by Elliot Burns
This brings me up to date. Here I am, in my kingdom stone room, wiring this. My army is ready, and I have levelled up my character. There is nothing left to do but face Henry Veik in our final battle. If I win, I’ll fix the game from the outside. If Henry wins…I am not sure he will do the same.
If anyone ever reads this apart from myself, and I sincerely hope that you don’t, then know this; Henry Veik is not to be trusted.
Jack closed the book. He felt the implications hit him like a shower of bricks on his skull. He felt dizzy from it, and he sat back on the table and steadied himself. It was so strange to read his uncle’s words; it was almost as if he could feel Alfie here with him.
His uncle’s note had confirmed what Elena had already told him. Jack was trapped here. No consoles, no commands, no menu systems. Nothing could save him now except winning the game, and to do that, he’d need to complete his kingdom stone. The only way to accomplish that, would be to defeat Lord Henry Veik.
He wondered if there was another way. Henry Veik was a real person, and he was trapped here too. Should Jack go and talk it out with him? Maybe, after all this time, Henry had come up with some way of fixing this.
Then, he remembered his uncle’s final words in the note: If anyone ever reads this apart from myself, and I sincerely hope that you don’t, then know this; Henry Veik is not to be trusted.
Henry Veik was starting to lose his minds, by all accounts. When Jack thought about it, he could understand. After all, he had a fear of being trapped in small spaces, and he knew how irrational your fears could make you. If Henry had been starting to lose it back then, then how bad would he be now? After all, Uncle Alfie must have been hit by the car shortly after leaving the game. Then, he’d been in a coma. That meant that Henry had been trapped in the game all this time!
He couldn’t understand how this had happened. It didn’t seem to make sense. In the storage unit, there had only been one capsule. Was Henry’s capsule somewhere else? In another storage unit, maybe? It didn’t matter now. The real world was gone, and there was only one thing Jack could do; defeat Henry, complete his kingdom stone, and get the hell out of Royaume.
He left the kingdom stone room via the twisting staircase. After a few minutes of climbing that made him regret cancelling his gym membership, he found himself back on the first floor of the castle. Elena and Mav were waiting for him.
“Are you okay, my lord?” said Elena.
Mav walked over to him and patted him on the back. “Well done, lad. You had me clenching my bumhole for a second there. I thought you were going to be atronarch gruel, but you figured it out. Not bad for a beginner.”
“I don’t know if you noticed,” said Jack, “But I died. I give myself B for effort, D for execution.”
“So what? You came back.”
“I take it you haven’t died before, then? It’s not pleasant.”
“I’ve had hangovers that are worse. Here, have some of this. It should clear your head a little and ease the sting.”
Mav passed Jack a vial of purple-colored liquid. Jack unscrewed the cork. It smelled of berries. “Go ahead, drink it.”
“I need to get out of here, Elena. I’m worried about my mum. I need to see her.”
Elena looked at him sadly. “There is no way back, Lord. Not until you have completed your kingdom stone.”
“I don’t even have an army, and I can’t fight for shit. How am I supposed to do that?”
“This is what you must learn.”
“Damn it,” said Jack.
“I’m sorry. I wish there were another way, but I’ll be with you, Lord,” said Elena.
Mav folded his arms. “I’ll stick around too. For a cut of the loot. Ten percent is all I ask, and you’re robbing me blind by accepting it.”
“That’s way too much,” said Elena.
“Okay – you’ve twisted my arm to eight percent. But when I’ve got enough to pay my son’s debt, I’m leaving. I have things to do.”
“Like what? Robbing more tombs?”
“Hey, I’m good for more than that. I’ve got skills that the young lord would find invaluable. They’re worth much more than a measly cut of flek, but I’m offering them at a bargain price. I can make bombs, I’m good with a sword, and I can handle myself in a dungeon.” He looked at Jack. “Besides, I’m much more use than her.”
Elena glared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Look, I wasn’t gonna say anything. I really didn’t want to embarrass you in front of our grand lordship, and I was going to keep it to myself. But since you attacked my career, I feel it’s only right he knows about yours.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack.
“I heard that the ice queen here didn’t graduate from the Tacher Halls with as many loops as most tachers.”
Jack was about to speak when he glanced at Elena. His breath caught in his throat.
For the briefest of seconds, her expression had changed. No, not just her expression, but her whole face. Her mouth and nose seemed to transform in front of him. They morphed like clay until her face wasn’t that of a woman, but instead a monster with a red face and an oblong head. Tentacles trailed off at the end where her hair should have been. Within a millisecond the image was gone, and Elena looked herself again.
The transformation happened so fast that Jack wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen it, or if his mind was playing tricks. Mav didn’t seem to have noticed. He felt like his plank of sanity had just wobbled beneath him. Should he say something? Now wasn’t the time to push it, he sensed. Elena took a step away from them, seething with anger, and tried to control herself. She wouldn’t want to talk about whatever this was with Mav present, and right now Jack had more pressing matters.
“We need to talk about you, Mav. Why were you here before I arrived? Why you were ‘liberating’ things?”
“I’m just a thief, alright? Nothing more to it than that. I needed flek and I thought there’s be easy pickings here.”
“No, you’re not telling me the truth. I can tell.”
He saw that Mav’s hands were shaking. Mav shoved them deep into his pockets. Jack swore he heard the tinkling of crystal. If Mav had managed to steal a crystal memory right in front of his and Elena’s eyes, then he was a talented thief indeed.
“I told you, I needed the flek. Ask Elena – she’ll confirm that I’m just your regular old, good-for-nothing thief.”
“Nothing would please me more than to label you as such, but the Lord is right. I don’t trust you. You don’t have any honor.”
Mav grimaced. “Honor? That’s a dirty word. Honor is for those with flek flowing out of their arses. People like me can’t afford it. Honor? Spit.”
“Did you just say ‘spit’ instead of actually spitting?” asked Jack.
“Spitting is a dirty habit,” said Mav. “so I say ‘spit’, rather than actually spitting.”
“Either tell me what your deal is,” said Jack, “or get the hell out of the castle. I’m assuming there’s a reason you’re so keen to stick around, so unless you’re honest with me, your ass is out.”
“Fine, for fuck’s sake” said Mav. He turned away for a few seconds as if gathering himself. “I’ve got a boy. Well, I call him a boy, but he’s twenty-eight now. Old enough that he’s got a family of his own, but the silly bastard got himself indebted to a lord. Like father like son, eh? Coyne’s sure know how to rack up debts.”
Debt was a touchy subject for Jack, since Mum had gotten herself into debt more times than he could count. Whenever he heard that someone owed money for spending more than they had earned, he felt a mixture of sympathy and anger. “How did your son get into debt?” he asked.
“He took a big bloody patch of land from Lord Veik on the condition that he would pay him back with interest on crops. Problem was, they found that the land was riddled with famigers. You know, the little bastards that eat every crop they see? Now the poor sod owns land he can’t farm, and Lord Veik has him by
balls.”
“And you’ve taken it upon yourself to pay his debts? Just like that, out of your generous nature?” asked Elena.
“I wasn’t exactly around much. From when he was suckling on his mum’s tit up to when he drank his first beer, I must have seen him a handful of times, at most. I’m a selfish fucker, I know. I’ve got a bit more sense now, and I want to make amends. He won’t speak to me, so I’m hoping that sending enough flek his way will do my talking for me.”
“You thought you’d steal from one lord to pay another?” said Elena.
“Some flek’s easier to get than others. I’m not privy to the Tacher’s special signs; I had no idea Jack was coming.”
Elena looked at Jack. “What do you think, Lord? Do you want Mav to stay?”
He didn’t know what to think. Mav had never hidden the fact he was a thief. At least he was upfront about that. Something deep inside told him that he shouldn’t dismiss the man just yet. That he might need him.
When he looked at Mav and Elena, he realized something; maybe he wasn’t so alone after all. The thief and the guide might not have been real, but they appeared so, as far as he could tell. His uncle’s words were lovingly woven into their personalities and their backstories. In that small way, it was like his uncle was here with him.
“You guys have helped me so far, and I’m sure I’ll be leaning on you again. You need to learn to be friends, though. I insist on it.”
“Fine,” huffed Mav. He offered his hand to Elena. The tacher took it, and they shook. The physical contact looked awkward for both of them.
“Not just her,” said Jack.
“What?”
“Bluntfang too. You were mean to him. Make friends.”
“You have to be pulling my goat.”
“Make friends with Bluntfang,” said Jack, in a firmer voice.
Mav cautiously reached out and stroked Bluntfang’s head. The expression on his face made it seem like he was petting a cactus. Bluntfang, for his part, seemed happy with the contact.
“Happy now?” said Mav. “Or do you want me to go and kiss all the sheep in the fields too?”
“I’ll save them the embarrassment. I guess that it’s time I got started, if I’m ever going to get out of here. Elena, can you show me how to build stuff?”
Elena smiled as if she was happy to receive orders. “Certainly, my lord.
Chapter Seven
She led them out of the oval-window room and down a tight passageway. The castle had a chalky smell to it like stone that had gotten wet, and Jack wondered if the old building had a case of damp. A few small windows were cut into the stone walls. Through them, he saw the darkening Holuum sky. The fading light gave the halls with a gloomy feel. A sinister wind blew through holes that Jack couldn’t see. It sounded a little like someone was whistling.
Suddenly, Jack felt Mav brush up against him. Mav moved his hand ever so lightly, and Jack felt something drop into his coat pocket. Jack put his hand in his pocket and felt the sharp edges of what seemed to be a gem of some sort.
Mav leaned in close to him and spoke in a whisper, glancing at Elena to make sure she didn’t hear. “Watch this when you’re alone,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A crystal memory. When you hold it, it will play a memory in your head.”
Jack didn’t have time to reply, because ahead of them, Elena stopped. “Here,” she said, gesturing toward a rusted metal door next to her. “This, Lord, is where you will build your kingdom.”
With a flourish that made the long sleeves of her robe bounce, she pushed open the door. When Jack poked his head through it, he didn’t see a mighty empire-building chamber. Instead, this was a giant oval-shaped room that was pitch black and smelled of mold.
“Are you sure this is the place?” he asked.
Elena walked into the room. Her footsteps echoed and made it sound like a darkened auditorium. She touched a glowing oval outline on the other side of the door. Sparks lit up on the wall. One by one, with a whoosh of gas, torches began to flicker into orange glows. The flames of the torches were mint green at the base.
“It is powered by alchemy,” explained Elena. “Lord Sutton Halberd, centuries ago when the castle was built, paid an alchemist to install this torch system. The workings of it are beyond me.”
“And here was I thinking that the tachers were masters of the universe and knew everything,” said Mav.
When the torches completed their relay of ignition, Jack finally saw the room for what it was. It was shaped like an egg, and the cavernous ceiling must have been what made sounds echo so much. In the centre, there was an oak table long enough for two giants to play snooker. It seemed solid at first glance but when Jack walked toward it, he noticed something peculiar. Floating an inch above the table, there was a flat layer of silver liquid. It gave him the impression that someone had boiled a thousand silver spoons and poured the gloopy mess out. It hovered over the table surface in a perfect rectangle.
The ceiling was twenty feet above. It looked to form a dome at first, but Jack realized that this was just an effect, and that a talented painter had decorated it to give the appearance of a dome. The illusion was so real that Jack swore the room had taken on an impossible geometry. In the north-west corner there was a spiral staircase made of thick black steel. The metal didn’t match the overall aesthetic of the room, but Jack noticed markings that indicated the stairs had been replaced at some point. Maybe they used to be made of wood, and like everything in this castle, the claws of time had scratched it.
The staircase led up to a second-floor platform that ran in a circumference around the room, protected at the edges by guard rails. It seemed to be a viewing platform of some sort, yet it only looked out onto the giant table. Rows of bookshelves lined the platform walls. The books covered all manner of subjects from military strategy to town planning. To his left, there was a window that looked out onto Royaume and showed his lands in all their (insignificant) glory. He saw an expanse of brooding woods not too far from Castle Halberd.
“This is where you’ll build your empire,” said Elena. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and select a book whilst you get used to things.”
She left Jack and Mav and crossed over to the spiral staircase. Her boots clanged on the metal as the walked up it. She started walking along the platform and studying each book on the shelves lining it. As she read the titles, she started speaking allowed.
“Read it, read it, read it, read it…hell’s, is there nothing here I haven’t read already?”
At one end of the table was a vertical screen made of silver liquid. In front of the screen was a chair. It looked like it had been designed by a demented dentist. It was comprised of an unforgiving dark wood seat, and armrests with leather straps across them. He could imagine tormentors of the Spanish Inquisition dragging a screaming heretic over to it.
“Take a seat, Lord,” called Elena, from the platform. “That is your Emperium chair.”
He walked around the Emperium chair, studying it from all angles. He didn’t know what he was looking for; bloodstains dried to the wood, maybe? Scratch marks from someone trying to escape? He knew he was being stupid. If Elena wanted him dead, she could have done it by now. She was his assigned guide, and he needed to trust her. He carefully lowered himself into the seat. The wood felt softer on his buttocks than it looked. It had a slight bounce to it, whilst being sturdy enough to support his posture.
“Lean your head back, Jack” said Elena.
“Whatever you say. I’m just here for a checkup, though – no drilling.”
He leaned back so that his head touched the wood. Before he could say anything, he heard a ringing sound in his head, and then everything in the room turned black.
“Elena?” he asked, worried.
“Patience is a virtue,” shouted Elena. Then, she carried on looking at the books. “read it, read it, read it, read it….”
His vision started to return t
o him, and he saw the room again. The table was in front of him. Mav waited at the side, while Elena was on the platform above him, next to the bookshelves. The silver layer of liquid rotated so that it was vertical, facing him. He realized that it was a screen of some sort. The screen started to change. The silver liquid bubbled and made glopping sounds. It started to flow counterclockwise, getting faster and faster until it resembled a molten whirlpool. Round and round it went, and Jack found he had to stop watching or risk getting dizzy. Just as the whirlpool became too quick for his eyes to follow, it stopped spinning.