missed this, if he was offline when Callista logged on, he didn’t know what would happen to the challenge. If she had a chance to prepare, or log out and make a new character, or—
There was no knowing what she would do. He had meant what he said to Thad: Callista was dangerous.
His lip curled. Thad was a fool. By now, any reasonable person should have seen that Harry had no intentions of following through on his end of the bargain. He wouldn’t have to if Thad died, and his help would hardly matter if most of Thad’s team was lost.
And it would be. Players never expected death in a video game to be permanent. They would run headlong into danger without a thought. It would be a valuable lesson for everyone else.
If, of course, the challenge still existed. He wanted to snarl. To come so close, only to have the opportunity yanked away now.
Because there was nothing left. If he lost this, if he wasn’t able to bring Callista down and take the crown that way, there was no further recourse. The very thought of losing made his blood turn icy.
He told himself that it was impossible for him to lose. This quest had been made for him, by him, as an expression of reality.
He was meant to have it.
The server light blinked green, and his throat caught. He texted Thad with shaking fingers and went to get his VR headset on. He was about to find out if all of his work had been undone.
But when he logged on, the challenge still showed in the corner of his screen, unanswered and unclaimed.
Harry sagged in relief. He was meant to win this, he told himself. He was born for this—to be this king, in this era, in this world. That was why he was here.
He created a party and ordered them to get ready. Almost, he told them to pray. For many, this was the last fight of their time here. That deserved some sort of recognition. But he said nothing, in the end.
Some people were born to be pawns.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The map on the table was printed out on glossy paper, far superior to anything Gracie could have drawn on her own. She had to admit that.
On the other hand, she had a soft spot for maps hand-drawn on sheets of taped-together graph paper. It was how she’d built the earliest worlds she played in, and it was how she still liked to organize her thoughts.
Regardless, this was what they had: a custom-made board to plan their strategy in Saladin’s Keep. Rosalie, the receptionist at Dragon Soul, had come over to the hotel with all of the materials. She had remembered every single one of their names and inquired as to relevant details of each person’s flight.
Gracie would bet good money that Rosalie would be running some company or other within the next few years if she wanted to.
Gracie planted her hands on the map and looked down.
“The east hallway is better if they don’t know we’re there,” Ushanas said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “There are more places to hide that are invisible from both ends of the corridor, so we can set up ambushes that just keep going. They think they’ve gotten away from one, then they run into another one. Their team comes to help, and they get ambushed.”
Gracie nodded.
“But there’s no flag,” Dathok clarified. “Right?” Of all of them, he almost resembled his character. He was tall, with incredibly broad shoulders and decisive features.
“No flag,” Gracie confirmed. “Just a weird sort of battle royale. Anyone on a team can attack the other team’s leader, and if either leader dies…” She met Jay’s eyes across the table. “The fight is over,” she finished.
Jay opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a tiny shake of her head. She didn’t want anyone on the team to know the stakes. She wanted them to go into this fight with their heads on straight and their focus razor-sharp. She didn’t want them worrying.
Alex had clearly noticed what had passed between them, but he said nothing. His girlfriend, Sydney, was curled up on the other side of the room with a book and was slowly falling asleep.
Kevin was tapping his fingers on the side of his face as he stared down at the map. He and Alan had been murmuring together, and Gracie remembered that they’d been playing video games together for years.
Her heart ached at the idea of having a sibling she was that close with. She looked around the table and saw Jamie watching them, his face drawn. She frowned and kept scanning. Freon was about as unremarkable a person as it was possible to be, with the sort of face you forgot very easily. He should, Gracie thought vaguely, be a spy. Lakhesis had curly brown hair that was escaping the multitude of clips and hair ties she had used, and a smile that always had an edge of sadness to it.
Gracie looked down at her phone when it buzzed. It was a message from Dhruv, telling her that the servers were online, Harry was online, and—
She frowned.
“All right, get ready to go, people. We’re getting a shuttle over to the building.”
Alex went over to kneel by the couch. Gracie heard him say something to Sydney, and she murmured something back sleepily. Her hand emerged from her blanket to clasp his, and Gracie made out the words, “Good luck.”
She smiled. When Alex looked at Sydney, his whole face softened. Gracie had known on some level that he was missing something, but she hadn’t realized just how much happier he could be.
So she was smiling when she came out into the hall and saw Jay waiting for her. She took his hand as they walked and saw his curious expression.
“Dhruv says they have something for me,” she said, with a shrug. “I don’t know what that means.” She tapped the rolled-up map against her leg with the other hand. “Shot glass of arsenic, maybe?”
Jay snorted. “If they had one of those, it would be for Harry.”
“That’s true. Good point.” She squeezed his hand. “Jay?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared.” The words came out before she could stop them. She squeezed her eyes shut, and when his arms came around her, tears leaked out. “I’m so scared.”
“So don’t do it,” Jay said urgently. He cupped her face in both hands, his eyes searching hers. “Gracie, don’t. They said they could make it so no one was out of the game. Dan wanted to. You don’t have to put yourself in danger for this.”
Gracie tried to laugh, but it sounded like a sob. “You know that isn’t an answer. It still leaves us with the problem—”
“You don’t have to solve the problem!” Jay’s voice rose. He was furious, but not with her. “It was never yours to solve. You weren’t supposed to be caught up in this. Harry’s an asshole who couldn’t—”
She put her hand on his chest, and he broke off. She gathered her courage to speak, trying her hardest not to start crying.
She hated crying. She decided to be angry at Harry for making her cry.
That helped her get her bearings.
“You don’t always get to choose what you get caught up in,” Gracie stated. “That’s life, Jay. All you get to choose is what you do with that.”
“I know,” Jay said, “but Gracie—”
Gracie shook her head and put her fingers over his mouth. “You fought so hard to get me through that quest,” she said. “When I wanted to give it up, you told me you thought I deserved it. I doubted myself, but you never doubted me. You went to Sam and asked for his help so we could get through the run before the servers went down. Why?”
Jay didn’t immediately answer when she took her fingers away. His eyes searched hers. “Because I thought you would be a good queen,” he said finally. He shook his head helplessly. “I thought Harry was…” He sighed a
nd looked away. “Fundamentally misguided,” he finished finally. He looked back at her. “I believe the way he sees the world is wrong, but he set up a test that you passed for the right reasons. You cared about the world. You wanted to do the right thing.”
Gracie nodded, smiling sadly.
Jay realized what she meant a moment later. “No. No, Gracie, please! If you use that to justify putting yourself in danger, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You didn’t make it true by saying it,” Gracie pointed out. “A good leader doesn’t throw other people into danger instead of themselves. A good tank certainly doesn’t. Jay, I want to be a good leader. I’m taking the risk because this best-case scenario is the better one. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Jay’s fingers clenched. “If we lose you—”
“If you lose me, Metamorphosis will still be what it was—and you will not for a second let Harry win forever.” Gracie reached up to lay her hand on his cheek. “I know that. He may be a crazy bastard, but he was right about one thing: people will come together to defeat a tyrant.”
Jay sighed. “Do me a favor?”
“Sure,” Gracie said cautiously.
Jay kissed her, his eyes closing for a long moment, and when he pulled away, he laid his forehead against hers and met her eyes. “Win,” he said.
Gracie laughed. She couldn’t help it. She laughed and wrapped her arms around him and held on tight while he hugged her back.
“Just a little favor, huh?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.” Jay wrapped his arm around her, and they kept walking. He sounded smug.
Gracie’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her sweatshirt before groaning and showing the screen to Jay.
Stop canoodling, Alex had texted. Alan is teaching people sea shanties and I’m going out of my mind.
It was only a few minutes later that they pulled into the parking lot of Dragon Soul Productions and piled out. Most of the lights were off, and Dan was waiting for them in the lobby so that the sleepy night shift of security guards wouldn’t be overwhelmed.
When they got up to the main level, Dan pointed down the hallway. “Dhruv is waiting for you that way,” he told Gracie. “I’ll get everyone else hooked up and your account prepped.”
“Thanks,” Gracie said. She squeezed Jay’s hand and headed off curiously to stick her head in the door of the only office with lights on. “Hello?”
“Hi.” Dhruv beckoned her over. “Your character is where?”
“The temple ruins outside Kithara,” Gracie said.
“All right, I’ll head there.” Dhruv was remotely piloting a character.
“You can play that way?” Gracie asked, surprised.
“Eh, it’s a bit buggy as an interface, but yeah. Made it a lot easier to test certain things.” Dhruv set his character to auto-run and brought up his inventory. “Harry’s challenge brings the two leaders to the same stats once the battle starts—same crit chance, same damage modifier, same hit points.”
Gracie sighed and nodded.
“It doesn’t work, though,” Dhruv said smugly, “on any future changes.”
“Eh?” Gracie frowned down at him. She was beginning to wish she’d had some coffee when Lakhesis did.
Dhruv, seeing her gaze light on his coffee cup, handed it up to her without comment. “If you switch your armor and weapon after the battle starts, you’ll gain an advantage,” he explained.
“That’s cheating,” Gracie said, shocked. “The whole point of this was that—”
“Fuck that,” Dhruv said. “You can bet your ass that Harry’s planned some dirty trick or other. Hell, this whole thing was a dirty trick. He never intended this to be fair. He only wanted it to be fair if he won, and if he didn’t win, he’d keep stacking the deck until he did. He wanted to be a dictator. I don’t want that, and neither do you.”
Gracie swallowed.
“This armor will bring you back to the stats you should have had with the armor and weapon you have now,” Dhruv said. “If I thought I could give you infinite hit points and a hundred percent crit and you’d take it, I would have done that. But you wouldn’t, would you?”
“No,” Gracie said at once.
“You know,” Dhruv told her, “there’s a very large overlap between honorable and stupid.”
Gracie gave him a look. “Will that be all?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you there when you get online and trade you the armor. You should have ten minutes or so to prepare before you get ported to the challenge area.” Dhruv looked at her. “You ready?”
“As ready as I’m gonna be,” Gracie said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you or aren’t you?”
Gracie looked at the screen. She didn’t have to use the armor, she told herself. She could choose.
And she had beaten Harry before. She would do it again.
“I’m ready,” she told him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gracie had barely joined the party and completed the trade with Dhruv’s character before the challenge yanked them all through the ether to Saladin’s Keep.
It was night there too, with moonlight catching on drifting dust in the library and illuminating the wreckage. Saladin had entertained even the most heretical scholars, keeping books on necromancy, demon summonings, atheism, new medical techniques, and more.
In the end, a mob had come for him with a challenger at its head. Surrounded by their most elite guards, they had fought.
Saladin had lost.
This was indeed the place where unworthy kings fell.
Gracie was not unworthy. She told herself that, although her chest was tight and her heart was pounding. On neutral ground lit up gold, she approached Harry for one last conversation. It was hard to take him seriously as a Piskie, but she knew better than to underestimate him.
Dhruv was right. Harry would cheat if he could.
“You took something that wasn’t yours,” Harry said. “You don’t deserve it. I will take it back tonight.”
Gracie looked at him for a long time. She remembered his face when he had come to her apartment—desperate, anguished. “You dreamed a better king than you could have been,” she said quietly. “And for that, I thank you.”
She turned on her heel and left without another word, returning to her team in the library. Harry did not call her back, but she felt his anger and pain following her.
You made yourself into someone who needed to be destroyed, Gracie thought. You wrote the Yesuan quest, and somehow thought it would end differently for you.
In the library, with the counter at two minutes, she looked at all of them and sighed. “Boy, did you all get more than you bargained for in this game!”
Everyone burst out laughing.
“Some of you have been here right from the start and some haven’t,” Gracie said, “but every one of you has been there to watch the weird-ass clusterfuck of this quest. I kind of hoped we were done with that bullshit now. Apparently not.” She did jazz hands.
“Nothing worthwhile is ever that easy,” Kevin chimed in.
Gracie smiled at him. “I just wanted to say, I appreciate more than I can say that each one of you is here, and that it is you guys who are here. I couldn’t have asked for a better group—Dathok to talk lore with, Lakhesis to tank with, Mirra to train new healers, Fys to take notes and make data-driven suggestions, Ushanas to tell me to get my head out of my ass…”
Ushanas chuckled.
“Every one of you has been there for me and for each other,” Gracie said. “I just—thank you.” If she said anything more, her voice was going to start shaking and they were going to know something was wrong. “Fuck ‘em up,” she finished with a laugh.
“Red Squadron!” Chowder said.
“Red Squadron!” Everyone chorused back.
Gracie turned to Jay. There was so, so much more he’d done than she could ever fit in a speech, and she hoped he knew that. He nodded slightly and reached out for a fist
-bump.
Gracie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Thirty seconds now. Her heart rate was increasing.
You can do this, she told herself. Don’t fuck up. As the counter entered single digits, all of her attention focused on the main door, and on what she knew of her opponent.
What she didn’t notice was Caspian waiting by one of the side doors, only to slip out as soon as the counter hit zero and the screen announced CHALLENGE STARTED.
The counter flashed and disappeared as the doors opened. Harry watched as the team charged out into the oasis, leaving a carefully-selected team of rogues and mages to watch him.
He waited for the explosion of communication, the calls between the teammates as they herded opponents into place and warned one another of sneak attacks. He had warned them that deaths in this battleground were permanent.
He had failed to mention just how permanent, of course.
The calls, however, didn’t begin. Harry sank into the shadows and waited, a frown on his face.
“Grok,” Thad said, his voice very low. “Report.”
“No one,” Grok replied.
“Scan the roofs,” Thad ordered. “Don’t give into the temptation to seek them out. Be patient; make them come to us.”
Harry nodded. Thad might be limited by his pride, but he had a good tactical mind. He wouldn’t throw players away to no purpose in this confrontation.
He didn’t stop scanning the darkness, though. Something was coming.
There was no way Callista had come here without a plan.
Thad crouched in the shadow of one of the trees and narrowed his eyes. Callista’s team should be here. There was no way they had beat Thad’s team to the oasis since there had been eyes on the other door, and they’d timed the runs from both sides. The great hall was closer to the oasis than the library was, by several crucial yards.
Which meant they were in the hallways.
Thad wanted to smile. On the one hand, that was idiotic. Everyone knew the fastest way through the keep was via the oasis.