by A. J. Markam
And you weren’t just limited to regular arrows. You could gradually unlock a whole cornucopia of crazy weapons, sort of like Hawkeye in The Avengers. Electrical arrows that stunned opponents. Poisoned arrows that slowly killed them over time. Arrows with ropes attached to them so you could scale high walls. Arrows that released a liquid-nitrogen-like substance that could freeze armor and allow you to shatter it with a second shot. And, yes, explosive-tipped arrows.
I knew all of this because one of my favorite characters before I took the job at Westek was a Level 55 Hunter, and I had amassed a pretty badass armory of trick shots. But my explosive arrows weren’t capable of blowing up anything bigger than an enemy’s unprotected head.
Which meant that the guy chasing me was probably substantially higher than Level 55.
Which fucking SUCKED. Players didn’t do well against way higher levels. Not unless they had a whole army of demon pirates and frost elves helping them out.
I was contemplating what the hell I should do when I heard a voice call out from the jungle.
“Do you have it?”
22
The voice was a deep, rumbling bass. It had a slight accent that sounded European, and the words were very precisely enunciated.
I sat there frowning and wondering, What the hell?!
Then the voice spoke again.
“Do you have it.”
A slight change in pronunciation – less of a question now, more of a statement.
“Are you talking to me?” I shouted back without looking around the stone I was hiding behind.
“Do you have it.”
Another minor change in delivery.
“Have what?!” I yelled back. “And why the fuck are you attacking us?!”
The speaker ignored my question. “Do you… have it.”
“Have WHAT?!”
“Do you HAVE it.”
Ordinarily I would’ve been annoyed as fuck by some asshole repeating the same sentence over and over again. But when you knew that the person behind the voice had blown lots of shit up, one-shotted a good friend, and sunk two inches of razor-sharp steel into your shoulder, annoyance gave way to creeping terror.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I shouted.
“Do… you have it.”
This whole interaction seemed oddly familiar – like a memory of a nightmare from a long time ago – but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“No, I don’t have it!” I yelled, hoping to change things up, maybe provoke a different response.
No such luck.
“Do you have IT.”
“I told you no!”
“Do you have it.”
“NO, motherfucker, NO! I already told you that!”
I racked my brain for why this felt so familiar.
For some reason I kept expecting it to be a different voice – one with a German accent. But why?
Then from out of my subconscious emerged the whine of a dentist drill, and suddenly I knew.
Marathon Man.
It was an old movie with a 20-something Dustin Hoffman as the hero. The villain is a Nazi dentist who pulled the gold crowns from Jewish prisoners’ teeth in Auschwitz, then went into hiding in South America after World War II. He travels to New York decades later because his brother has died and left behind a fortune in a safety deposit box. The Nazi tortures Hoffman by drilling into a live tooth because he wants to know if the diamonds can be retrieved safely, or if the FBI is lying in wait for him. The entire time he’s tormenting Hoffman, he asks only one question:
Is it safe?
This entire scenario was obviously patterned after that.
But why? I didn’t know about any diamonds.
When I didn’t answer, the voice asked again, “Do you have it?”
The Marathon Man reference reminded me that whoever the fuck was chasing me was just a character in a game, written by a bunch of game programmers cribbing from an old movie.
Instead of being frightened, I got pissed off.
“Yeah – yeah, I have it!” I yelled. “Come and get it, asshole!”
I heard a rustling in the underbrush.
YES.
If he came out of hiding, maybe I could dive from behind my cover, target him, and turn this into a real fight.
“Do you have it.”
“Yeah, it’s right here – all ten inches of it, and it’s going up your ass! Come here and bend over!”
All of that was bravado. I was psyching myself up to leave my cover so I could attack him.
Plus I had nowhere near ten inches.
The voice sounded amused. “Do you have it.”
I heard more rustling in the brush, roughly seven o’clock to my position.
This was it.
No more hiding. No more listening to stupid questions.
On three: one, two – THREE!
I dove out from behind the rock, ready to Soul Suck the bastard –
THHHP –
THOCK.
An arrow slammed into my shoulder before I got two steps.
The impact spun me around, and I immediately collapsed onto my back.
As soon as I got hit, I gasped in pain. Even at 50% sensory levels, it was agonizing – though the arrow had only shaved off 10% of my hit points.
I hadn’t even gotten a look at my attacker yet, but I knew he was still out there, so I forced myself up to a sitting position –
THHHP –
THOCK.
Another arrow, this time to my gut.
Another 20% gone.
I was down to 30% Health.
I screamed in agony, but managed to stay propped up on my elbows to see who the hell was shooting at me.
I almost wished I hadn’t.
23
A hulking figure at least nine feet tall emerged from the jungle. It was a Hunter, all right. I knew that because it was carrying a bow, with another arrow nocked and pointed right at me.
But nothing else about him looked like any other Hunter I had ever seen.
He was clad all in black armor – leather, I was assuming, because hunters couldn’t use chain mail or plate in OtherWorld. It restricted their movements and slowed them down too much.
But the armor was crafted exactly like plate. It looked like somebody in the 21st century had used an elaborate suit of samurai armor as a template, then used precision instruments to cut greaves and gauntlets and joints out of hard, black leather, so that they would all fit together like puzzle pieces. The way that everything overlapped looked almost insect-like. Organic. Like it was an outgrowth of his body rather than a suit.
The only exception was the helmet, which resembled something out of science fiction. In fact, it looked like it had been patterned on Darth Vader’s. It was wider, though: the flaring black helmet extended past the Hunter’s collarbones and covered almost half of his broad shoulders. The facemask was similar to Vader’s, although instead of a triangular grate there was a bulbous oval that covered his nose, mouth, and chin. The glass oval eyepieces were slanted, so that it looked like he was squinting derisively.
Over the top of his shoulder I saw a quiver filled with dozens upon dozens of arrows. There were darts secured to his forearms, strapped to his gauntlets. Multiple bags and knives dangled from his belt, including one almost as big as a short sword.
But most terrifying of all was the collection of skulls, which hung on silver chains pulled tight across his chest. Unlike orcs I had seen, who let the flesh decay from their vanquished enemies’ heads, these skulls were all boiled clean and bleached pure white. There were multiple races, all of them missing lower mandibles. The squat, wide skull of a dwarf. The elongated, thin cheekbones of an elf. A Neanderthal-looking orc. Several I wasn’t sure what they were, but I noticed one with horns sprouting from its forehead.
On more than half of the heads, there were crowns bolted into the bone. Gold and silver with precious stones affixed.
There was a scene in the mo
vie 300 where an emissary comes to see Leonidas to pressure Sparta into surrendering to the Persian king Xerxes. As a form of intimidation, the messenger carries a chain with skulls wearing crowns – all the kings that the Persian Empire had destroyed.
That’s basically what this guy was wearing, except his barrel chest was so huge that the skulls almost looked like toys – even the orc’s.
He didn’t really need them for intimidation purposes, though. For any regular player in the game, checking out his stats would suffice.
A Level 89 Hunter. 975,000 hit points.
Jesus Christ, I’m fucked.
He was a living, walking nightmare – and he was advancing towards me with an arrow pointed right at my head.
Actually, my mistake – three arrows nocked on three different strings. One of the abilities of higher-level Hunters was that they could fire three arrows at once, at either the same person or three different targets. Not realistic in the real world, but this was OtherWorld. Earth logic didn’t always apply.
And then he said the magic words.
“Do you have it?”
“Yeah,” I snarled as I threw up my hands to cast a spell, “right h– ”
THOCK THOCK THOCK.
Three arrows slammed into me – one in each shoulder, another in my gut – and knocked me backwards to the ground. I had just started Soul Suck, but the brutality of the attack ended my spell before it began.
I was down to 12% Health.
A shadow passed over my face, and the Hunter knelt down next to me. There was a metallic schink sound, and a glimmering Bowie knife the length of my arm pointed in my face.
The Hunter began to trace my skin almost lovingly, the tip of the knife scraping across my skin.
“Do you have it?” he asked in a rumbling whisper.
I stared up at him, gritting my teeth against the pain. “Who… who are you?”
“I am all of your bad choices come back to haunt you.”
He had a Spanish accent. I could hear it now that he’d said something other than the same four words over and over again.
Suddenly it hit me where I recognized the voice from.
No Country For Old Men.
The game designers had patterned this guy after one of the scariest motherfuckers in all of cinema: the dead-eyed killer Anton Chigurh, played by the Spanish actor Javier Bardem.
First a Nazi dentist, now a sociopathic bounty hunter.
Bounty hunter –
SHIT.
That was when I finally figured it out. I was an idiot for not putting it all together earlier.
I closed my eyes and grimaced. “Varkus.”
“Yes,” the voice rumbled.
“You’re a bounty hunter.”
“I am the bounty hunter, so far as you are concerned.”
“What are you? An orc?”
Other than actual giants, only an orc could be that massive and still look humanoid. Ursines and some other races were bigger, but the proportions were different.
“You do not need to know that. You only need to know that I am Suffering and Pain personified. My name is Shyvock. I tell you this so that you can scream it as I tear your limbs off one by one.”
Shyvock. Like Shylock, the loan shark who demanded his pound of flesh.
I was facing down a Shakespearean nightmare, as well.
“Unless,” the Hunter continued, “you answer the question correctly. And so I ask again: do you have it?”
“The 4000 gold,” I muttered.
“Actually, the day you fled Exardus, the sum owed was 4386. However, in order to pay for my services, and as an extra penalty for leaving without paying your debt, the fee is now 10,000 gold. Do you have it?”
I groaned in despair.
“There’s no way I can ever pay that off! I couldn’t even pay the 4000, how am I going to – ”
“That is not my concern,” the Hunter interrupted. “All I want to know is, do you have it?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Gooooood,” Shyvock drawled, and I could hear the smile behind his mask. “I was concerned you might be able to pay, and I would not be able to have my… fun.”
My skin crawled.
“Varkus told me you are a warlock, and that you resurrect after every death.”
“No,” I lied.
WHAM!
A fist the size of a bowling ball slammed into my face, breaking my nose. I could hear the crack! vibrating inside my head as pain exploded through my face.
9% Health.
“I will ask you again,” Shyvock said as I howled in pain, “and this time I would appreciate it if you do not lie to me. You are a warlock, and you resurrect after every death. Correct?”
“Y-yes,” I gasped.
“Good. My instructions were to kill you 300 times, then deliver you to Varkus. I am looking forward to it, for I have many, many ways of killing people, and I have not been able to practice for some time now. But first I must deliver you to a graveyard, so that you cannot escape. As a gift, I will give you the choice of your first death. One: flaying you alive. Two: bending your knees and elbows completely backwards, then breaking every other joint in your body until you expire from the pain. Three: disembowelment. You decide. We have a long journey ahead of us, so you have plenty of time to think about it.”
He reached down, grabbed me by my shirt, and started to hoist me up –
An electric TZZZAP! ripped through the air, and a ray of violet light struck Shyvock in the shoulder.
Alaria!
I looked over and saw her standing 100 feet away at the corner of the temple, her arm extended and her palm smoking from the just-fired bolt of energy.
Shyvock’s cry of pain sounded like a lion roaring. “ARRRRHHH!”
The blast didn’t exactly cripple him, but it knocked 2% off his total hit points – way more than I was expecting.
But more than anything, the attack just pissed him off.
Shyvock dropped me, stood up, and pulled an arrow from his quiver –
That was when I hit him with Soul Suck.
Beautiful, life-giving Health poured back into my body. I could literally feel myself coming alive again.
Great for me, but not so damaging to him. I drained less than half a percentage of his hit points – but at least now he wouldn’t be able to kill me with one kick to the head.
I didn’t waste the distraction that Alaria had provided for me, either. As I cast the spell, I kicked with my feet and scooted backwards across the grass, putting at least a few extra feet between me and the Hunter.
Another violet blast hit Shyvock on his chest, shaving off more hit points and knocking him slightly off balance – but he still managed to release the arrow.
Less than a second later, I heard Alaria’s digitized scream as her hand exploded.
“AAAAAAAH!”
Oh SHIT –
I cut short my attack, flipped over onto my front, and sprinted for all I was worth towards the nearest stone hut.
There is a famous shot of Wolverine from the comics where he’s pierced by 100 ninjas’ arrows. (They also stole the shot for the second movie.) Motherfucker looks like a pin cushion, but he’s still fighting through it all in a berserker rage.
I felt exactly like that.
Except I was running, not fighting.
And I only had four arrows sticking out of me instead of a hundred.
And I suppose I was filled more with terror than rage.
But fuck it, I wasn’t Wolverine. Running with four arrows sticking out of me was tough enough.
In less than a second, I had a fifth.
A red-hot pain slammed into my back between my shoulder blades. I stumbled, but managed to make it behind the cover of the ruins.
I had Soul Sucked enough Health out of Shyvock to get me up to 50%, but the newest arrow took me back down to 30%.
Fuck it – at least I was alive and on the move.
From where I stood, I had a better view
of Alaria. She was huddled behind the edge of the temple, and clutching her forearm in pain.
I couldn’t see much from this distance, but I could tell that her hand was completely gone. The wound was severe, but had only knocked off 15% of her hit points.
That’s what being a robot made out of metal will do for you.
No problem – I had enough Health to heal her. If I dropped too low, maybe I could even die and resurrect somewhere miles away from here, wherever the closest graveyard was that Orlo hadn’t destroyed.
I raised my hand and mentally activated Self-Sacrifice –
Nothing.
…what the fuck?
This time I physically selected the button on the action bar at the bottom of my vision. I aimed my hand –
Again, nothing.
WHAT THE FUCK?!
Were these magic-dampening arrows he’d shot in me? Had they short-circuited my ability to cast spells?
No, that didn’t make any sense. If that were the case, then the Soul Suck I’d cast on him shouldn’t have worked.
That was when the awful possibility occurred to me:
Maybe I can’t heal her because she’s a robot.
If that were the case, it was fucking catastrophic.
It meant that whatever her total hit points were now, that was all she was ever going to have. And that was a huge problem.
If what Orlo had said back in the laboratory was true, her soul would not return to her flesh-and-blood body if she died.
Which meant that if she died in her robotic form – if Shyvock was able to blast her with a couple of arrows to the head –
“ALARIA!” I screamed. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”
She looked over at me in alarm and shook her head. “I’m not leaving you!”
“I CAN’T HEAL YOU!” I screamed. “GET OUT, NOW, BEFORE HE CAN HIT YOU AGAIN!”
Her yellow eyes widened in shock.
On second thought, maybe revealing my succubus’s primary weakness out loud wasn’t the best idea. I had done it because I didn’t think she would leave me unless I convinced her of the gravity of the situation – but Shyvock immediately took advantage of the new intel.
I heard his boots stomping across the grass towards the temple.
He was fast for his size, but Hunters in OtherWorld were known for the accuracy of their long-range attacks, not their sprinting speeds. He was a big guy carrying a lot of weight, so we had at least a couple of seconds before he reached her.