by Brian Simons
“I can do this,” Coral yelled, being blown back a few feet. She raised her bow toward the top of the tower.
“Are you insane?” Daniel yelled. It was 11:59 a.m. Insane might be all they had time for.
Coral stumbled into the sand, but stood back up and raised her bow again.
“Let me help,” Daniel yelled, and he trudged toward her. He stood behind her and put one arm around her waist. The wind wasn’t blowing him off course the way it was affecting everyone else. He didn’t know what was different.
With Coral pressed against him, she was able to raise her bow against the wind. Daniel cast his eyes downward to keep the sand out. He saw the dauntless gauntlets covering his hands and he knew, that’s what the difference was. These gloves had taken on a part of Coral’s personality when she crafted them. She was a woman who would not be moved.
Maybe she was just that brave. Or maybe it was sheer stubbornness. Either way, just like Coral, Daniel would not be moved either. Not by wind or sand, not by fear or pain.
Coral’s arrow grew red, then white hot. She aimed toward Sagma’s tower, but her bow wavered in the intensifying winds.
The arrow took on a yellow aura that darkened to orange. There was no sand in that aura, only the sight of distorted air made preternaturally hot. Whatever grains of sand approached that arrow transformed into miniature droplets of glass that fell to the ground and cooled.
That burning aura sent a pulse of adrenaline through Daniel’s body. It was so hot, and so close. The memory of burning skin came back in a painful flash. The smell of charred flesh as he exhaled the smoke of his own burning lungs. The twin mindset of knowing he was dying, and disbelief that a game could be so real, and so cruel, as to inflict that much trauma before his HP ran out.
He squinted his eyes and pushed that memory aside. Not all heat would singe, not all fire would kill. He dug his toes further into the sand and held tight. No spectral memory of death would control him today.
Still holding Coral with one arm wrapped around her waist, he slid the other hand down her arm until his other dauntless gauntlet rested behind the hand that held her bowstring taut. Her weapon stopped wavering. She raised her weapon and resolved her aim.
Coral released the bowstring. The arrow shot with feverish speed, cutting through Sybil’s windstorm like a hot knife through butter, as impervious to the countervailing force of the wind as Coral and Daniel were, thanks to those gauntlets. It arced up as it reached the top of the tower, then plummeted down, landing on one of those crimson crystals.
The arrow planted itself there, its shaft sticking straight up. It had melted the sand that swept onto the crystal, and continued melting what Sybil’s windstorm blew its way. A cloudy sheet of fresh glass pooled from the arrow’s blazing head.
Before Daniel knew it, Coral had fired more and more arrows. They volleyed through the air and landed atop the tower. As they did, the red light in the sky grew dim. As long as cyclone winds pumped more fresh sand onto the tower, Coral’s arrows would continue smothering them with molten glass, blocking the noontime sun from reflecting off them. Sagma’s hypnotic beacon was undone.
The sun passed over the tower and began its long afternoon descent toward the horizon. Any trace of red light flickered out completely.
Sybil stopped singing and spat sand out of her mouth.
Podonos got to his feet, in much better shape than Daniel had hoped for. Other players had really come through. His health was restored, and he sported an impressive array of buffs now. He drew back his bear arm to deliver a blow to Sagma. The way things stood, it could be a deadly one.
“Stop!” Lyla yelled. “Don’t kill him, please!” So she did have some hope left in her after all, that Sagma might take her people back. She and the other orcs flooded the space between Sagma and Podonos, a buffer between warring deities.
“Let these people go,” Lyla said, turning next toward Sagma. “We will serve you willingly instead.”
“I will not relinquish what I have gained,” Sagma said.
“Then I have no choice,” Alua said. She stepped forward and raised her arms. The word Channel appeared above her head as she activated one of her most powerful Medium abilities.
Sagma’s eyes turned white. The ghostly shape of a white eagle superimposed itself over Alua’s body as her eyes glazed white as well. Then the words Baptismal Rain appeared above Sagma’s head and the sky burst open. She had tapped into his skill tree and spent all of her MP to activate one of the god’s own skills.
Enormous drops of water crashed into the sand, soaking Sagma’s feathers, Podonos’s fur, and everything else in the desert. Daniel clung to Coral. Everyone else kicked frantically to keep from sinking into the wet sand, but together, the two of them resisted the movement of the ground below.
The rain washed away the impurities that littered the desert. The debuffs faded away – Slow, Silence, even the mark of Sagma that so many players had brought into the desert.
Sagma’s tower sank into the quicksand, floor by floor, story by story, until even the crystals atop the tower were well below the desert. If the tower’s treasury really did contain what was left of the players’ gold, it had just become irretrievable.
When the rain stopped, Alua was shaking. She collapsed onto the sand and buried her face in her hands.
“You have no head Priest,” Lyla said to Sagma, “and your temple must be built from the ground up. A new temple, for an honest future, one without the mistakes of the past.” She waved toward the empty space the huge tower had taken up just moments ago.
“Yes,” Sagma squawked. He looked up at Podonos, a god that could now kill him handily. Sagma had to start from scratch to rebuild a following if he would ever have enough strength to match Podonos again. “I accept the orcs as my supplicants.” The orcs cheered and crowded around their god in celebration.
Sage Natan stepped forward, also clad in a winged suit of wyvern skin but still sporting his bony yellow cape. “Mighty Podonos, let it be remembered that you won this battle with dignity and showed mercy on Wise Sagma.”
“Yes,” Podonos said before turning north and running back toward his temple on Hiber Mountain.
Sal walked up to his friends. “I don’t even know what to say,” he said. “Thank you guys. How did this even happen?”
“I think Arbyten will have to answer that one,” Coral said.
“You’re still getting evicted,” Sybil said.
“I feel so sick,” Sal said. “What am I going to do?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Sybil said. “You could move in with me if you want. And pay rent of course. Something fair. We can work out the details later.”
“Thank you!” he said and threw his arms around the little elf.
“Your mind is clear,” Sagma said, “like everyone else’s.” His eyes were trained on Alua. She was on her knees, bent over so that her face was close to the sand. When she sat back and moved her hands away, her face was red and wet with tears.
“Yes,” she said.
“Whatever influence you were under,” Sagma said, “it is gone now. You are free.”
“What is he talking about,” Daniel asked.
“I have been… infatuated with the Regent for some time now,” Alua said.
Daniel nodded uncomfortably.
“I know now that it was not voluntary. Somehow, he coerced me. I left Cedril to pursue an impossible love for a man that has only ever caused pain and misery. I need to know how this happened.”
Daniel reached into his inventory and pulled out a small scroll. “Would this help?”
“You would give away such a powerful relic to help me?” Alua asked.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said.
Coral and the others crowded around.
Alua unfurled the scroll and read the script aloud. The paper lifted from her palm and rippled like water against a still breeze. When the rippling stopped, the square paper was replaced with a vision of the p
ast, a window into a time long ago.
The group watched Harold, the Regent of Havenstock, in the days before he took power. He was a young Knight, on a journey with Alua and Cedril. Harold left his companions fighting zombies in the swamp and entered Galbrag’s cottage. Inside, he forced the swamp witch to part with two powerful potions.
One was a zombification potion — not the kind of thing Daniel wanted a man like Harold to get his hands on. The other was a love potion. Alua gasped when the floating window into the hidden past showed Harold handing Alua the love potion and telling her it was a mana potion, to restore her energy after her battle with Galbrag’s zombies.
That was how Harold secured Alua’s devotion to him. He poisoned her with false emotions. Daniel felt a little better now for having poisoned Harold with actual poison, though he did feel guilty about poisoning the guards.
The past continued to play before them. When Harold returned to Havenstock, he visited the man who ruled it then, King Frederic. He brought a guest though, a small ogre with a Confusion debuff. The little green guy attacked the King, though he couldn’t have known what he was doing. Then Harold stabbed the King in the back. He murdered his way into power and framed the ogre for the King’s death.
Daniel recognized that poor little man. It was Grum, the ogre who was imprisoned under the castle with Embra the dragon.
“Grum is innocent,” Daniel said, amazed at the story he just watched.
“How do you know of Grum?” Alua said.
“I was exploring the castle,” Daniel said. “He is trapped in the basement with Embra.”
“Grum is alive,” Alua said, “after all this time…”
The vision continued. After Harold assumed the title Regent, he had a visitor. A pale-skinned elf with white hair.
“Sage Tawn?” Sybil asked. “But it can’t be. He should be lavender like the other drow, but he’s the same pale golden color I am. Why does he look like a regular elf?”
“Harold took over Havenstock hundreds of years ago, before the elf queen banished the drow,” Alua said. “There were no dark elves then, only elves.”
“So what does this mean?” Sybil asked.
The vision ended.
“I do not know,” Alua said. “Thank you for sharing the truth with me. I hope our paths cross again.”
Alua turned and left. Daniel wanted to follow after her, to offer any assistance he could. Instead, a hand clasped his shoulder.
“Practically had to jump to reach your shoulder,” said a voice from behind him. Daniel spun around. It was Mayor Hammergeld.
“You’re an honorable young man, Daniel_of_Manayunk,” he said. “Just the kind of leader we need on the mountain.”
I’m no leader, Daniel thought. Marco made that pretty clear.
“What are you doing here, Mayor?” Daniel asked.
“Our patron deity was on a suicide mission, we had to see how it would turn out,” he said. “I didn’t expect this to turn into a talent scouting mission, but it did.”
“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.
“We’d like you to lead our army. Become a general in our war against the elves. What do you say?”
“That’s incredible,” Daniel said. He was still without a class. This would change all that.
“Then it’s settled. Come to my office and we’ll start you off right away.”
Class Selected: General
Congratulations! Your class has been changed to General. The higher Diplomacy a General has, the more troops he can command at once. As a General you gain an extra +2 Diplomacy per level.
“Oh, and you did a nice job cajoling old Hiber to stop being so indifferent to what happens to our mountain. If he hadn’t distracted Sagma when he did, the battle could have gone very differently. Here is your reward.”
Quest Complete: Hiber Nation
Hiber allied with Podonos, ensuring that the dwarven kingdom would survive another day. He may not be a permanent ally yet, but it’s a start.
Reward: Kobold Steel Armor (full set) and 100 bars of gold.
Daniel turned to his friends. “Here’s everyone’s share of the gold bars.”
Sybil took hers first. “I can’t wait to see what these fetch on the exchange. It’s good that this day wasn’t a complete waste. You know, aside from rescuing this numbskull.”
“Come on, it’s not my fault,” Sal said.
“We know, Sal,” Coral said. “Thanks for the gold bars, and good luck everyone.”
“Wait,” Daniel said. “What do you mean good luck?”
“Maybe it’s better if I strike out on my own,” she said.
“Is this because of Marco? I can promise you he’s not coming back.”
“No, Daniel, it’s not because of Marco. I don’t like feeling ambushed, and I have this feeling I can’t shake, like if I keep hanging around with you it’s just going to happen again.”
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“I need to be fair to myself,” she said. “Sybil, Sal, thank you for welcoming me into the team. Be well.” Coral turned to leave.
Daniel couldn’t find any words that would keep her there, so he just watched as she took a few steps and teleported away.
36
“I’m confused,” Domin said. He had called Hector up to his office, and Hector had a pretty good idea why.
“Yes, sir?”
“You told me not to worry about the message boards, yet you neglected to delete a thread instructing players to destroy their visors,” Domin said.
“Not destroy entirely,” Hector said.
“Do you know how many players replied to that thread, Pérez?”
“At last count,” Hector said, “it was just over 20,000. Quite a lot of engagement on that thread.”
“You understand I don’t want to fire you,” Domin said, “but—”
“You understand,” Hector said, cutting off his boss, “or at least I assume you understand, that we had a safety mechanism built into the visors long before the game ever launched. It was tricky to implement a retinal pulse that would override the game’s built-in protocols, and even trickier to design a way for the nanotech to force players to open their eyes, but we did it. I did it.”
“You’re talented, Pérez, but that’s not the point,” Domin said.
“The point is, sir, that this message thread warned about a potentially dangerous subversion to our tech, one that quite frankly should trouble you more than it does. Whoever did this undermined our safety features and used this exploit to drive players toward dumping money into the game against their interests. That someone would need to have programming override authority or superuser access. You wouldn’t have any hunches about who altered the visors’ functionality, would you sir?”
“I assure you, Pérez, the workings of that visor are below my pay grade.”
“And the money?” Hector asked. “Before I came up here, I saw that one billion gold coins vanished from the in-game economy.”
“That’s our money,” Domin said, “and I’ve invested it accordingly. Meanwhile, if you ever disobey an order from me again, I don’t care how talented you are, I’ll have you removed from your desk and thrown out of the building before you can even think the letters ‘AFK.’”
“Yes, sir,” Hector said. “Is that all?”
“It certainly is.”
37
Coral teleported back to Havenstock before logging off. The last thing she needed was to log in, find herself in the Sand Barrens, and face off against a player killer. Havenstock wouldn’t be safe, now that Daniel had poisoned the Regent, but she’d worry about that another time.
Daniel wasn’t a bad guy. He had a good heart and he was trying to do what was right. The trouble was, his idea of doing the right thing was to keep the important facts to himself and charge ahead without consulting his “team.” That’s not the way Coral wanted to play.
She took her laptop down to the kitchen and made a sandwich. The message
boards were on fire. There were thousands of replies to her post about the Travail visor, and a lot of players that said they would meet her in the desert to face off against Sagma except they were on the wrong server. Some messages post-dating the fall of Sagma’s temple confirmed that there were head Priests on other servers gathering gold from players, but those iterations of the temple had sunken into oblivion as well.
There were also posts by angry players that had been duped into donating their money to Arbyten. There was no word from the company on whether they would issue any refunds, but one player speculated that Arbyten had already spent it all.