Liar King

by Adam Elliott

  “You’re worrying about me for the second time in one day. Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I know that you’re being a jerk right now.” She laughed, tucking a few strands of loose hair behind her ear before she continued. “Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  “Not where my mind would have gone.” Cayden replied.

  “No?”

  “No. Ozymandias is all about hubris and decay. This…” He waved a hand in the direction of the still flaming wreckage they had left behind. “I am become Gigabyte, destroyer of systems.”

  “I am like, ninety percent sure that isn’t how that quote goes.”

  “Only if you are a philistine. Reboot is a classic.” Cayden laughed softly, then turned away from the scene of destruction. “Is everyone ready to go?”

  Silver glanced back over her shoulder before replying. “I think we should give them a few more minutes at least. The Wardens aren’t going anywhere until the morning, and it looks like everyone could use some time to breathe and get rid of some stress.”

  “You’re probably right.” He conceded.

  “Always am.” Silver grinned. “Humble too.”

  The two stood in silence for several minutes then, watching the fire across from them as the sky dimmed and the stars appeared above them. A ribbon of green and blue trailed across the sky, the colors too vibrant to have ever appeared on earth. The horror and the majesty of Babel in a single image.

  “That was a brave thing you did.” She said at last.

  “Why thank y-”

  “Stupid.” Silver cut him off. “But brave.”

  Cayden glanced in her direction. “You don’t think we should have?”

  “I didn’t say that.” The girl laughed again, rubbing her eyes as a waft of smoke stung them. “I probably would have too. Guess we’re both stupid.”

  “Yeah.” Cayden chuckled along with her. “I guess we are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Day 12 - Morning

  Resources – F – 640 -20, Z – 780 +10, M – 275 +5, I – 680 +20, P +40, R +20

  “Hey.” Sarah’s soft voice was reproduced by his headset like a whisper in his ear. Gone was the usual vim and verve of the blue-haired girl, color seemingly drained from her cheeks.

  “Hey.” He replied in the same quiet tone, unsure of precisely what to say or to ask, despite being the one who requested the video call.

  As expected, Sarah had respawned in Sunè barely an hour after her ‘death’ in Islo, but in the day that had passed, that had been the only information the girl had been willing to provide. His calls had been unanswered; his messages received no reply. It was only when he threatened to expend some of their limited resources to teleport to Sunè that she finally relented, and accepted his call.

  She hadn’t taken her loss well, that much he could plainly see. The displayed reflection of the ordinarily immaculate girl was instead ragged, her hair untouched, her eyes sunken. Though she stared straight into the mirror to give him his video feed, her own eyes were offset slightly to the left, unwilling, or perhaps unable, to look at the image of him being streamed onto her glasses.

  “Look-” They both said at once, the jinx barely enough to force her to crack a smile. Each jostled for a few moments, trying to let the other go first before at last Cayden took the initiative. “I’m sorry for being so pushy. I just… we needed to talk.”

  “I know,” Sarah said quietly. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, nostrils flaring as she took a deep breath before continuing. “I screwed up.”

  “You did,” Cayden admitted even as the kinder side of him railed against the honesty. “But we all screw up sometimes, and in the end, no blood, no report.”

  “I nearly got you killed. Nearly got all of you-”

  “Horseshoes and hand grenades.” Cayden shrugged a little. “We didn’t have to chase you, so the only person you nearly got killed was yourself. And in the end, we destroyed the enemy caster, which we probably wouldn’t have managed any other way. We gambled, and we won.”

  “That doesn’t-”

  “No, it doesn’t make it alright.” He agreed. “But I’m also not your officer or your leader. I’m your friend. I’m not calling to scold you.”

  The girl on the other end of the call quivered, one hand moment momentarily distorting his vision of her as she adjusted her glasses long enough to wipe away a tear. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure darlin’.”

  “Cayden. Your rural is showing.”

  “I suppose it is.” He chuckled. “You know if there had been any other way-”

  Sarah held up a hand to forestall any further words. “Cayden, its fine. I get what you did. I’m just sorry about the way I reacted. The Dizzy Sheep was just… it was important to me.”

  “Because of Symbal?” He asked warily.

  “Among other things, yeah.” Sarah sighed briefly, then studied the image of him on her display. “How much have you figured out?”

  “Only a little,” Cayden admitted. “That you used to be involved in PvP for one thing.”

  She winced. “So the bad part then.”

  “I figured. But didn’t want to assume.” He replied, choosing his words carefully and studying Sarah closely as he did. “If you’d been a duelist, or involved in any sort of arena, I probably would have been able to find your name when I searched for it, even if it was a while back. Which leaves…”

  A few breaths passed before Sarah finally saved him the discomfort of saying it. “Player Killing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was a screwed up kid.” Sarah murmured. “The game was brand new, and it was better than having my stepdad hit me for the hundredth time, so I ran away. I made some new friends, built a party, and at first, it was fun. Just a real-life game, right?”

  “Three of us died getting to level twelve. Other parties were beating us up the tower, and I kept pushing for us to try and take on things we weren’t ready for. We didn’t have the gear or the money.” Color and shame flooded Sarah’s face as she spoke. “The first time was this level 30 solo player, Katya. Sebastian, my party leader, had been trying to get her to join us all week, probably because he thought she was cute.”

  “And she said no?” Cayden asked.

  “With more colorful words, yeah. Seb didn’t like that. He took a swing at her, and once she started beating him, we all piled on her.” Another tear briefly interrupted the tale. “She had more money, and better gear than the five of us put together. And it had been so easy.”

  “How many?”

  “I honestly don’t know. At least a dozen.”

  “How can you not know?” His voice was incredulous, just one step below a yell as Sarah shrunk away on the other end of the video feed.

  “You think I was myself during all this?” She asked with a mixture of indignation and embarrassment. “A young girl with a bunch of older guys in Babel, with no supervision? I was high more than I was sober.”

  “And that is your-”

  “No!” Sarah cut him off. “It isn’t an excuse. I’m a terrible person. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Cayden said nothing, his mouth opening and closing a few times as he searched for any sort of proper reply. What could he say to an admission like that? Player killers were a small, but dangerous fact of life in Babel, but when he thought of them, he thought of lunatics covered in bones or creepy silence of the lambs types. Not her.

  “You don’t have to deny it. I know I am.” Sarah said, her voice just barely above a sob. “I know what I did.”

  Unsure of what else to say, of how to comfort her, Cayden instead pressed her story. “Why did you stop?”

  “I’d like to say I grew a conscience. But in truth, we just got sloppy.” Sarah looked down, no longer meeting his digital gaze, or letting him see her reflection as she spoke. “Sebastian picked someone with friends in high places, and they came after us with everything they had.
I managed to get away though sheer dumb luck, and I hid on the second floor.”

  “And Symbal?”

  “They couldn’t attack me in town, but they still made my life a living hell. I couldn’t find a place to sleep, to buy food. Symbal was the only one who knew what I was, who was still willing to give me a place to stay, and something to do with myself, even if I had to hide who I am to do it.”

  Cayden cocked his head to one side, about to inquire further as realization struck him. “Your name isn’t Sarah. It’s Desdaemona.”

  “Funny how you can miss something as simple as hearing your own name.” She smiled. “But really, I prefer Des.”

  “How long have you’ve been there…?”

  “A year and a half,” Des replied. “It was the closest thing to a good home I’ve ever had.”

  “And I burned it to the ground.” Cayden winced.

  “You did.” The slightest hint of a wry smile emerged on her face as she looked back to the mirror once again. “But I can think of worse reasons to have done so.”

  “So what do we do now?” He asked after a brief hesitation.

  “I’m going to join some refugees making their way to Bastion,” Des replied. “I’ve got another five and a half days on my death timer. After that, I am yours to command.”

  “I meant after this?” Cayden said. “Once this event is over. And about the others.”

  “I’ll tell them once this is all over.” She promised. “And when it is all over if you’ll have me, I’d like to join you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I can help you get that wish, then maybe you can help me fix the mistakes I’ve made.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Welcome Home, Field Marshall.”

  “Valserys,” Cayden replied. For a moment he said nothing more before emotion got the better of him. “You have got to stop sitting to the side of the door. This is like, the third time you’ve nearly given me a heart attack.”

  The officer regarded him coolly at first, though a half smile eventually snuck in below that absurdly colored mustache. “Perhaps Sir should try expecting my presence.”

  “How can I? You’re like the Spanish Inquisition.” He waved away any requests to expand on the idiom and instead continued speaking. “Command: Quick Item seven.”

  His steps carried him further into the room as the miniature War Frame materialized into the palm of his hand. Silver, Michael, and Asch were all quick on his heels, and before long the table once again dominated the center of the Strategy room, the room’s occupants arrayed in a semicircle around one side.

  The map had changed significantly since he’d last looked upon it. The once proud city of Islo was now little more than burnt out wreckage surrounded by powerful walls, while a long of crimson banners and marching miniatures streamed out from where it had once been.

  “So, we’ve lost Islo,” Cayden said, starting with the obvious.

  “I wouldn’t say we’ve lost it.” Silver smirked.

  “Really?” Cayden asked.

  “Really.” Silver replied, unwilling to back off the reference despite his tone.

  “Islo is gone.” He rephrased after losing the brief battle of wills. “And with it, a huge number of Warden troops. The best estimate we have from the Goon scouts we have in the field suggest we’ve knocked out as much as a third of their army.” Cayden allowed his friends a brief moment of self-congratulations before he continued. “The real question is, what do we do next?”

  “The bridges, wasn’t it?” Michael asked.

  “That appears to be their next destination,” Valserys confirmed, indicating the two bridges that crossed the Ryks river at the roughly halfway point between Bastion and the ruins of Islo.

  “The real question isn’t if the Wardens are going to the bridges, it is if they are worth defending,” Asch said.

  Cayden tapped the tip of his nose. “She’s got it in one. With the Islo and other player forces added to our own, the combined army is greatly expanded.” He brushed at the side of the War Frame, manipulating its surface to call up a new menu. “Once all units are back to full strength we’ll have about Sixteen-hundred infantry men and two hundred Cavalry.”

  “But there are some problems with that,” Valserys added.

  “There are.” Cayden agreed. “Right now we don’t have enough Field Supply Limit for all of our forces.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Michael asked.

  “It means that if we deploy them all in the field at once, we start getting charged extreme upkeep costs in terms of Food, Production and Grand Zenni,” Cayden replied. “We have enough to field about half the army right now, but anything over a thousand at one time is going to cost us.”

  Michael crossed his arms. “So that should be our priority for construction. Shouldn’t it?”

  “It would be if we didn’t also bring home a little over nine thousand civilians.” Silver said as she rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “We have housing for not even half that many, and now that Islo isn’t providing us with any Food, we’ve only got enough to feed all our mouths for about twelve days.”

  “We can feed them all for the time being,” Cayden assured the others as a ripple of worry ran around the table. “The increased population allows us to work another three tiles around the city, which should alleviate that worry once we get some farms up and running, but housing is going to be our number one priority. Over-population is giving us the same sort of negatives we get from having too many soldiers under arms, and unlike the soldiers, we can’t alleviate the problem by having them sit around and do nothing.”

  “So you’re saying that victory has defeated us?” Michael chuckled.

  Cayden snorted. “I’m saying that we need to take a few days and secure our gains, even though we’d be better off going on the offense if we could.”

  “Then there won’t be any defense of the bridges?” Silver asked.

  “Not unless we come up with some grand plan in the next few days,” Asch replied before Cayden could. “As soon as the turn starts tomorrow morning, we’ll be smashing the northernmost bridge. After that, we’ll be taking stock to see if we can put up a meaningful defense of the southern bridge. Ideally, we can hold it for a day or two before smashing it as well.”

  Silver arched a fine black eyebrow at the repeated mention of we but rather than comment on that; she considered the strategy. “Can’t the Warden troops just swim across? Or… I dunno, zombie walk across the bottom? It isn’t like they need to breath.”

  “I’m actually kind of proud of this one,” Cayden replied with a wide grin. “Valserys?”

  “Yes, Field Marshall.” The elder Elan replied. With a gesture, he swept away the current image on the War Frame, and with a few more he drew up an image of the Ryks that stretched south of bastion and north all the way to Sunè. The Warden troops were much closer in the image, their army pressed against the bank of the river, while the Elan forces opposing them were stretched over ten hexes to the north and six to the south.

  “While it is indeed possible for Warden troops to swim, I believe that this Temujin will find it tactically inadvisable,” Valserys explained. “The current of the Ryks is strong and swift. Even a Warden soldier will be swept some distance downstream if they enter the water. Though the specific distance is quite variable.”

  As the Elan general spoke, banners indicating various Warden units took to the river. The moment they did so, however, the individual banners split and fragmented, a single unit producing up to twenty miniature banners that traveled downstream, coming up in ones and twos on the Bastion side of the river before being quickly dispatched.

  “You can see what happens when they do so. Their formations are broken, the individual soldiers scattered. They all make it across the river, which would not be true for our soldiers, but they do so in such a scattered and fragmented way as to be functionally useless as an armed force.”

  Si
lver’s head bobbed as the demonstration came to a close. “So long as we guard our side of the river…”

  “They shall not pass.” Cayden finished for her. “It stretches our line quite a bit, which is worrisome if they have some other surprise, but so long as we keep units across from them, down enough of the river bank, they can’t ford it. And even if a few do breach, they can’t bring their siege equipment across either.”

  “Which makes Sunè our next battleground.” Michael pointed to Islo’s northern sister city. “Are we going to burn that one to the ground as well?”

  Silver gave a disapproving gesture before any of the others could. “Even a stupid opponent wouldn’t let that work twice.”

  “A defense of the city then.”

  “We won’t have the manpower to do that either,” Cayden replied. “If we pile enough troops into the city to make a difference there is the very real possibility that the Wardens leave the city and try to ford the river instead. If we don’t put enough in, then they take it and kill our defenders in the bargain.”

  Michael seemed aghast. “It sounds like you are suggesting we just let the city fall.”

  Cayden and Asch exchanged glances before the latter leaned back on her heels. “The city will start it’s evacuation as soon as we demolish the second bridge. That should space out the refugees well enough that they don’t further exacerbate our problems.”

  “And remove the last stumbling block between Bastion and their army.” Michael persisted. “I get that we want to keep Elan casualties at a minimum, but at some point, we need to make a stand. Sunè sits astride the Ryks, if they capture the city, then they have their river crossing.”

  “Just forcing them up that far buys us over a week,” Cayden replied. “And we’re already working on plans for what happens once they are on our side of the river. Have a little faith.”

  “Care to fill us in?”

  “I said working on,” Cayden said, to table-wide laughter.

  “What about the shackles?” Silver asked once the mirth had died down.

  “I’ve instructed the garrison to conduct an exhaustive search, as you requested,” Valserys replied. “A magical search might turn up more, but at this point, I am confident that the only shackles in Bastion are the ones chained to the wall in the dungeon.”