Occultist

by Oliver Mayes

  “Good evening,” announced Kevin in a voice that suddenly brimmed with confidence, “and welcome to today’s episode of ‘The Saga Continues’.”

  Damien’s jaw dropped. He loved that show. This show. Oh my god, he thought, hands dropping to his sides, I’m the highlight of the official Saga Online channel. They’re all watching me. Oh, crap.

  “Today we are joined by Damien, AKA Scorpius, a beta tester who has been playing the warrior class on a private test server of Saga Online for a month. Give everyone a wave, Damien. You’re live on camera!”

  Damien nervously raised a hand before pausing. If it was the same as the episodes he’d seen, they were watching from his perspective. He turned his hand around and waved at himself awkwardly. There was a flurry of activity in the chat box that Damien couldn’t follow, although he did catch a few ‘hi’s’ and a smattering of ‘wuttup noobs’.

  “Scorpius has joined us at extremely short notice today to fill in for Aetherius, who decided to pull out at the last minute.”

  As the chat expressed its dissatisfaction with this turn of events, Damien’s shock intensified.

  I’m filling in for Aetherius? He’s top of the leaderboard in the Streamer Competition!

  The Streamer Competition encouraged players to record their gameplay and upload it to their Saga Online profile pages to garner votes from fans. The winner would get 100,000 real-world credits.

  A sudden thought interrupted his moment of glory. Wait, if this was originally tuned for Aetherius then what the hell am I going to be fighting?

  “Today, Damien fights a new boss monster that will eventually be introduced to the core game.”

  Oh, crap.

  “Now, in all honesty, Aetherius would have struggled against this thing.”

  Nononononononononono—

  “In fact, after a brief description of what he would be fighting, Aetherius was so scared he decided to pull out of the show. I guess when you have a reputation to uphold, you don’t fight enemies you’re not sure you can beat.”

  If Saga Online enabled wetting yourself as a method of communication, Damien would have communicated liberally. As things were, he remained silent.

  “I didn’t invite Damien here today in the hopes that he would win. I only hoped he would have the courage to put on a show. Even when,” Kevin cleared his throat, “even if he fails, he’ll be making gaming history.”

  Kevin’s tone changed to one of sincerity as he addressed Damien directly.

  “Damien, I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to prepare you for this. You probably can’t beat this monster, but somebody has to fight him so we can see him in action and you’re the only one we’ve got. I was worried that if I told you earlier, you’d say no, and I’d have to let down all our viewers. Please, Damien, will you do this for me? For everyone? I’ll owe you, big time.”

  Damien’s mind was reeling. Being on this show was a dream come true, but he wasn’t ready. Never mind that he was low level and knew next to nothing about his opponent, the power to his unit might be cut at any moment. With so many variables at play, he couldn’t focus. In the brief seconds following Kevin’s plea, the viewers had swamped the chat with pleas of their own, encouragement and... well, there’s always going to be a ‘that guy’:

  5ubzer0: You can do it Damien, stab his freaking eyes out!

  BootyliciousBarb: Go on Damien, for the warriors!

  Naughtylus: A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES!

  CactusLover: I shaved my balls for this x_x

  Polymorpheus: lol, Aetherius noob, Damien op, get it dun son

  Vargus: lol he gonna die… ‘opens popcorn’… dis gonna be gud

  Damien opened his menu and scrolled to his newly acquired downloads tab. The spin2win file sat there. It was like staring down the barrel of a gun. A quick glance at the header of the chat box informed him that over ten thousand people were now waiting to see what he would do.

  The pressure was enormous, but Damien was committed. He had already agreed to help Kevin before being told there was no chance of winning. The only reason to back out now would be because he was afraid. He pondered, briefly, whether that was a good enough reason to leave Kevin hanging. The answer couldn’t have been clearer. With a focused glance and a nod, spin2win was activated. A low rumble started under his feet as the chat box squealed in delight.

  Kevin’s voice cut through the vibration. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down! Okay, you keep him busy, I’m going to buy us some time.”

  The low rumble had become a deafening roar and the entire arena shook as if in the throes of an earthquake. Damien staggered and threw his hands out for balance, trying his hardest not to fall over. He bent his knees and drew his sword, glancing around nervously. Where was the enemy? The rumbling stopped. In that moment of silence, Damien processed what Kevin had just said.

  “Kevin? What do you mean, ‘buy—'”

  Before Damien could finish his question, the ceiling exploded. A thousand fragments of rock, some bigger than Damien himself, were propelled across the arena. Many of the glowing orbs that had been the only light source were snuffed out by flying debris. A chunk the size of a fist whizzed over Damien’s head, embedding itself in the column behind him.

  The rest of the roof caved in rapidly, unable to support itself in the wake of the apocalyptic force at play. A gaping exit wound in the center of the ceiling marked the cause of the explosion. Something had hit it hard enough to pass straight through with no resistance, a shell of fire surrounding it in the fashion of a meteorite smashing through the earth’s atmosphere. It wasn’t a meteorite, though. Meteorites didn’t have health bars.

  One and a half seconds after the initial explosion, the real highlight of the show crashed into the ground, vaporizing everything in a ten-meter radius. The shockwave threw Damien back against the column and pinned him two feet off the ground, spread-eagled and helpless. As his limbs connected with the column, there was a grotesque pop. His sword arm had snapped below the elbow. Unable to grip his weapon, the blade clanged off the stone and span away out of sight.

  Stunned, Damien dropped to the floor in a heap. A third of his health bar had been depleted, and that was the good news; his ears were ringing, he’d been disarmed, and he still didn’t know what he was fighting. He looked up to find out and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  In the middle of a smoldering crater, surrounded by shards of glass where the sand had been superheated, was the most powerful enemy Damien had ever seen in this game or any other. Resting on one knee, with an obscenely large serrated blade thrust into the ground in front of him, was Toutatis: The Mad Tyrant.

  He was adorned in silver plate mail that still glowed red, except for his midriff which lay bare. The musculature of his abdomen implied that armor was not strictly necessary. Toutatis rose to his full height, dragging his sword out of the ground with one hand, before setting his sights on Damien. The god’s face may have been obscured by his helm, but Damien knew full well he was being observed.

  A red icon in the shape of a menacing eye had joined the debuffs he already recognized as Fear and Crippled Limb in his battle HUD. He focused on the eye briefly and was rewarded with the debuff’s name and description: In the Sight of the Gods - All stats reduced by 20%. Even Toutatis’s gaze held power.

  It was hard to tell from his position eating sand on the floor, but Damien reckoned Toutatis was about eight feet tall. The sword was two feet longer than that.

  Damien frantically reached behind himself with his unbroken arm, searching blindly for his backpack. As he did so, Toutatis produced a roar so unimaginably terrible that its outer edge possessed discernible form. It picked Damien up and threw him against the column he’d recently become so well acquainted with. Sand and shards of glass forced him to turn his face away.

  On the plus side, the pack he’d been searching for was now firmly wedged against his lower back. On the negative, he was at half health and the fight hadn’t even begun.

 
The chat box weighed in on Damien’s prospects:

  CactusLover: yep he gonna die

  Vargus: I told you so

  Dedpewl: SUPERHERO LANDING!!!!

  Naughtylus: @_@ glhf

  BootyliciousBarb: Hope you’re wearing your brown pants.

  Polymorpheus: pwned

  Akejfnioegnne: Hey guys come watch Sagarama every day at 8pm

  5ubzer0: You can do i- wait, never mind

  Damien was now in contact with the pack, granting him access to his inventory. He willed his only health potion into his waiting left hand and uncorked it with his teeth, pouring the bitter liquid down his throat as fast as he was able. A warmth burned in his belly before spreading to every extremity. His right arm snapped back into place and sealed. His health shot up to full. The Crippled Limb debuff disappeared, but Fear and In the Sight of the Gods remained. They were persistent effects and it would take more than a potion to be rid of them.

  The ringing in his ears stopped, only to be replaced by ringing of a more conventional kind. Kevin had decided to make a phone call and must have had it on loudspeaker for the entire stream to hear. Damien was too distracted to figure out what was happening, but a nagging voice in the back of his head insisted it was not good news. His suspicion was confirmed when the call was answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Kevin Bants from Mobius Enterprises. Am I speaking to Cassandra Arkwright?”

  There was a terse silence before Cassandra responded coldly, “It’s actually Cassandra Brades, but yes, that’s me.”

  Damien’s eyes widened. Kevin, you complete idiot. Damien was opening his mouth to convey that exact sentiment when motion from the center of the arena brought him back to virtual reality. Toutatis was spinning rapidly on the spot, his sword outstretched.

  As his speed increased, a miniature cyclone formed around him, picking up stray pebbles and sand until Toutatis was surrounded by a dense wall of twisting matter. Lightning arced impossibly from the clear sky above, striking the ground in his vicinity and throwing more sand in the air, which in turn was picked up by the whirlwind.

  When it reached full power, Toutatis flung himself toward Damien, carrying the localized tornado with him. Damien scrabbled to his feet and flung himself away as a dull clang behind him signaled Toutatis’s impact with the column.

  “I wanted to have a quick word with you about Damien, if that’s all right?”

  “Oh, well, he’s coming for dinner now. In fact, he should already be here. Would you like me to fetch him for you?”

  Damien was holding his hands over his head, waiting for the killing blow to strike him. But it never came. After a few seconds, he turned around to see why he wasn’t dead yet. Toutatis had sliced deep into the stone pillar, but now his sword was stuck.

  “No! No, that’s quite all right, Mrs. Brades. It’s actually you I was hoping to speak to.”

  Toutatis growled at Damien before turning his attention to the column, both hands grasping the hilt of his sword as he braced himself to pull it free. The red eye disappeared from Damien’s debuff list. If Damien was going to do something, this was the moment.

  “All right, so why are you calling me? Has Damien done something wrong?”

  “Not at all! Damien has been incredibly helpful, and I just wanted to let you know that you have a wonderful son.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say, but I still don’t understand why you’re calling me. Is there something I should know?”

  Damien’s priority was to retrieve his pack. He glanced down at the column where he’d left it and his heart sank. Toutatis’s left foot was planted firmly on top of it. He might as well try to pick up a mountain. Without his pack, and with his sword flown off to who knew where, Damien would have to try and make some sort of mark on this fight unarmed.

  Toutatis heaved and his serrated blade grated against the stone as the first few feet of it came free. Whatever Damien was going to do, he didn’t have long. Damien hurriedly circled behind him. Surely there must be some kind of weakness he could explo—

  That’s when he saw it. Toutatis’s extremities were all encased in armor. Every extremity, that is, except one. His greaves ended at the top of his thighs, and in between those thighs there was a prominent bulge showing through soft leather. It wasn’t particularly well detailed and Damien imagined that Toutatis was about as well endowed as an action figure, but there was only one thing it could be.

  Damien had spent years analyzing enemies for weak points. He knew an opportunity when he saw one. Without hesitation he lined himself up, took three measured paces forward and put all his weight behind his heavily armored right foot.

  Toutatis inhaled sharply and rose ever so slightly off his feet. A tiny sliver of his health bar disappeared to mark Damien’s achievement.

  Time stood still.

  Inevitably, Toutatis glared at the person responsible. The red eye debuff appeared in Damien’s status bar again.

  “Hello? Kevin?” Cassandra said. “Are you still there? Hello?”

  Damien pursed his lips. He’d done what he could, but it seemed like it was all downhill from here. If he was going to die horribly, he might as well make the most of it.

  “E-excuse me,” Damien said pointedly, struggling not to stammer, “but you’re standing on my pack. Do you mind?” Toutatis turned to look at his foot and the pack that lay under it, then back again, the red eye debuff disappearing and reappearing in Damien’s HUD.

  Damien would have laughed if not for the circumstances. He grinned up at Toutatis apologetically, the sides of his lips twitching.

  “My mom is waiting for me to come and have dinner, you see, but I’d quite like to have my pa—”

  Toutatis’s left arm blurred around in a circle, catching Damien in the side with the backhand to end all backhands. First Damien’s arm snapped. Then his ribs broke and his chest caved in. His body wrapped itself around Toutatis’s forearm as though he were made of putty. At the end of the swing, Damien’s limp body was propelled through the air.

  He was still accelerating at twenty-five meters, reached terminal velocity at fifty meters and came to an abrupt stop when he hit the wall on the other side of the arena some seventy-five meters away.

  “Kevin? Is that my son I just heard? What’s going on?”

  Kevin collected himself. “Er, yes, that was Damien. He’s actually helping me with something at the moment, and I was hopi—”

  “Oh. Oh! I see what this is. He’s playing that damn game again, isn’t he? I told him not to play until after he finished his assignments, but does he listen to me? Of course not. And now I know why he’s late for dinner. Unbelievable!”

  “Mrs. Brades, I’m very sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Please don’t blame Damien for this, he was only—”

  “It’s Miss Brades, thank you very much, and I’ll blame whoever I please. Goodbye, Kevin. Please don’t contact my son again.”

  Existence was pain. Damien’s status bar was a collection of ominous symbols. From his position encased in the arena wall, he performed a quick check and decided that at least one of them denoted internal bleeding. That would explain why his health bar, already so precariously low, was still dropping.

  He tried to free himself from the wall and stopped when his limbs screamed in protest. If he’d known how this fight was going to pan out, he’d have turned off the pain settings in the menu. They were currently set at half, which was considerably more than he felt like dealing with.

  He looked up at Toutatis just in time to watch him kick down the enormous column and retrieve his sword. The red eye appeared at the top of Damien’s status bar for the final time. The Fear debuff disappeared as Damien rolled his own eyes at the irate god.

  “Fine, don’t give me my pack back.” He paused to cough up blood, the crimson liquid spattering over the sand below him. “You didn’t have to be a dick about it.”

  “Damien, this is Kevin. I’m sorry, I called your mother
but it... it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”

  Toutatis had started spinning again, preparing to end the epic mismatch. Despite everything, Damien laughed.

  “Yeah, numbnuts, I heard the call. You haven’t done me any favors. Pull me out. I’m done. Good game well played and all that sh—”

  Beeeeeeep!

  “You’re still broadcasting live, Damien, please don’t swear. I can’t get you out. When the combat is over the Test Zone will reset and you’ll instantly be brought back to life, but you or Toutatis have to die first.”

  Lightning had started striking the ground around Toutatis again. Any moment now he would charge toward Damien and end the battle. Damien felt he had suffered quite enough for one day. He did the only thing he could do.

  “Menu.”

  Using his eyes to scroll and blinking to click since he couldn’t even move his fingers, he set the pain settings to zero. His entire body went blissfully numb.

  “You better make this up to me, Kevin. This is not how I wanted to spend my Monday night.”

  “I will, Damien, I promise. You’ve done a terrific job. I’m in your debt.”

  Toutatis lurched forward. It would all be over soon. What a relief. The edge of the blade scythed through the air, coming closer and closer with each rotation. With seconds to spare, Toutatis froze on the spot.

  A searing headache burned its way into the core of Damien’s mind and he screamed in very real pain. The edges and colors of the Test Zone blurred like a wet painting. Then it all went dark.

  Damien grabbed his head in both hands – his real, unbroken hands – and opened his eyes, still screaming. His mother was glaring down at him, one hand on her hip and the other holding his NOOB headset by her side. In his confused state, Damien wondered why the red eye wasn’t appearing in his status bar.

  It was time for a real boss battle.