Circuit World

by Daniel Pierce

  I removed both of my weapons from him, sending streams of blood pouring from each opening now that there was nothing to plug the holes up. I lunged back in, driving my blades home into each of his knees. He yelped then and fell forward, all of his wounds glowing around their edges with the searing enchantment of my blades.

  The man was so tall that even as he sat there on his knees, his eyes were almost level with mine. Like the man before him, he was ready for things to end, conceding defeat. So, just as I had done with the previous man, I pulled out both blades and brought them into his neck, leaving little material behind to anchor his head to the rest of his body. I had to jump back to pave the way for his descent, as he came crashing down, landing in the grass with a loud thud.

  “The worthy earn their mercy,” I told him, but he was dead and could not appreciate my kindness.

  I turned back to my girls to see that they were still working their magic. Binari had traded her ropes of fire for purple missile blasts that sought out their targets with expert accuracy. Safira’s ethereal shields had grown a bit more offensive in the time I had turned my attention from them. Now they would wrap around the arm of an attacker, anchoring him in place while allied forces moved in for the kill.

  I looked to the trees and picked out Faun. She was putting her special bow to use, sending arrow after arrow into the chests of any enemies who dared to come near. Each strike was like a physical punch, lifting victims from their feet and leaving them sagging on the ground or stone dead from the initial wound. I heard her raging over all the other sounds of battle. This was no mere fight to her, as was the case for many who drew arms that day. She and hundreds of others were fighting to safeguard their home. Everything was on the line in this war.

  A smile crept across my face as I watched her go about her work, but then I regarded her in helpless horror as the unthinkable happened. An arrow traveled up to her from somewhere below and lodged itself in her side. She dropped her bow to the grass growing stories below her then made the descent herself, a slave to the sudden pain in her abdomen.

  “No!” I shouted, scanning the masses below for a sign of who had let that bolt fly.

  Then I saw him. He was a slimy-looking man, I could see that even from so far away. He sneered in the direction of where my girl had fallen, and I watched him pull a dagger from his belt and start off toward where she lay.

  “No!” I shouted again, then began to move. “You pigfucker. You die next,” I ground out as white-hot rage burned me from within.

  He was surrounded by his allies, and I had little hope of making it over to him without getting mown down by the legions of men around him. It was doubtful that I could even make it over to Faun before he had his way with her.

  Pop!

  NEW SKILL!

  Fury

  Type: Active

  Description: Say the name of this skill to banish all thoughts of fear against seemingly insurmountable odds.

  Well, that’s a deus ex machina if I ever saw one, I thought, realizing that all these well-timed, newfound abilities I’d received over the course of my journey were a little too convenient to be coincidence. I was leaning more and more toward the idea that all of this was happening as part of some tutorial and that this introductory quest served to teach me how to use such skills.

  “Fury!” I shouted.

  I felt as if someone had pumped me full of adrenaline. All of my muscled began to buzz and hum, and the world took on a reddish-orange tint. Time slowed, sounds echoed. I felt that if I concentrated hard enough, I would be able to see the vibrations of the noises around me. This ability had radically changed things.

  I sprinted to meet the soon-to-be-dead man who had shot my girl. The sneer had not left his face the whole time, but I was determined to change that. He was almost to her, and I could see several of his brothers cheering him on as he went, but in that moment his dagger seemed like little more than a toothpick compared to my blades.

  I was on top of him in the next few seconds, not knowing how I’d cleared the distance. I didn’t really even remember doing it, aside from a few fragmented images in my head. He was under me on the ground, arms were pinned beneath my shins, and he was already crying out for mercy before I even struck him.

  I did not cut him right away. That wouldn’t have given me the time I needed to vent my rage. Instead, I dropped my blades to the side as I took him to the ground and began slamming my fists into him, all up and down his head and upper body. I took his smug melon between both hands and, gripping it firmly, pulled it up and drove it back down into the dirt over and over again. Tears were streaming down his face as he reached up to try and stop me, but it was no use.

  “I’m gonna break you apart,” I spat.

  Arrows flew all around. I turned to see that several of them had come from his allies in a futile attempt to help their downed brother. All of them appeared too afraid to get too close to me, the raging lunatic who was beating their brother to an unrecognizable pulp.

  For the big finish, I reached down and closed my fingers around his puny neck, feeling his resistance fade at the same time as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell limp. I jumped up, taking his fresh corpse with me, and heaved it into the small gathering of archers who just couldn’t seem to land a shot on me. They scattered back, none of them wanting to be the next one to invoke my rage.

  I would have charged in to deal with the rest of those worthless sacks of shit, but I had more pressing matters to focus on. Faun was unconscious where she had fallen. I put an ear to her chest and only breathed a sigh of relief when I could make out her faint heartbeat. She was alive, but there was no telling how much longer that would be the case.

  The arrow was still sticking out of her side, and I thanked the virtual gods of Circuit World that her fall had not driven it deeper in. I’d picked up several potions before setting out with the army for occasions like this but never would have imagined I’d need to use one on Faun. Of the three women who I had grown so close to in my time there, she was the last one I would have expected to be in need of medical attention. But everyone had bad days.

  I popped the cork off the bottle and poured the concoction on her leg, making sure to get as much of it as I could in the hole without it spilling over. I had never had to handle an arrow wound before and was unsure if I needed to remove it for the potion to work efficiently, but I was hesitant to try, knowing that more of her blood would follow.

  I watched as the wound miraculously began to stitch itself back together, closing in on the wooden shaft lodged inside of it. Thinking that I was running out of time, I thought to chance it, so I gripped the arrow firmly and pulled it out with a good, strong yank.

  Faun woke up screaming, and I put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. I looked down and saw that the wound was continuing to heal up nicely. A few more minutes and it would likely be fixed up enough for her to get back on her feet.

  “What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “You were shot, but it’s all better now,” I said, lifting the bloody arrow to show her.

  “You are lucky that wasn’t barbed or serrated, Si1ence,” she said.

  I laughed and said, “I suppose you’re lucky it wasn’t barbed or serrated.” I threw the arrow over my shoulder and leaned in to lift her up.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, putting an elbow around my neck to brace herself as I stood with her in my arms.

  “I’m going to get you back in the woods. I want you to rest up and heal. You should be good to good fairly soon, I suspect. You won’t be out of commission for too long.”

  She huffed and, after being assured that I was holding her firmly, crossed her arms. “Fine.” She glanced up at me from the side of her eyes, not turning her head to fully face me as I carried her. “Thank you, Rixon. I appreciate you more than you know.”

  “And I appreciate you,” I said, kissing her gently—or as gently as I could while my blood stea
med with magical rage.

  I took her several trees deep, giving her a buffer of two staggered rows of archers between her and the main battlefield. Before saying another word, I went to retrieve her Elderwood bow and sat it at her side when I returned.

  “Seriously,” I said, “don’t go anywhere until you know you’re ready. All right?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a wink.

  When I returned to the field, I still saw Dukayne sitting smugly atop his high horse on the hill looking out over the rest of us peons while we did the fighting. I always hated players who did stuff like that in player-versus-player combat, sitting back and waiting for the enemy to grow weaker while the rest of their team did all of the heavy lifting. I decided that it was time to show him the right way to behave in team fights, regardless of what his rank was.

  We locked eyes when I came to the foot of the hill. I looked up with murderous intent on my face, never before hating a videogame villain as much as I hated him. He dismounted his horse and stood waiting for me at the tree where the old druid’s head was impaled. I began my ascent, savoring each step.

  “So,” I asked. “Am I to assume that’s your handiwork?” I pointed to the severed head.

  “Oh, this?” he asked mockingly, grabbing a clump of the poor sap’s hair. “That is correct. These coins here are my calling card. Are you not familiar with my methods?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t say that I am. I’m pretty new here.” I pulled both swords out; his own slender blade was in his hand the next moment.

  “I suspected as much.” He made a few playful swishes and jabs in the air between us, in the space that was dwindling every second. “You seem as if you are not quite . . . of this world.”

  That caught me off guard. I had to wonder if he was even an NPC with that remark, or, wilder still, if some of the NPC’s had been made aware of the outside world. The idea that my adversary might realize he was the villain of a videogame blew my mind, but I did the best I could to brush that thought away. It would only serve to distract me during our epic showdown.

  “Do you care to elaborate on that?” I asked before fully shutting it out of my mind, trying to maintain an air of nonchalance.

  “No,” he laughed. “Hurry up, boy. You’re taking forever to get up here!” His mocking swordplay increased in speed and enthusiasm, and he began hopping around like a bunny. As far as villains went, Dukayne was not the typical no-nonsense tyrant that I had come to expect of the high fantasy genre. It was a little refreshing to see something that wasn’t done so often.

  “As you wish,” I said, and then added, “Fury!”

  I flexed every muscle in my body, preparing myself to feel that flood energy, but nothing came.

  Pop!

  Not enough mana.

  Oh, fucking great! I thought. I hadn’t had to deal with any form of magic points so far in the game. I had begun to expect that mana didn’t exist in this universe and the spells operated off of some sort of cooldown timer mechanic. This was probably the worst possible time to figure out I couldn’t cast a spell when I was kind of depending on it to give me an advantage. The screen faded away almost as quickly as it appeared, taking a modicum of my hope with it.

  Dukayne was laughing at me. He had somehow noticed that the spell didn’t work, even though I didn’t remember it having an external visual component to it. It was not as if he could see that it didn’t work.

  “What?” I asked, clearly disgruntled.

  “Your spell—it did not work. Poor boy. Poor stupid boy.”

  “What makes you think it didn’t work?”

  “Nothing more than the look of disappointment on your face, dear child.” His smugness was really starting to wear on me.

  I tripled my speed and was on him before he was able to get another of those gut-wrenching cackles out.

  “Barrier!” he shouted as my scimitar came down to greet him.

  My weapon was stopped by a forcefield just like the ones Safira had been using. The dark prince’s smirk grew even wider, almost unnaturally so.

  “Hm?” He chuckled. “Did you think that you and your concubines down there were the only ones who knew a little magic?”

  “I hadn’t given it much thought,” I said as I brought the second blade upward on a course to his stomach.

  He didn’t have to say anything this time. The barrier lingered and had a larger surface area than I assumed. It phased back into existence when my second weapon collided with it. Fuck! I thought, wondering if the spell prohibited him from attacking me until it disappeared as well. I pulled my first blade back and struck at it a third time, only achieving the same result.

  “Fury!”

  Pop! Still no mana . . .

  His laughing only grew in intensity, as did the hard-on I had for killing him. I struck at the shield several more times, and each time I was balked. I supposed he was in the same position as me because he made no effort to use his apparent invulnerability and attack me.

  “All right,” he said, pulling himself together. “Shall we get serious?”

  He mockingly bowed to me and took a sudden swing. After not meeting any resistance from him before—except of course for his Barrier spell—I was completely caught off guard when he finally did switch into attack mode.

  I brought both swords up into the shape of an “X”, only intercepting his blade by some miracle. Even then, all I could do was force it upward, heading straight for my face. I followed up with a step to the side before his thin metal rod rendered me blind in one eye or worse. He noticed my fumble and began laughing even more, which only made me want to beat the shit out of him more.

  Before he had fully turned around to face me again, I brought one blade into him, aiming for anywhere from his shoulder to his head. He bent forward, and my sword pierced nothing but open air. I brought my other blade up and met his own. He was truly a master, dodging and blocking simultaneously as he did. All of the other swordfighters I had faced so far could only execute one semi-decent move at a time. Sometimes they could pull off a block; sometimes they could sidestep. Rarely could they keep doing it over and over, and never had I seen a successful attempt at doing both back-to-back. The man-made swordplay seem like dancing, as if our moves had been carefully choreographed and practiced many times over before we came to meet each other on the hill there. I would admit I was beginning to lose a little more morale then.

  I moved my first sword down to cut the wrist of his dominant hand while he still held it out blocking my previous attack. I didn’t believe my eyes as the fucker literally let go of his handle in midair and move his arm back just as my blade was about to severe his hand from that arm. My sword swung by him without cutting so much as a sliver. In the next instant, he reached back in and regained his grip on his handle before it had even fallen a foot from where he originally held it. I almost dropped my own weapons in sheer amazement. Then he punched me in the face.

  I went stumbling backward, but before I got too far out of his grasp, he took a swing at me with his sword, tearing a thin slice in my lower stomach, just above the waist.

  “Oh, my,” he taunted. “Have you recently had a babe removed from your belly?” He lunged forward and jabbed me this time, poking a hole in my abdomen that was hard to ignore. I groaned in pain and surprise. No matter how sharp the blade, getting stabbed fucking hurts.

  I staggered back several more paces and quickly regained my balance. The man had the reflexes of a cat. He was not only a dark metrosexual bad guy; he was a rogue dark metrosexual bad guy with a penchant for delivering gut wounds.

  “Fury!” Still, no power welled up inside of me, but as it was, there was a likely chance of me overdosing on that emotion in the next few minutes.

  I charged in and swung again. Clang! He swiped my blade off course with his own. That didn’t stop my follow-up swing. Clang! And again, my sword was diverted from its intended path. This happened two, three, four more times. Each clang of metal was punctuated by more of
that intolerable laughter.

  That was when the cuts really began to burn. I looked down to see embers searing into my flesh and turned back to my opponent with the shocking realization that his weapon must have the same fire damage enchantment as mine. And it burned like a bitch. I hastily swatted at the wounds, patting the embers away. The light soon faded, but the pain was still there. Dukayne watched me the whole time, clearly entertained by the show I was putting on. I felt my cheeks grow hot. I knew I needed to prepare myself to attack before he stuck any more holes in me. My will to fight was quickly draining.

  “You stand no chance, boy,” he said, taking a step closer, that sneer never leaving his face. “You should be honored that I’ve asked you to join me.” He glanced back to the field. “You may even bring your women with you, with no fear of harm.”

  He was watching me, waiting for an answer. Circuit World must have been one of those games where a player could pick their ethical alignment, choosing whether to fight on the side of good or evil. I decided to stick with the original horse I’d chosen, however unconsciously. But, still, I needed to do something fast.

  I looked down to the battlefield myself and then back to Dukayne and asked, “Even her?” I nodded down in Safira’s direction where she was focusing on a spell.

  His brow wrinkled and he looked back to see which woman I was referring to. The moment I was sure that I was out of his periphery, I lunged forward and jammed my scimitar into his ribs. Fuck yeah!

  He howled and whipped around to face me before falling to his knees.

  “Yeah. Dirty as well,” I said. “I’m a rogue, so you better fucking expect me to fight like one, you candyass.”

  “That’s not fair!” he wailed.

  I punched him in the face, sending him dropping the rest of the way down. “Life’s not fair, boy.” I kicked him in the stomach and broke out into a dance while pulling a healing potion from my pack and pouring it on my cuts.

  “I’m tempted to tell you to fuck off, but it’s a beautiful day and seeing your blood makes me—I don’t know—softhearted,” I said, then shrugged. “Then again, fuck you.”