by Elliot Burns
“Did you find anything good down there?” asked the man. “We can cut a deal.”
He guessed that as well as opening his character screen, touching the kingdom stone had also run some kind of language command, allowing him to understand the man. He didn’t have time to dwell on it right now. Instead, he ran back up the staircase until he saw light at the top, where a rush of chilly air hit him.
Once he was back in the room with the oval window, he saw a woman stood in the centre of it. The corpses of four beasts lay around her. They were wolves of some sort. They must have been the source of the noises that he’d heard earlier, but their growling days were over. Next to her, rubbing its muzzle up and down her waist, was a fearsome animal. It was bigger than a St. Bernard dog, with a long neck, a pointed face, and two tentacle-like antennae on its head.
The woman reminded him of a praying mantis, with her long, gangly limbs and thin waist. She seemed just as deadly as a mantis; she didn’t have any weapons in her hands, yet she’d taken out a pack of wolves by herself. Certain aspects of the way she looked reminded him of his friend Sarah; her rust-colored hair, and her face that was so pale she could have passed for a vampire. She had milky blue eyes, and she wore an expression so stern that Jack wondered if he’d done something wrong, despite having only just met her. Her name floated above her head.
Elena A. Gaard
Jack heard footsteps behind him. As they became louder, he heard the old man muttering to himself, “Fucking castles with their secret fucking doors and their hallways…” The man reached the opening and stepped into the room. He was going to say something, when he noticed Elena. His expression changed. He had a look of recognition in his face, but he didn’t seem happy. Elena returned his glare.
“You…” they both said.
The old man also had a name floating about his head, and his was Mav Coyne.
Elena looked at Mav, then at Jack. “Lord Halberd,” she said. “You must ready a cell in the dungeon for this man.”
“Why? How do you know my name?” Jack said. Then, another question occurred to him. “And where’s the dungeon?”
“This man is a thief,” she said.
“I’m not a thief,” said the man. “I’m a loot liberator.”
“You guys are weird. Can either of you tell me where I am? Is there a newbie town around here, or something? Or someone who can access the game menu for me?” asked Jack.
Elena looked at him strangely. “This is your castle, Lord.”
“Bloody hell, you’re Lord Halberd?” said Mav. “I should have realized by the way you opened that door on your first try. They say only the owner of the castle can open it. You could have said something, you know.”
Elena took big strides across the room. When she stood near Jack, she was half a foot taller than him. She wore a white, tight, robe with a hood. Eight metal loops were sewn into random parts of her attire, and they rattled when she moved.
“Forgive me,” she said, “I haven’t introduced myself. I am Elena. I am your game guide.” She stuck her hand out toward Jack, and he saw that it was covered in blood.
“Err, Elena, you have blood on your hand.”
“Whoops! That’s no way to treat a lord, is it?” She slapped her forehead comically, smearing the blood over her skin. Then, she wiped her hands on her clothes, before finally offering him a clean handshake.
“Nice to meet you,” said Jack, returning the handshake. “Can you explain what’s going on here? This is a game, but is there a menu somewhere? Or maybe you don’t know it’s a game, if they programmed you to think it’s real. I’m waffling here. I need a little guidance, Elena.”
“Have you visited your kingdom stone?” asked Elena.
“I saw it,” he said. “But it hasn’t exactly illuminated things for me. Elena, if you’re my in-game guide, can you answer a few questions for me?”
“Of course.”
“Where’s the damn menu? Why aren’t any of the usual escape commands working?
“Your kingdom Stone is your menu, Jack.”
“But it seemed to be broken. There was a piece of it missing. It’ll only open my character screen, and nothing else.”
“That is true.”
“Is there a way to fix it? A command console, or something?”
“There is a way, my lord. I believe that Lord Alfie left a document behind.”
“Where?”
“Near the kingdom stone,” said Elena.
“The book on the table, you mean? I better go get it.” Then, he looked at Mav. “Mav, you kept using a phrase before I touched the kingdom stone. Asano tarum, or something like that. What does it mean?”
“It means, and you’ll have to forgive my rough translation, ‘You are a cock-brained donkey arse.’”
“Figures,” said Jack, unsure what else he had expected.
He was about to go back to the kingdom stone room, when something caught his eye. He crossed the room and walked to the oval window. He looked out of it, to see the game landscape spread before him. As he stared out of the window, something caught his attention. It was something out west, right along the dirt path he’d taken to get to the castle.
It couldn’t be. A person was there, in the exact spot where Jack had first entered this strange place. They were too far away for him to look at in detail, but he could see that they were trying to get off the ground. Had someone from back home entered the game? He had to find out.
Chapter Four
Lord Henry Veik’s Throne Room, 50 Miles North of Lord Halberd’s Lands
The window in his throne room looked out over the old hangman’s square, and beyond that were the stone-built shops and houses of the town. Hangings were a spectacle back when the square was still being used. A man would stand on a platform in the centre, quivering while the rest of the peasantry watched. They’d shout things, tell the executioner to hurry up, and yell insults at the condemned man. That was the backstory Alfie had written for this dreary little town, at least. Backstory had always been Alfie’s job. Henry was the programmer who took care of most of the technical aspects, while Alfie got busy with his stories.
Henry sat cross-legged on his throne while one of his peasants, a wiry man with a dirty face, stood before him. Over to the far right of his throne room, there was a scale replica model of a castle that Henry had made using crystal glasses, which were the most expensive kind in the game. He was two glasses away from finishing the final tower, and then it would be done. The hitch was that he’d run out of glasses, and he had been waiting on the edge of his seat for Bruce to scour the lands and find him some more. In a weird way, he wanted to complete his castle model more than anything. That was what boredom did to you.
Maybe it was what giving up did to you, too. Henry had always been a motivated person. He was career-focused, and he never had time for games; for playing them, at least. He was a programmer after all, and he had to make games for a living. Still, he used to be a driven person. He’d been in here so long now that it seemed unlikely he’d ever get out. He’d tried everything, and nothing worked. Now, his drive had left him, and he was content to do anything to pass the time.
“Beg yer pardon, lord,” said the peasant, below Henry. “But we were wonderin’ if you could…” The man stopped talking, as if his fear had made the words disappear from his mind. He clenched his fists, but not in anger; it was probably all he could do to stop them shaking.
“Come on,” said Henry, in a calm voice. “Come out with it. I don’t bite.”
“Well,” said the peasant, scratching his head. “We were all wonderin’ if you could…maybe just for a while…lower our taxes?”
Henry smiled. “Why didn’t you just say so?” He stood up from his throne and walked down the three steps, until he stood next to the man. He could smell the sweat from his armpits. Why did we make the game so damn realistic? he thought.
He put his right arm across the man’s shoulders. “It’s like this,” he said. “I
raise taxes to pay for my soldiers. And do you know why?”
“To protect us?”
Henry shook his head. “So that if a chance ever comes, I can escape. That, my smelly friend, means more to me than your crops. Crops that, by the way, after years of growing, you still can’t seem to bring to a full harvest. And your carrots taste like crap, too.”
“But Lord-”
Henry raised his finger and put it against the man’s lips, quietening him. Then, he moved away a step. He reached to his side and drew his sword from his sheath. The peasant’s eyes widened. Before he could react, Henry thrust the sword forward, sticking it straight through the man’s belly. He twisted it until the man screamed in pain. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth. Henry raised his foot, and then kicked the man away, freeing his blade.
2% EXP gained!
[78% until level 56]
The peasant lay dead on the marble floor. Blood gushed from the wound in his stomach, and it dribbled out onto the marble and joined the pool of blood that had already been there before the peasant had even entered the room. Henry grabbed the man by the arms and dragged him across the floor, then added his body to the growing pile of dead men, women and children in the corner of the throne room. He looked at his corpse pile as the sunlight shone through the window and cast its rays onto their lifeless forms. It was at that point that he wondered exactly just how crazy he had become since he had been trapped in the game.
It wasn’t that he liked the violence. Ask anyone in the real world, and they’d tell you that Henry Veik was a swell guy. He was the kind you’d go and have a beer with and shoot the shit, and also the kind who could be sensitive when he needed to be. After all, hadn’t Kit Shearer trusted him enough to tell him that he thought he might be gay? Henry hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone, and when Kit finally came out to the world, he bought Henry a new watch as a present for helping him to do it.
Here in Royaume, though, things were getting to him. After losing the battle to Alfie, he’d gone through the stages of grief, cycling through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, before hitting on the final one; acceptance. This was acceptance of the fact that everything had gone wrong, that he and Alfie had created a dangerous game, and that in their battle to escape it, Alfie had won. Now, after being stuck here so long, Henry had hit a new, sixth stage of grief; boredom. To satisfy this, he’d tried everything. He’d done everything, and that included every woman in his damn town, even Nana Jones. Finally, he’d found a glimmer of amazement in abusing the NPCs. They were digital, after all, so it wasn’t really all that wrong to kill them and stuff, was it?
As he pondered this, the doors of his throne room opened. A man came striding through them. He was big, but not in a muscular sense. He wasn’t overweight, either. He was strong enough to take on most men, but still had a decent amount of athleticism. Despite his physical advantages, he rarely used them. This man preferred to scheme his way to getting what he wanted, and that made him one of Henry’s favorite NPCs.
The man crossed the room until he stood over the man on the floor. Looking at Henry, he gave a deep bow. He smiled at him. “My Lord,” he said, bowing.
Bruce Frier was the kind of man who drew the attention of all the women in the keep when he walked through it. No sooner was their attention drawn, then they would get a rebuke from their husbands or fathers, who would tell them not to stare at such a dangerous man. He had a handsome face, but he didn’t give a damn about his appearance. This showed in his greasy hair, naturally curled but never styled. His eyes had an open and honest look that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The weirdest thing about him was that he had the smallest lips of any man that Henry had ever met.
“Bruce,” said Henry. “Please tell me you’ve found more glasses.”
Like a magician trying to impress a child, Bruce pulled his hand from behind his back to reveal two crystal glasses. The sunlight hit them and made a rainbow of colors shine from them. “Would I disappoint my favorite lord?” he said.
“Bruce, I could kiss you. Thank you.”
“Please don’t. That’s not all, Lord,” said Bruce.
“Oh?”
“Have you checked your kingdom stone lately?” asked Bruce.
“What’s the point?” said Henry. Every time he thought of his kingdom stone, he thought of the missing pieces, and then he thought of Alfie. That made his chest tighten with anger.
“You might want to go check it,” said Bruce. Then, he looked at the corner of the room where the peasant corpses rotted. Flies buzzed around them. “My, what an impressive pile of bodies. Someone’s been busy today, haven’t they?”
Ignoring him, Veik walked forward two steps, until he stood next to one particular part of the stone floor. It looked like all the rest at first, but when he crouched and touched it with his hand, a handle appeared in the centre. He opened this to reveal a staircase, which he followed down into his kingdom stone room.
Ever since losing to Alfie, Henry’s kingdom stone had been half-empty. After defeating him, Alfie had taken a piece of Henry’s stone so that he could complete his own, which left Henry with only two pieces. If this were a four-player game it wouldn’t have been a problem, since Henry could have defeated the other two players to complete his kingdom stone. Then again, if the whole system hadn’t suffered a catastrophic error, he could have just opened a menu and left the game.
This time, rather than looking at a half-empty kingdom stone, he stared in amazement at his stone, which had three pieces. Only one of them was missing now. He was so shocked that his mouth went dry, and his throat felt like sandpaper. He rubbed his eyes, believing it was a mirage, or the onset of an even greater, hallucinatory, madness.
A new piece had been added to his stone, so that it had three pieces again. This could mean only one thing; the game had reset. There were only two ways for a game to reset. One was if someone had reset it from the outside. That had been the original plan, though Alfie had been gone a long time now, and he still hadn’t done anything. Henry didn’t know what the hell he was playing at in the real-world, but Alfie had left him here to rot.
The other way the game could reset was if a new player had entered it. That would reset Veik’s kingdom stone, and it would reset his kingdom, too. His soldier count would go back to zero, his town would become a tiny village again, and his population would plummet back down twenty-eight.
Well, there was one way to test it. With excitement flooding through him, he ran out of the room. He ran up the steps like a child, leaping two and three steps at a time. When he got to the top, Bruce was waiting.
“The glasses for your model,” he said, holding out the glasses to him.
Henry took the glasses from him. “To hell with it,” he said, and threw them at his shining glass castle model. One the glasses smashed into it, the whole structure wobbled and then shattered. Glasses crashed to the floor and then smashed into hundreds of pieces.
He ran over to the window and looked out to Hangman’s Square. There were still houses there, but there were less of them now. Most of the shops were gone too, with no sign of the blacksmith, apothecary or weapon master. The town had changed. Next, he tapped his chest and brought up his character screen. His breath left him when he saw that his level had gone back to zero. That settled it. That bloody settled it! The game was back in play.
Henry’s heart pounded. This all meant that a new player had entered the game. He had started to think that he would be trapped here forever, but by some miracle, he had been given a second chance. This time, he wouldn’t rush into battle like a fool. He’d play a much clever, more patient game. He’d toy with his new rival, and he’d slowly destroy them.
“Bruce,” he said. “Is it Alfie? Is he back?”
Bruce shook his head. “My ratters tell me it was someone younger. A teenager.”
“But how would anyone else even get here? It doesn’t matter. This couldn’t possibly have gone any better for me. This ne
w player, whoever it is, won’t have the same knowledge of the game as Alfie did. I’ll crush him once I build my army back up.”
Now, when he looked at the corpse pile in the corner of the room, he felt a little sick. Perhaps now that he had a glimmer of hope of returning home, his head was beginning to straighten itself out. “Bruce, have the dead bodies taken out of here,” he said. “And then it’s time to build up my army again. We’ve got a kingdom stone to complete.”
Chapter Five
Jack was almost out of the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Elena in front of him. “This isn’t what you think it is,” she said.
“There’s somebody out there! I need to go and see who it is,” said Jack.
“It’s just a-”