Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  He turned with a furrowed brow to look behind him and I snatched up a sizeable pinch of tobacco and concealed it tightly in my fist as he turned back, looking desperately confused. “What was what? That’s a workshop through that door, and that’s a window.”

  Congratulations! Speech has reached Level 4!

  I leaned back, resting my hands on my hips as I frowned at the window and made a show of shaking my head. “I just don’t get these newfangled things,” I muttered, and turned to leave. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re … welcome?”

  I made my way quickly out and into Hrzog’s shop, nervous about getting back into the basement. He looked up and flashed me an uncertain half-smile. At least he didn’t know what I had in my pack. I had no idea what he would even do to me for stealing something so valuable from him. “Where’d you go, before?” he asked.

  “Bathroom emergency,” I said, so quickly that I surprised even myself, and my mouth twisted in confusion.

  Congratulations! Deception has reached Level 2!

  Nice! I was really shooting through these levels. I just wished I was a little more competent when it came to combat.

  Feeling super confident about my speaking skills, I thought about my quest for a moment, and then turned to Hrzog, who was eyeing me as he bent over his counter, scribbling some notes in a ledger.

  “Listen, have you left the shop for any time at all today?” I asked, feigning a look of concern.

  He mirrored my expression. “Why?”

  “Well, I overheard Balin again just now,” I said, “talking about going into your basement. Do you know why he might want to do that?”

  His nostrils flared and he reached down for the key, and with a jolt I realised that it was still in my possession. He let out a strangled roar when he was sure it wasn’t there, and threw open the door to the basement and slid into it.

  I scrambled after him, sliding down onto the first step and hopping to join him in the dark. The chest was still wide open and empty, and Hrzog screamed again. I was very glad I was not on the receiving end of his fury.

  “Look,” I said, pointing at the grate, which was about a half inch askew, where I hadn’t quite shut it properly. “That’s how he must have escaped,” I said. When Hrzog was looking at it, seething, I opened my fist and chucked the tobacco around the floor beside the chest. “What’s this stuff?” I asked innocently.

  He turned back, his visible muscles twitching, and bent down to pick up the tobacco and sniff at it between his fingers. His eyes were wide and a vein in his green forehead was popping out. He looked like a slightly uglier, slightly scarier Hulk. I forced myself to look concerned for him, and not for myself. After all, the key to his basement and the stolen dagger were in my bag, and if he was a little more perceptive he would have seen that my leather shoes were soaked in sewer water.

  But he didn’t even seem to notice I was still there. He left the basement in a blur of green fury, breathing heavy like a charging bull, and roared Balin’s name as he thudded out of his store and next door.

  A crowd almost instantly gathered, to watch Hrzog scream and punch the glass armour displays before throwing tobacco in his face and roaring accusations that even I couldn’t understand, and I knew what had just happened.

  “Y—you’re crazy!” poor Balin was yelling, holding up his hands and backing away from the crazed orc. I slipped through the crowds and made my way as far away as possible. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the faceless man standing, obscured by shadows, at the edge of a nearby alleyway. His arms were folded as he watched, and he raised his fingers in a silent greeting to me. I nodded without making full eye contact, and slipped down a side street as a roar and a crash sounded out behind me.

  Quest Completed!

  Excision

  You have received Excision

  Your reputation with the White Suns has increased by 200!

  You have gained 100 EXP!

  My heart was pounding with adrenaline — that had been the most nerve-wracking thing I had done since arriving.

  Congratulations!

  You are now Level 5.

  You have gained 2 Attribute Points.

  You have gained 2 Skill Points.

  Two of each this time? I didn’t know if that was because I had hit a mini-milestone level, or if that was going to be standard from now on, but I knew exactly what to do with these points.

  I needed 12 points in Dexterity to be able to use Excision without fumbling and dropping it like I had in the sewer, so I barely hesitated before I poured my two points into that, feeling myself become a little lighter, and more confident with moving my body.

  As for the skill points, I considered piling them instantly into Spectral Magic, but then remembered that I was trying to save skill points for later, when increases would be more difficult, so I kept those for later. After all, now that I knew how to teach magic, I could sit down and meditate on new spells and gain levels.

  I wondered if there was a way that I could sit and try to learn new spells without wasting a piece of quartz on it, since I wasn’t clear how the process actually worked yet. I decided that I had a little down time now before I had to go and find a crooked merchant who would help me in my main quest, so while I waited for Roark and Faceless to get done with their graffiti, I was going to go and spend some much-deserved time lying in my scratchy Dawnspire bed.

  Maybe I would finally get a moment of peace.

  11

  London, England — four days after the Exodus

  She was alone, and, pending investigation, was looking at the rest of her life in jail.

  She sat in Bryson Mayer’s office, and as it often did, her mind wandered to Joe. Her brother. The last conversation they’d had had been … unsatisfying. He had explained to her that life was shit, the world was shit, and that he was going to take part in the ‘Exodus’ — which was the name people around the world had given the mass ‘immigration’ of Earth people to Mayer’s basement, and to the world of S&S.

  Anderson had gone too far. Joe was dead. Everyone in that basement was dead, and she knew it had been his fault. Burying her face in her hands, she made a decision.

  She knew she’d be alright going inside. After all, as Anderson’s number two she had spent a good deal of time inside the beta herself. And there were VR pods on higher levels of the building that she could stay in for some time. She would go in and find her brother, and she would take revenge on Anderson for what he had done to all of those poor, innocent people.

  The man didn’t deserve to escape his life sentence into the beautiful world Mayer had created; it wasn’t fair.

  So she had disconnected him from his VR pod twenty minutes after he went in, and had surprised herself with how easy it had been to jam the long, sharp hair clip she kept in her bag straight into his throat. His breathing was laboured, and he had twitched as his body died, but she didn’t care. That was something new she had learned about herself: she could kill somebody without guilt. Her therapist’s head would explode if she ever went back to tell her, but she knew that she wouldn’t.

  Anyway, Anderson Hendrix wasn’t dead. Not really.

  All she had to do now was hop into the game world and find someone, somehow, among one hundred million players and who knew how many NPCs. She had to lead him into a player kill area, and destroy his consciousness.

  Then he would truly be dead.

  She sat in front of Bryson’s incredibly advanced three-monitor computer and felt nervous as she carefully hacked her way into his programmer files and figured out how to send an announcement. She thought she remembered that he’d programmed this feature in, just in case, and she had been right.

  The camera clicked on and the mic buzzed for a second as she leaned forward and blinked, feeling exposed and frightened all of a sudden.

  “Attention,” she said finally. “Attention, all players in the game.” She hesitated, wondering how best to break the news to all of those pe
ople she had personally promised safety to. A slight noise had her glance over her shoulder, unsure of exactly what would happen if she was caught here by somebody. “I don’t know how much time I have, but I have figured out how to send messages through to the game from Bryson Mayer’s office. God. I really hope you guys can at least hear me…”

  She straightened out her skirt from underneath her, thinking that she really should have thought up a script or something before she started to speak.

  “Listen very carefully,” she said finally. “You may not be aware of it, but … technically, your bodies back on Earth are all dead.”

  She looked down and tried not to let her eyes well up.

  “You have all been murdered.”

  12

  Xanthe

  Name: Matthew Blake — Level: 5 — Progression: 16%

  Race: Human — Specialization: None

  Faction: Dawnspire Collective — Rank: Initiate

  STR: 14

  DEX: 12 (+3)

  INT: 8

  WIS: 5

  FORT: 10

  CHA: 9 (+4)

  Atk: 7 (+8) — Def: 5 (+15)

  Alliances:

  Dawnspire Collective — Very Friendly

  I sat back in my bed, eyes closed and quartz in my pack on the floor beside me, and I tried to think about magic.

  It was hard. It wasn’t coming easily to me at all. I tried to think of something offensive, and pictured Moro running around snapping at unseen foes, but the picture was difficult to focus on and without detail, which told me it was likely just my own imagination.

  After some hesitation, I reached down and pulled one shiny piece of quartz from my bag and curled my fingers around it. Moro’s ears pricked up and she slid her gaze from the wall right to me, like a dog who has seen her master pick up a tennis ball.

  I concentrated hard, and this time my image of the snapping wolf became bolder and more vivid in my mind, and slipped sideways into something much easier to pick out details in. I was trying to get her to grow, to get more teeth, or even shoot lasers or something, but the image wouldn’t form. I felt like I was no longer controlling what I saw. I tried to just simply have her use her sharp teeth, to stop being incorporeal just for a few seconds at a time...

  The wolf in my imagination took off, and a beautiful landscape rose up around her as she fought off marauders in the form of twisted black smoke. She launched forward and snapped her jaws around their smoky necks, and yanked her head away. The smoke fell and then dissipated with a puff, and Moro turned and ran to the next enemy.

  I would have forgotten about the quartz in my hand if it hadn’t suddenly become so hot I could hardly keep my fingers wrapped around it without flinching. My eyes opened quickly and I dropped it on the bed and wafted my hot hand through the air. Moro stared at the quartz like a cat spotting a mouse, and didn’t break her gaze, her muscles tensed.

  “I am not really sure what this spell is — it didn’t look like magic to me,” I told her. “But I guess getting your help in combat would be useful enough that I shouldn’t second guess this … go ahead.”

  The words were just about out of my mouth when Moro leapt onto the quartz and swallowed it whole. It disappeared into her spectral body and then there was a hissing and the faint smell of burning straw…

  I shooed her off of my bed to see that the blackened spent quartz was burning a dime-sized hole in my scratchy bedclothes, so I quickly kicked it with the toe of my boot and it clattered across the floor, causing the one other occupant of the large room to stir in his sleep but not rise.

  Moro was energetic from the absorption and looked at me from the floor with her mouth slightly open and her tongue lolling, her tail beating against the wall with enthusiasm.

  Moro has learned a new spell!

  Lesser Bite

  What was with these all being ‘Lesser’? How did I level up a spell? Or did I have to wait until I was a higher Spectral Magic user and find a new gemstone?

  It was an exciting moment for me, though. Now I didn’t only have a rare spectre, I had one who could aid me in a fight. I immediately scrambled for a new piece of quartz and leaned back again with my eyes shut. I tried to picture a blast of fire from Moro’s mouth but it came out as more of a bluish spray that scorched everything it touched. My heart was beating with excitement at the thought by the time the quartz burned in my hand, and I immediately shoved it at the wolf, expecting some serious excitement from her.

  Congratulations! Spectral Magic has reached Level 1!

  She looked at me with slight disappointment in her big eyes and turned her nose away.

  Spectres of Votorius-Khan cannot learn Fire spells without Rax’s blessing.

  I read the text with a deep frown on my face. What? So why had she been able to learn those other spells without a blessing of any kind?

  So now I had a warm piece of quartz with a glowing core, which was fairly useless to me. I was nervous now about creating more spells, since I actually didn’t know which kinds of things she was allowed to learn.

  At that moment, sitting cross-legged and thoughtful on my bed and teaching magic to a ghost, the entire world seemed to gently buzz suddenly, and I freaked out thinking that I had done something wrong and cast some kind of spell on the room.

  It buzzed again, my vision gently shaking and my teeth chattering. What the hell was that?

  An image appeared in front of me and I pushed myself back up against the head of my bed instinctively. It was a human woman, with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes, concern knitting her sharp, attractive features together. I looked around, alarmed, to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing.

  “Attention,” she said, making me jump almost out of my skin. “Attention, all players in the game.” She quickly shot a look over her shoulder and then turned around again and I was once again struck by her beauty; so out of place when I considered the dirty, brutal place I had spent the last few days living in. I zoned out a little, thinking about how exhausted I was, thinking about what life was like back on Earth with so many people in this game, and wondering how incredible this woman must look in the flesh.

  My thoughts drifted to one idea … back on Earth it hadn’t been very easy for me to … you know, with a woman. What would that be like here? In a place where pain was so very real. I swallowed, suddenly worried she could see me, but she continued to talk.

  She got my attention again when she said that I was dead.

  That was definitely one way to get me to sit up and listen.

  “The thing is, Bryson looked into it before he left, and he made a horrific discovery: with your bodies dead out here, your mind has no anchor. Therefore, when you die in the game, your brain tries to touch base and finds nothing. That’s the origin of the glitch.”

  Shit. Fuck. The glitch. Gellert.

  “You basically aren’t able to climb back into your avatar. Heaven knows where your consciousness even goes. Instead, the game defaults and assumes control of the body, which isn’t ‘dead’ by the system’s standards, and gives it the default foe hostility setting. This is the only glitch in the game, but, uh…” She delicately cleared her throat and looked away. “It’s a big one.”

  Understatement much?

  “I could go into the details but I don’t think I understand them, and I don’t know how much time I have to talk to you before I have to go. Bryson tried to fix the glitch — he really did — but there doesn’t seem to be a way.” She brushed her finger underneath her eye and tried to compose herself as quickly as she could. “You’re all dead back here, but there you’re alive. My advice is to stop adventuring. Live out your lives there the safest way you can. Take up a trade, live in a fortified city. Stay alive.”

  I rubbed at my face, unable to blink. What was this? I was dead? I didn’t feel dead. I felt sick, but I didn’t feel dead.

  In fact … it may have been a cliche but I felt more alive than I think I ever had before.

  My hands we
re trembling at her words, though. Death meant death. It hadn’t really, truly sunk in when I had seen what had happened to Gellert. But now it had. I had to stay safe.

  “I want you to know, everyone, that this is the fault of a man from England called Anderson Hendrix. He overloaded the systems in place to keep your bodies alive. I checked, his player name is simply ‘Hendrix’. I don’t know where he spawned, I don’t know where he is — I don’t know what his avatar looks like, either. But he is the one who murdered you all, along with your loved ones who are playing, and the people you’ve met on the way, and the people you will meet in the future.” She took in a long, shuddering sigh. “I have … taken care of his Earth body. If you’re listening, Hendrix, it’s true. I killed you. Now I want you to bring him to me. I played the beta more than most. I know the game. I will get you loot, gear, and gold beyond your wildest dreams if you bring me the player named Hendrix. Alive.

  “And Joe,” she added suddenly, her blue eyes wide. I was speechless, unable to do anything but listen to her. “If you’re still alive.” Her voice broke a little but she continued. “Get to safety. Get to Dawnspire, it’s safe there. Even in the surrounding lands it’s safe there. Joe. Get to Dawnspire and I’ll meet you there. I’m coming in. I need to finish what I started. Anderson Hendrix needs to pay for his genocide, and I refuse to stand around and let him water plants and explore caverns with the guilt of all of your lives weighing on his— shit.”

  She turned around fast and then back to face me, eyes wild and chest rising and falling. “I have to go. I’m coming in.” She leaned forward. “Stay safe. Find Hendrix. Don’t let him get away with this.”

  The transmission ended and her face flickered and disappeared.

  I was left with the view of wooden walls and brown beds and dirty floors. And the curious amber eyes of my spectre. I cleared my throat.