Team Newb

by M Helbig

  While the gear of the newcomers had looked to my inexpert eyes to be every bit as impressive as that of the original five, their skill had not been. I suddenly felt a lot better about my group. Perhaps the original five were the best of the best and the other group was of a more typical skill level. With the orc now restored to all her body parts, the first group resumed its assault, soon back in rhythm. I was confident they’d finish off The Scion before long, unless someone interrupted them again.

  Olaf looked into my eyes and seemed to read my mind. “We need to help. Maybe take out their healers?”

  “I’d rather try to find a way outside, dearie,” Nanny grumbled. “Decrona has to be up to something.”

  Well, Olaf had read part of my mind anyway. “How? Hit them and hope they die from laughing too hard? I appreciate your loyalty to our faction, but that’s suicide. Where did those extra people come from? I thought there wasn’t a way to scale city walls. My map says the area on the other side of the palace is exactly like it is here.”

  Olaf shrugged. “Mine does as well.”

  Nanny’s hairy face spread into a broad grin. “Knew there was a reason I liked you, new kid. We should check it out.”

  Alizia waved us away. “Have fun and let me know what the bind point looks like. I’m gonna stay here and watch the show from a safe distance.”

  We waited about thirty seconds until The Scion’s pattern forced the Shadow group to dance away from us, and then we sprinted to the other side of the palace. When I came to a halt, I thought I’d gotten turned around and ended up where we started, but when I looked back across the plaza, I saw Alizia’s huge head still poking from behind the bench and knew I’d indeed traveled to the other side. On closer inspection of the new area, I could see only a further difference: an open sewer grate sat just behind the empty bench. As I neared it, I checked my map again, and according to it the sewer grate shouldn’t have been there.

  “Is this new?” I asked. “I thought maps to starting cities were supposed to be one-hundred percent accurate.”

  “They are,” Nanny said. “They wanted to make the starting stuff as easy as possible to get people hooked on the game, and then when they get comfortable, make it hard so they die a lot. That way people will think the game is really easy but they had a bit of bad luck, so they’ll come back in with more money. No idea why this isn’t on the map.”

  A sudden voice from behind us made me jump and nearly fall in. Fortunately, Alizia’s long arms caught me at the last second. “I’m so disappointed in myself for remembering this,” she said with a sigh, “but it’s almost impossible to not get Deccy’s droning voice stuck in your skull. This is the exit to that unfinished dungeon they built under the city.”

  Olaf picked up the sewer lid and bounced it in his hands. “This is not supposed to come off. It is supposed to be permanently affixed so no one can get in.”

  Nanny stared at the darkness below. “And if they never finished it? What’s down there?”

  “Probably half-finished mobs like headless goblins, headless spiders, and legless heads.” Alizia winked at Nanny. “If we could stop by the butcher’s and buy some spare limbs, we could make a killing down there—assuming those unfinished misfits don’t make a killing of us.”

  “What level do you think they are?” Nanny asked.

  Olaf joined Nanny in staring down the hole. “It was supposed to be a tutorial area, so level one or two.”

  “Hmm . . . Those Shadow players had to have come through here to get in, but with their levels, they could take on about anything. Let me check Tracking,” I said.

  Besides The Scion, the only things it showed were colored white (Sun) or red (Shadow), indicating they were players: Olaf, Alizia, Nanny, the five Shadow players (Skullcrushery, Foxy Soxy, Thr’Gdd M’rshull, Demonina, and Lord Darklife), and Decrona. Seeing Decrona’s name at the end of the list of Shadow players was probably only a coincidence, but it brought a very terrible thought to mind.

  “And?” Olaf asked. “What’s down there?”

  Alizia leaned over Nanny’s shoulder to peer down the hole.

  “Nothing. Not sure if that means I can’t pick up any mobs that are down there because they didn’t finish it, if that means nothing is there, or if the mobs are out of range, but there is one other thing.” I paused and stared into Olaf’s friendly eyes. I knew he wouldn’t take what I was about to say well, so I decided to brace him for it with a long explanation.

  Before I could gather my thoughts completely, Alizia shoved Nanny down the hole and dove after her. “One way to find ooooooooout!”

  Part of me was grateful for the distraction. With no time to spare, I just spit it out before I jumped down the hole after her. “I think the reason Decrona’s outside is that she let the Shadow players in.”

  Olaf’s voice followed me into the endless darkness as I dropped. “You’re wrong but Alizia was right. There is only one way to find ooooooout!”

  The Land the Developers Forgot

  The hole looked like it went on forever, and after I jumped in, it occurred to me that this one just might do that. There was a chance Pyrite hadn’t gotten to putting in walls, a ceiling, floors or in general anything. The floor was what I was most concerned with, especially the part where it’d stop me from falling.

  As I let out a less-than-manly but entirely appropriate scream, considering I could literally be falling into oblivion forever or to my permanent death, my eyes focused on the only thing I could see: the Tracking interface that I’d inadvertently left open. With nothing else to do, I flipped through the names several times, but it always came up the same. After a nice skill up, I decided to focus on the task at hand and selected Decrona’s name. At the very least it’d let me know if I’d fallen below her. I breathed a sigh of relief as the Tracking arrow showed her still below me, but quickly rolled up to show her as straight ahead as I landed on a surprisingly soft surface. I rebounded about a foot off the ground and landed gingerly on my feet.

  The area was built in old, worn bricks and dimly lit by torches along the walls at regular intervals of about five feet. Cobwebs covered every inch of the ceiling and upper walls, though I wasn’t sure if they were an intentional design decision to give the place a catacomb-like feel or if they had become that way from the place being locked off for decades. I turned Tracking off as the streaks of footprints were easy to follow through the dust-coated floor and arrow-straight passage. Almost immediately, something grabbed me from behind. My mind wanted me to jump, but my body rebelled and froze instead.

  “So, ya use someone like a trampoline and don’t even offer an apology?” Alizia shook her head. “Chivalry really is dead.”

  “You killed him in one of your drinking contests, dearie,” Nanny said.

  “No, that was ‘Chivalroo’. He wanted to be the first knight mounted on a kangaroo. Of course, he did teach me that you can actually die from alcohol poisoning in this game and that was a sort of chivalry, I suppose.”

  I swatted her hand off my shoulder. “Do you always have to sneak up on me like that? One of these days, you’re going to kill me too by doing that.”

  Alizia saluted me crisply. “From this day forward, I will only sneak up on you in a new and exciting way. I, Alizia the Slightly Buzzed, do so solemnly swear.”

  Nanny rolled her round black eyes and Olaf stifled his laughter poorly. I shook my head and went back to moving down the tunnel.

  Most of the footprints were facing the other direction, indicating they were from the Shadow players going into the city, but occasionally I could make out a pair going in our direction. I assumed the latter pair belonged to Decrona, but it didn’t really matter because they headed where we needed to go.

  Our eyes darted around the area as we went. The passage wasn’t terribly wide—barely wide enough for two of us to stand next to each other—but it did have an abundance of doorway-like openings without doors. I imagined some long-dead cult that worshiped a god named “Archway�
� had built this structure, but it was more likely built that way so Pyrite would have an easy way to hide mobs to jump out at you. I flipped Tracking on to be sure nothing was hiding in any of the corners but gave up after the fifth time it came up blank. Despite my assurances, Olaf and Alizia stabbed into the dark patches anyway just to be safe. Nanny, who I learned was a mage, directed a light spell in them afterward to double check.

  “This dungeon was supposed to lead into the city,” I said. “If there were mobs hiding to take out players, they’d be hiding in the dark spots on our side of the arches.”

  Olaf poked his head back through an archway and stabbed into the corner to my right. Alizia shrugged and tossed an empty potion vial into the next corner down on the left.

  “The place is obviously empty, besides us,” I said. “I think we can forget about this whole checking-every-shadow thing and run to the end. If we don’t hurry, Decrona might escape.”

  Olaf poked the next corner on the right. “You mean she might move to a safer place, and we might have to go find this new place, so she can then tell us how she was meeting her contact outside the city walls. You know, one of the people who’s been helping find information on the whereabouts of my son and the guy who killed you in the real world.”

  Nanny stared into a corner, probably to avoid eye contact with Olaf. “Sorry, dearie, but I’m with the new guy.”

  I looked to Alizia for support. She tried her best to pretend she didn’t see me, but in the tight passageway she couldn’t avoid me for long. She eventually gave up and shrugged. “Listen. We all know I trust Deccy as much as I trust an insurance salesman or a certain game company who says you can make millions with little risk, but even I don’t think she’d open the back door for a bunch of Shadow players. Well, she’d probably open her backdoor if they belong to the secret Book class but—Where was I? Oh, yeah. I agree. She’s been lying to us—probably so she can make a little extra cash on the side—but I don’t think she unlocked the door for them.”

  “One way to find out.” I pointed down the passage. “Let’s go.”

  I began running and was relieved to hear footsteps behind me. With Sprint activated, the identical doorways flew by like the background in a cheap cartoon. In no time, I could see the rectangular-shaped light of the exit. “Almost there, guys!”

  “Almost where?” Olaf’s voice echoed off the passage, making it seem like he was a mile away. “Horus, where are you?”

  “Where are you, Olaf?” Nanny asked. “I don’t see any of you.”

  I could hear footsteps to my right, but the skeptic in me turned to make sure my friends were still there. I found not the bald pate of Olaf nor the brown fur of Nanny, but a dark-haired head that I saw in the mirror every morning. I veered slightly off course and crashed into a door post for 6.

  As I lay there, I could see an abundance of stars that peskily kept moving before I could make up constellations for them. I was that close to finishing the one I was going to call Reginald the Minotaur Bedazzler before they faded completely. The two reflections of me to my left and right didn’t fade with them, no matter how hard I poked at them. The bright side was that the reflections were kind enough to help me to my feet.

  I dusted myself off. “Thank you mes—Wait, how can reflections touch me?”

  “Reflectionsssss . . . meeeee?” the one on the right asked in an oddly nasal voice.

  “Waaaaait . . . touchchchch?” the one on the left asked in the same nasal voice.

  “Meeeees,” they said unison.

  In frustration, I crossed my arms, and they did the same a second later. Uncrossing my arms caused them to split off into copies that trailed behind the originals like I was looking at them with a prism. I rubbed my eyes, hoping they’d go away, but that only made more of them appear. It was like I was looking at myself in a mirror and there was a mirror behind the reflection into infinity.

  After I shook the headache away, caused by trying to figure out what would happen if I pulled out a mirror, I decided to try a more active approach and pushed the one on the right. If they can touch me, I should be able to touch them too.

  My hand touched nothing, and I fell straight through him for 2. When I rolled back over, peculiarly all the copies were still standing, though the ones on the right had their left arms out like I had when I tried to touch them. I rubbed my chin as I tried to figure out what to do next. The ones on the left rubbed their chins too. Now that I was convinced they weren’t the result of some visual effect like a faulty mirror and were sentient, I tried Inspect on them.

  Please focus on a monster, player, NPC, or object to use Inspect.

  “Hooooorusssss?” Alizia asked from somewhere far away. I turned to see where she was calling from but couldn’t see anything besides the rectangle of light that marked the exit. Realizing that she’d been behind me when I last saw her, I spun back around to look for her past the army of “me” reflections. Two pairs of identical hands brushed against my shoulders as I turned. The two closest reflections had their hands almost at my neck. My eyes made them jump back, put their hands behind their backs, and begin whistling innocently in a manner my mom had always described as my “guilty-as-sin look”. I gave them a dirty glare, and in response their mouths spread into wicked grins.

  Doing my best to keep one eye on them, I tried to look for my friends in the distance. My face started twitching uncontrollably about fifteen seconds in, so I gave up. I formed my hands into a cone and put them over my mouth. “Olaf, Alizia, where are you guys? I’m in the middle of the passage.”

  “Olaf!” the reflections on the right echoed down the hallway.

  “Alizia!” the ones on the left echoed after the “Olaf” faded.

  The word “Horus” in both of my friends’ voices came after that, and before that could fade both pairs of reflections repeated it in my voice. My nerves shot, I turned and ran toward the exit. With Sprint on, the exit grew larger and larger until it seemed to be only forty feet away. I checked my Action Points and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was still more than halfway full.

  I stopped, turned, and gave them one last grin. They frowned in response. I supposed their frowns were sort of an inversion of my grin so, in a way, they’d returned to their mimicking. The light from the doorway warmed my back as I gave them a sarcastic goodbye wave. Each responded with a hand gesture of his own, comprised mostly of a lone finger from opposite hands. My hands found the frame, and I pulled myself back, but my cocky wink was abruptly cut short when my butt pressed into a solid wall. The clones winked in response.

  Keeping one eye on them and another on the opening, I reached out toward the light. My hand connected with an invisible force. “Alizia? Olaf? Nanny? You guys around?”

  “Guys, Alizia?” the one on the right asked.

  “You, Olaf/Nanny?” the left one asked.

  “I’m not a guy, jerk face,” Alizia said from somewhere through the opening.

  “I do not think that is what he meant, Alizia,” Olaf replied also from the other side. “Horus, where are you? It sounds like you are still inside, but we cannot see you. Is Nanny with you?”

  “Which is probably a good thing for you right now,” Alizia grumbled.

  I ignored my army of twins, who were back to making faces at me. “No Nanny here. And I’m in the doorway, but I can’t go through it. Is there a door there?”

  I started as Olaf’s voice sounded right next to my ear. “No. This doorway is just as empty as the other ones.”

  “I’ve got two rows of reflections of me threatening to do not-so-nice things to the real me right now,” I said. “Did you guys see anything like that?”

  “Are you sure they’re not me?” Alizia asked, apparently just in front of me. “I can think of several not-so-nice things I’d like to do to you.”

  “Yes,” Olaf said from a great distance. “I asked mine to let me out, and they did.”

  Alizia’s voice seemed to come from the floor. “And I told mi
ne not to let me out, because anything that looks like me is obviously much too awesome to listen to someone awesome like me—or too awesome to be the reverse of awesome and it reflected well on . . . No, that’s not right. I tricked myself by doing exactly what I wouldn’t have done, and then two plus two, divided by awesome. Whatever, it worked.”

  “So, what you’re saying is there’s a door handle that only they can open?” I asked.

  Neither of them responded, but the row of “me” on the right nodded, while the ones on the left shook their heads.

  “So,” I said, “I take it the guys on my right always tell the truth and the left handsome fellows always lie.”

  The right one shrugged. The left ones turned around and mooned me.

  “Could you gentleman open this door behind me?” I asked.

  The right one shook his head. The left one nodded.

  “Could you not open the door for me?” I asked.

  The right one nodded. The left one took a few steps forward, rapped me on the ear for 1, and moved back.

  I rubbed my ear, which drew a panicked reaction from both of them. A puff of smoke appeared near their right hands to reveal weapons. The right one held an upside-down sword and the left one wielded a broken bow. They began inching toward me in fighting stances. I summoned my sword in response and tried Inspect again. The same error message appeared indicating they didn’t exist.

  The right one swung his hilt at me, and I raised my blade to parry it. The two weapons met with a loud clang, yet I didn’t feel any impact and didn't have time to think about it, as the one on the left swung his bow in my direction. My blade barely arrived in time to connect. A hard thunk later and again I felt nothing against my blade. The two tried a series of weak jabs to test my defenses which I easily deflected.