Scrambled Lives

by Rue Vespers

  “And for human players?” Jenner persisted.

  “For humans there are amulets enchanted to increase your level, your fighting abilities and your body and what-not. Increases your health points or lets you run at elf-speed, or it does a bunch of those things altogether. Depends on the amulet. They’re called the blessings and they’re hidden in the game for you to find, unless you plan to steal them from another player.”

  The security guard motioned vaguely to the shop at his back. “We’ve got two blessings turned in today, a clay Cadipa for speed, costing one hundred golds, and a Zerotte that packs a wallop for a low-ranking human. Pretty thing.”

  “What’s it look like?” Jenner asked when the man didn’t go on.

  He received a glare for not just leaving it alone. “Green stone and silver. It’s the Tree of Life within an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. It costs an incredible amount of golds.” Snippily, the guard added, “You got any gold in your little leather purse?”

  “Not yet,” Jenner said tightly.

  “And you won’t, not for a long time.”

  Temper piqued, Jenner said, “Hopefully they’re still up for sale when I do.”

  “They won’t be. A human House will pay us top dollar for the Zerotte; some shopper will snatch up the Cadipa by the end of the day. Blessings don’t last long.” The guard turned away, clearly finished wasting his breath on someone he deemed unworthy.

  Jenner was satisfied with what he’d learned anyway. He crossed the road and arrived at the dock to look around for this thing called the scuttle pen.

  The dock was a busy place. Workers along the planks were gutting fish and wrapping them up for customers as fat cats lolled about, their tails twitching contentedly beneath the tables. A group of heavily armed men and women were boarding a boat destined for the Fortune Islands, carrying provisions over their shoulders and slipping silver coins to the captain once aboard.

  Fun Fact Time! The Fortune Islands are only above the waves for four-hour periods. Hunters who do not get back to their boats in time drown unless they are equipped for underwater fortune seeking, which can be quite lucrative!

  Should Jenner save up for a silver and take that trip himself? He needed a fortune of his own for a wand, for armor and weapons and blessings, and potions from that apothecary. But the fortune hunters aboard the boat weren’t taking so many weapons for no reason. They had swords and axes on their hips, knives and bows and packed quivers hanging from their belts, shields on their backs and daggers tucked into their boots. A few had wands in slim black casings that hung on leather thongs about their necks.

  Jenner had nothing but his own two fists. He resumed his search for the scuttle pen and soon found it beyond the fish gutters, helpfully labeled SKUTEL PEN upon a dilapidated sign. It was a wooden corral that could hold up to fifty people, though only two dozen were inside. Sitting on halved barrels and leaning idly against the sides, Jenner let himself through the gate to join them.

  A man in a smart green vest stepped up to the corral. “I need ten strong lads and lasses! Six pence for an easy day’s work.”

  “What kind of work?” someone called.

  The fellow got a dodgy look. “Security.”

  Four people left with him. Those who remained in the pen muttered that those security positions were likely as look-outs for robberies or red-shirts for raids. Jenner was surprised that even four players were willing to accept such shitty pay. Six pence wouldn’t cover anything more than a day’s food and board, and barely that.

  Several more visitors came to the corral over the next few minutes, offering six pence for cashier work, seven pence to gut fish, five pence to sell fruit from a drum, even a lowly three pence to help load a boat. The scuttle trickled out of the pen in ones and twos, though nobody shifted for the woman who offered three pence until she raised it bad-temperedly to five. To kill time, Jenner checked on the state of his character upload percentage, which had barely budged from 5% to 5.1%.

  Yikes. That seemed really slow to him.

  A balding, harried man in a white robe with two golden braids down the front appeared at the gate. Briskly, he said, “Fifteen pence to anyone willing to join a cleaners’ crew for Tremaine Wizarding College. Dinner will be included plus scavenging permitted.”

  Everyone in the pen got up like a cattle prod was jammed into their backsides. This was a good job, a very good job. Jenner leaped into the line and filed out through the gate. A wagon was waiting for them upon the road, two gleaming black horses hitched up and swishing their tails.

  The moment Jenner sat down in the back of the wagon, the blocks soared back.

  Congrats! You are now Level 2!

  Congrats! You have gotten a job as a janitor at Tremaine Wizarding College! This ancient school of magic is currently under the leadership of Headmaster Magus Vonex Rainwater.

  Somebody else was reading the same message. Snorting with laughter, a woman said, “Vonex Rainwater sounds like the name of a prescription douche.”

  The blocks scrambled into yet another message.

  Inner-World News: Tremaine Wizarding College used to be the premier school of magic in all of Talvenor. It fell on hard times along with its host House after the Gray Wars left its very walls demon-cursed. Through the hard work of many talented wizards over the years, the effects of the curse have been reduced. However, aspiring young wizarding pupils often select other schools in which to hone their abilities.

  Fun Fact Time! Scavenging at a wizarding school can be a rewarding activity. Take whatever you find to your nearest apothecary and see if it’s worth gold . . . or crumbs. Don’t steal, though! Many wizarding items are charmed to prevent you from doing so.

  Joining the driver upon the wagon seat, the man in the robe withdrew a wand from the folds of fabric. He pointed it at the scuttle in the back. Suddenly, white robes fell down upon each of them, identical to his except for a lack of gold braids. The robes were so long that they puddled at Jenner’s feet.

  “You will address me as Alvus, and I am your supervisor,” the man said, holding to the back of the seat as the wagon lurched into motion. “You will be cleaning the East Wing of the college. Do not make eye contact with the wizards, be they students or staff, though few should be present at the school today. Do not speak to them unless spoken to first. Move aside swiftly to let them pass and incline your head as they do. An anti-stealing spell will be performed upon each of you at the end of the day. Thieving will lose you both the item taken as well as your pay. However, anything you find discarded upon the floor is fair game.”

  He turned to face the front.

  “Can’t they clean the school themselves with spells?” Jenner mumbled.

  A scuttle man cast him a sidelong look. “They’re wizards, mate. They don’t clean nothing.”

  Jenner thought about his map, and it appeared in his fingers. He unfolded it and watched as the blinking dot moved through the crummy, muddy roads of the Rundown. They were getting closer and closer to one of those mysterious, unmarked regions in the city.

  He glanced around the driver as the horses turned left and passed under a wide archway to a cobblestone road. Carved in the arch were the words Stronghold of Tremaine.

  The blinking dot disappeared from the map.

  Interesting! Not only could the features of this region not be seen upon the parchment, but Jenner could not see them either when he raised his head. The world around the wagon was . . . shifting. One moment he was staring at black towers rising above a thick thatch of trees, and in the next moment, the towers were sinking down and disappearing. Cottages grew up like mushrooms amongst neatly tended gardens, but then they continued to grow, rooms wrapping around and around the cottages until they were gargantuan buildings overlaying the gardens and leaping up to the road to throw the wagon into shadow.

  Robed figures flickered here and there like ghosts, their features indistinct. Now the black towers were rising elsewhere, somehow jumping from the left side o
f the wagon to the right. Then they split apart, one dead ahead, one appearing behind them. The tower ahead unfurled like a black-petaled flower.

  Jenner blinked and it was gone; he didn’t see either of the towers again. It was disorienting to watch for very long, so he put his head down. The other scuttle were doing the same.

  Inner-World News: Many of the wizarding strongholds within Galadras are protected by magic to prevent humans from sneaking in to raid. After the Nightstorm, in which a human army of ten thousand warriors led by Emmerlin the Strong simultaneously laid waste to three high-ranking wizarding Houses and their lands simultaneously, anti-mapping and sight-disturbance spells became common. Emmerlin the Strong was captured in battle and delivered to the High Council of Talvenor, where he and his surviving warriors were sentenced to immediate scrambling in a unanimous vote of nine.

  This punishment resulted in a lawsuit against Scrambled Lives on behalf of Emmett Schultz, 26, a Dublin, Ireland-based player upset to lose his character of Emmerlin the Strong. Since you wish not to receive Outer-World News, the legal arguments and the judge’s ruling are irrelevant.

  Oh God, the game’s artificial intelligence was snarky when you disabled its precious features! Jenner was sort of falling in love with it for that.

  There hadn’t been any guards stationed at the archway to this wizarding terrain, he realized, but he supposed no guards were necessary. How could you attack a place that you could hardly see?

  “Almost there,” Alvus called. Jenner put his map away.

  The wagon rocked to a stop a minute later. When he looked up, the world was blessedly still. They were parked upon a paved driveway, which curled around an imposing college. The main building reached four stories into the air, mineral streaks coloring the gray walls. Ivy-covered dormitories stood upon either side.

  The air tingled strangely on Jenner’s skin, a weak electrical current making the hair rise on his arms. That had to be the effects of the magic all around him, he reasoned. There was so much magic being done here that he sensed it even as a human.

  Ushered off the wagon, the scuttle followed Alvus around the main building to a side door. They entered a room packed with cleaning materials and crowded together there amongst the mops and brooms and dusters.

  Withdrawing his wand again, the supervisor pointed it at the three scuttle closest to him. “You, you, and you, first floor entryway, follow the footprints. I want that floor swept so clean that you can eat off it, and those windows should shine. Go.”

  Brooms, feather dusters, rags, and spray bottles appeared in the arms of those scuttle, who stared at the floor as if they were seeing something upon it while they trailed away into the corridor.

  The wand pointed at different players in turn. “You and you will be sweeping the stairs and polishing the banisters. They should be spotless. Go. You and you and you, report to the second floor classrooms. I don’t want to see a single cobweb when you’re through. Go. You and you and you, third floor classrooms. There aren’t as many on the third floor, so when you’re done, head downstairs to assist with the second floor classrooms. Go. You . . .”

  The wand pointed at Jenner. A broom came to his hand.

  “Fourth floor laboratory,” Alvus ordered. “For the love of the game, don’t touch anything on the counters or tables, or be so foolish as to open the cages. You don’t know what spells have been performed on those objects, and you may be interrupting an experiment in progress. Curiosity scrambles scuttle in there every year. Just take care of the rubbish and sweep the floor. Go.”

  Green footsteps glowed in the corridor. Jenner hiked up the front of his long robes in his fist to keep from tripping and followed them obediently.

  Chapter Six

  Jenner had a vague memory of holding a broom in his other life, his life out there, sweeping up twenty pounds of kibble that spilled out of a ripped bag. He hadn’t been happy about the broom that time. Then again, the most exciting thing he ever found on the floor at Zoomies was a dropped quarter. As far as he knew.

  The footsteps led him to a grand entryway with tall windows, stunning mosaic walls, and a dazzling chandelier with hundreds of burning candles that never dripped. Or the entryway should have been grand. A literal blanket of litter covered every inch of the floor. Bits of old food, empty mugs, crumpled papers, torn fabric, and snapped sticks were all mixed up together. Liquid had spilled and dried in multiple areas, Jenner’s boots making sticky sounds upon it. The scuttle assigned to this room were already hard at work.

  The mess continued up the staircase. Junk crinkled and broke under his shoes all the way to the second floor. More scuttle were going through the classrooms with care, unfurling the papers to see what was written upon them, picking things out of the snapped sticks. Wands! That was what those sticks were. The broken wands had hollow centers, the scuttle janitors tapping the halves against their palms and squirreling away whatever came out into their purses.

  The green footsteps guided him from hallways to staircases until he came to the fourth floor laboratory. The last step shined brightly to let him know that he was arriving at his destination. Then all of the footsteps disappeared, leaving him in the doorway to the lab.

  His jaw dropped.

  The laboratory was a maze of counters, free-standing cabinets, tables, and stacked cages. Within the cages were odd, twisted objects instead of animals. Others were empty, or appeared to be. Murky liquids frothed and steamed in hundreds of beakers, which were connected by complex networks of glass tubes that stretched over the gaps between counters. The smell of the gas the beakers released was appalling, a rancid yet cloying perfume that made him wrinkle his nose. Fire sporadically burst up here and there beneath some of the beakers, causing them to burp more gases into the room.

  Bins of ingredients stood along the walls, labeled in jargon, and glistening braids of hair and ribbons hung down from pegs. A human skull rested upon a window sill, turning on its own to stare through empty eyes at Jenner. It was not the only thing moving within the lab. Skeletal birds and bats were roosting high above in the rafters. They cast down wary looks to Jenner in the doorway, some of the birds snapping their beaks in warning.

  None of that, though, was what had made his jaw drop.

  It was the mess.

  Wizards were goddamned disgusting! The floor was a complete pigsty from end to end of the lab: decorated in torn pages from books and reams of balled-up papers, singed ribbons and robes, shards of broken beakers and ampoules, molding, half-eaten sandwiches and shattered lenses and snapped wands. Thousands of white feathers rested upon the trash like a gigantic pillow fight had taken place in here. The only clean thing in the whole lab was the rubbish bin, untouched and pristine in a corner.

  “Jesus tap-dancing Christ!” he swore at last.

  Fun Fact Time! As Jesus Christ does not exist within Scrambled Lives mythology, most players choose to take the names of the game’s most vaulted players in vain. Examples of this are Hogdoor (Hogdoor’s balls!) and Shirvath (Shirvath! Or Shirvath’s luck!). Hogdoor the Troll was renowned for his tremendous size, and Magus Shirvath was the first player to achieve Level 200 before she scrambled herself by stepping into an undetected glitch. The developers apologized for the mishap and cleared the glitch, but refused to restore the player’s highly feared character.

  Jenner didn’t even know where to start in this catastrophe of a room! Overwhelmed, he picked up half of a wand by his boot and tapped it against his palm. A gray tooth rattled out.

  You have found a common Capricorn tooth! Frequently used by beginner wizards, these magical fish teeth have a short shelf life and are most often used in disposable wands.

  That was all good information, but what was a Capricorn tooth worth? Anything? Jenner rolled the tooth back and forth in his palm and decided to keep it. If it was worth money, that was great. If it wasn’t, then he had just wasted a little time. He opened the drawstrings of his purse and dropped the fish tooth inside.

  Then
he chucked the stick into the rubbish bin. It disappeared upon entry, making him scoff. Wizards didn’t even need to worry about the trash overflowing! The rubbish bin was charmed to stop that from happening. Yet they still couldn’t be bothered to drop their trash inside. If it weren’t for the magical powers, he would pray to never get scrambled into a wizard. On top of being obnoxious and entitled, they were gross.

  He got to work. Tooth after tooth went into his purse; handful after handful of chicken feathers and garbage went into the rubbish bin. The skeletal creatures forgot about him in time, chittering happily to one another in the rafters and the skull turning in a half-circle to gaze out the window.

  None of the papers that he picked up contained anything useful. Scribbled numbers and letters and doodles adorned most of them; others were ungraded, half-completed exams. One paper was a note apparently passed between the wizarding students of this lab, stating PROFESSOR MORDECAI IS A DICK and everybody else drawing penises of varying sizes and colors around the words.

  School was school just about anywhere. Or so he thought. He couldn’t name a single school that he attended, or a teacher. The lost knowledge didn’t trouble him overly much. None of it was relevant to his new world.

  He picked up another wand half and shook it. A sapphire blue octagonal scale slid out and patted softly into his hand. It was a lovely little thing that shined from the light through the windows.

  You have found a common juvenile dragon scale! Frequently used by beginner wizards, these magical scales have a short shelf life and are most often used in disposable wands.