Scrambled Lives

by Rue Vespers

  At first he mistook them for wizards, since the only time he had seen a chariot was in the Fortune Islands with wizards in the back. Then his heart beat faster at the woman holding the reins in the lead chariot.

  It was Mereene. She wore a silver battle dress, her long hair held back by stiff, golden feather clips. Two women of equally exquisite beauty were standing behind her. They were armed with swords and cross-bows, spears and wands. The second chariot held armed men, and they were as handsome as the women were beautiful. Another seven chariots followed in their wake, all of them drawn by a pair of snow-white horses.

  “Succubi and incubi,” Ocelo said in wonder. “This sight I have never seen in any life.”

  “Even they’re here to fight,” Rosy said in begrudging respect.

  Mereene drew up the reins to speak with a guard posted at the gates. He stepped aside a minute later, and one person within each chariot lifted a wand. The horses grew wings at the spell. Turning, Mereene gestured to the chariots behind her.

  “Ho!” she cried.

  “Ho indeed,” Rosy mumbled, the teacup’s respect only extending so far.

  “Shut up, Rosy,” Jenner said. The reins snapped and the horses bolted through the gates to the courtyard and up into the air, drawing the chariots behind them. They curled around the castle to go east.

  “And all bonds will be broken,” Ocelo said softly, staring to the stars as the last chariot wheeled away. “The succubi and their brothers are stirred from their beds, and the children shall be lifted up as offerings, and the darkest wizards have won the fight to wield the worst of their magics. The High Council has snapped the yoke, and thus snapped itself in two.”

  “What does that mean?” Jenner asked.

  She was quiet. He couldn’t say if the mermaid even registered his question.

  “Let’s find the fruit again!” Rosy suggested, and Ocelo came back to herself.

  They let the cup run through the side quest two more times, and then someone yelled from downstairs, “The dragons are here! The dragons are here!”

  A great shouting and a stampede of feet resounded throughout the castle. The three of them went downstairs and out to the garden, where they were sorted into their squadrons beneath a full moon. At the far end of the garden were hulking, enormous dragons, already saddled to carry their passengers, the armorers moving among them to tighten the straps.

  “Come on! Get into position!” a commander castigated. “What kind of battalion is this?”

  Jenner was far from well-versed in battle, but one didn’t have to be a pilot to know that someone had fucked up if there was a helicopter in a tree, and he didn’t have to be a commander to recognize how unspeakably pathetic this battalion of new players was. At the front of the lines were the Level 1s, a squadron which was growing smaller every minute as one real-world player or another checked out of the game to try again on a better day for Talvenor. Each time another player went missing, the line had to shuffle together to fill the gap.

  The Level 2s and 3s were next, standing in slightly uneven rows. Then came the 4s, and behind them was Jenner among the 5s. He had a good view of their crappy battalion from his position upon the slope.

  The poor little dragonlings, kittens, bear cubs, and wolf pup in the front lines were too young to understand what they were supposed to do. There weren’t many of them, thankfully, the shifter babies numbering no more than nine. Many were being cradled in the arms of the Level 1 humans, demons, and dwarves. One striped kitten was inconsolable, mewing and struggling to get down.

  Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for Eve of War.

  A hiss of disgust rose from many in the battalion at the wholly inappropriate notification. Jenner heard himself hiss with them. It was a game, yet it was real; they could die yet not die; it was a mind-fuck of fantasy and reality, but his hiss was as heartfelt as it would have been in the outer-world. The game could shove its stupid merit trophy!

  “Shut up and be still!” the mustachioed Level 1 commander yelled bad-temperedly at his whispering, shuffling troops. “And if any more of you outer-world players sign out of this game, I’ll make it my personal mission to track you down in every life you ever live in Scrambled Lives! To end it!”

  Despite his threat, the wolf pup immediately vanished, followed by the bear cubs and one of the two dragonlings.

  Jenner hoped against hope that the players of the remaining dragonling and kittens would decide to get out of their pods. When they did not, he realized they could be perma-added characters and unable to do so.

  Yes, it was just a game, but their presence disturbed him. It was like taking toddlers along to war as soldiers. And it didn’t surprise him at all that it was a demon patrol to bring them here. If he had to choose between being a wizard and being a demon in Scrambled Lives . . . they were both bad options.

  “Ice demons boarding!” A small party of black-eyed demons broke away from the ranks and took a path down to the dragons. “Elves over Level 5 boarding!” Another small party marched after the ice demons.

  That feeling of repulsion suddenly overcame Jenner, and he swept Rosy into his pocket to protect it. Commander Tetra was marching along the lines of Level 5s to inspect them. Jenner stood there with ramrod-straight posture and clenched his teeth until the man moved away with his creepy amulets.

  “Ugh,” he whispered.

  The mermaid was shivering. “It taints a human’s character, using so much demonic magic. As it taints him as well.”

  She nodded down the slope to the commander of the Level 1s, who also wore a clot of amulets around his neck. Increasingly embarrassed by his shoddy, shrinking squadron, he was shouting to stand up straight and slapping his troops on the backs of their heads. When the fussing kitten wriggled out of a player’s hold, the commander kicked it in fury.

  Twin roars of outrage broke the night, the first from Dan the Troll. He had been pointing the last of the elves to their dragon but covered the ground between them in several huge steps. The second roar was more of a scream, and then Jenner was knocked aside as an enormous striped female cat bounded through the ranks and spilled players everywhere to get to the front.

  “A child! A little child! How dare you? This is but a kitten who wants her mother!” The troll’s heavy fist descended atop the mustachioed man’s crown. The blow was so tremendous that it split his skull like a rotten peach. Grabbing him up before he could fall, Dan the Troll heaved him bodily into a dry fountain.

  Everyone froze.

  Then several more players vanished simultaneously among the Level 1s, 2s, and 3s.

  As Jenner picked himself up, the troll said to the adult cat, “Take these babies far away from here! If all else is to be lost, we will still hold to our decency! Anyone who stops them will have to deal with me.”

  The den mother rounded up the kittens, and they fled for the courtyard. Dan the Troll scooped up the little emerald-scaled dragonling, now the last one left of the babies, and carried it on his hip. “I will lead the 1s as well as the 3s. Level 1s boarding!” He guided their wobbling lines away.

  Boarding went quickly after that, and soon Jenner was in a saddle atop a gargantuan silver dragon. He left the teacup where it was since Commander Tetra was still stalking around, his troops shying away in their saddles as they felt the awfulness of his amulets.

  “Taking off!”

  Jenner yelped and held on as the dragon lifted up to its feet and burst into a run over the trampled earth. Its great wings beat and they took off, rising past the first floor of the castle, the second and third and the towers, until the people in the garden looked like ants far below. The wings churned as the dragon steered northeast.

  Stars twinkled against a black felt sky in every direction but the one they were going in. Lightning flashed within the roiling cloud cover over the plains, occasionally showing the soaring bodies of dragons. Booms teased at the outermost reaches of Jenner’s hearing. Not thunder, but explosions.

  Even in th
e full moonlight, there was little to be seen below as the miles fell away. A glint of light on a curling river, a swaying mass of trees, walled villages tucked away in the forest with watchfires burning orange along the perimeter. He thought about taking out his map to see what he was flying over, but his hands were full with the shield and sword. Entering them into his inventory crossed his mind, yet they might exceed the allotted weight. He didn’t care enough to find out.

  A dragon carrying part of the 1s squadron zipped past, half of the saddles empty. They could hardly be blamed for ditching the game, those with a choice in the matter. Jenner would have ditched himself. Scrambled Lives was looking a lot more like Man of War at the moment, but that was a game in which you expected to spawn in battle because battle was the whole point. It had been much more fun to spend his first day exploring Road of Royals, lollygagging about the scuttle pen, collecting Capricorn teeth in the laboratory, and meeting Rosy.

  More fun than this.

  He shuffled his weapons about and took the teacup out of his pocket. “Sorry. I thought the commander might smack you away again.”

  “Where is that asshole?” Rosy said, craning to see the occupants of the flying dragons around them. “There he is! Way in the back on a blue dragon and asleep in the saddle. Maybe he’ll fall off. A teacup can dream.”

  It was a new day, and the news popped up. Jenner skimmed the headlines.

  Inner-World News: Good morning! Select a headline below to read more.

  Both Sides Sustain Heavy Losses on the Plains of Araholle

  Vampire House Credits Itself for Troll Invasion, Though Evidence is Scant

  In Unprecedented Move, High Council Summons Necromancers To Secret Meeting

  Outraged by Rising Food Prices, Looters Strike Grocery Stores in Scapegoat Hills

  Cars in Talvenor? What Do YOU Think? Vote in the Poll!

  Notable ‘Deaths’: MachoNachoMan, Magus Indominus Hex, NeverScrambled

  “Vampires? They did this?” Jenner asked Ocelo, who was seated one saddle ahead.

  “Not vampires,” Ocelo replied, holding her long hair in a ponytail to keep it from flying everywhere. “Vampires always take credit for things they had no hand or fang in.”

  Jenner nodded to Dan the Troll, who shot past on a much smaller dragon with only one saddle. His onyx mount blended into the night sky so perfectly that it looked like the troll was flying upon nothing. Having wrapped a sheet around his torso, the dragonling was snuggled up inside and fast asleep against the troll’s back.

  The swirling cloud cover loomed larger and larger as they neared the plains, which were bathed in mist. The reverberations of the explosions carried all the way up to the dragon fleet, making Jenner’s teeth rattle. Though he could discern little feature below, each boom was accompanied by a gigantic purple flare spouting up from the earth to engulf huge, reeling shapes in fire.

  The trolls! Those shapes were the Blue Mountain trolls! He lost sight of them as the fleet descended well away from the scene of the battle.

  They landed upon a rocky, barren stretch of land swathed in white, the moon reduced to a hazy blob above and the stars blotted out in whole. The silver dragon lowered itself to its belly. Shuffling his weapons about again, Jenner swung his leg over the saddle and slid off.

  Little quakes vibrated through his feet from the faraway explosions. It was impossible to see much of this western flank with everything cloaked in white. The battalions already here to hold the west were lost out in the mist. His vision was limited to the bubble of space around him, and shifting shadows beyond that.

  Smaller dragons swooped above, carrying the commanders as they shouted down confusing directions to the individual squadrons about where to stand. Dan the Troll was the only one on the ground and even he looked baffled as the Level 2s shuffled this way and the Level 3s took ten steps that way and the Level 5s stepped closer to the lines of Level 4s while the Level 1s were made to step back to be closer to the 2s.

  Finally, the troll tilted his head back and shouted to the sky, “Leave off for the love of the game gods! What tomfoolery are you playing at?”

  A purple flare showed dimly through the mist, and the ground rumbled from another explosion. The dragons were still flying above the children’s battalion, the breeze of their passage rifling the hair of the ground troops. Someone shouted down to Dan the Troll for assistance, the onyx dragon returning for him. He boarded with the dragonling and was lost to sight.

  The temperature dropped several degrees as the minutes dragged on. Behind Jenner, someone whispered, “I don’t like this. It’s not normal.”

  Jenner didn’t like this either, whatever it was. Perhaps Tetra was flying overhead with his demonic amulets.

  The others shifted nervously, whispering in confusion to one another about why the commanders weren’t down here with them. On the off chance a troll broke their way, what were they supposed to do with these shitty weapons that wouldn’t even pierce its hide?

  But that was how much danger they weren’t in, Jenner told himself. The children’s battalion was just here to take up space while the upper-level players did the real work of war.

  Rosy shifted on his shoulder, the cup staring upwards. “What the fuck is that thing?”

  He looked up. An eerie but radiant greenish-yellow light was flying in lazy circles high over his head. “A firefly. A drunken firefly, apparently.” Two more greenish-yellow lights swam into view in the mist.

  A wall of solid, livid purple fire flared in the east. The ground trembled hard.

  The previous quakes had faded within seconds. This quake continued. Some of the Level 1s lost their balance, crying out as the earth jerked and bounced under their feet. Jenner swayed with it, noticing the number of fireflies was increasing above to create a circling swarm of brilliant light. The dragons were up there too, flying around invisibly and stirring up the mist with air currents so strong that the fireflies were being carried along by them.

  Another flare of purple fire burst up. It was miles long. Then there was another and another and another, spouting up to the north and east and south. Voices called overhead, Jenner unable to hear what they were saying over the booms and rattling of swords on shields as the battalion rocked from side to side in the quake.

  A firefly dipped lower, and it was not a firefly at all but a yellow-green light caught in a cage. The cage swung from a chain that rose into the whiteness and disappeared.

  Troll lures are smart tools for the prepared dungeon visitor or mountain explorer. This mesmerizing light will overcome their senses and draw them like moths to a flame. While an excellent distraction, use them with caution! The moment a lure is lit, a player should depart in haste lest he or she be trampled by the approaching troll.

  Abruptly, the mist cleared.

  The chains were hanging from the feet of the flying dragons. There was more than one swarm of the troll lures: the dragons were divided up into tiny squadrons of their own that stretched from the battalion to a mile or so east. Of the thickest swarm, which was circling directly over the troops, their lights were being reflected and magnified by a fifty-foot tall wall of ice spears behind them. It was that nearby ice dropping the temperature: it must have grown concealed by the mist.

  The ice wall was long and curved inwards, forming a vast cup shape with the children’s battalion inside. There were no other battalions in sight but the one that Jenner was in. None of this made any sense!

  Then it did.

  The odd pieces of the scene came together in his mind, and the picture they made was utterly horrifying.

  The trolls weren’t being guided away from the western flank.

  No.

  They were being brought directly to it!

  The squadron of dragons farthest out turned in the air and flew for the ice wall as thundering, colossal forms advanced. The trolls were coming to the children’s battalion, where dozens upon dozens of lures were dangling meters overhead.

  Rosy’s jaw drop
ped. The little teacup had stitched the pieces together as well.

  It had all been a lie.

  They were red-shirts, and they had been brought here to die.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Everything fell into chaos.

  Whether their aim was to claim glory in war or a desire to get scrambled, a number of players broke away from the children’s battalion to charge the oncoming trolls. With pebbles flying from sling-shots and filthy swords waving aloft, they ran over the lurching ground with maddened cries.

  A much larger number of players ran for the ice spears to pummel them by fist and club and hammer. Tiny chunks of ice broke off the spears and they battered even harder, panic blinding them to the futility of it. The ice wall was so thick that nothing could be seen on the far side. Not the moving shapes of the ice demons to conjure it; not the glow of a light over there; not tree or rock or sky.

  As for the rest of the battalion, it was in total disarray. Some squared their shoulders and waited grimly for the running trolls to reach them, maintaining their position; others cried out that this was bullshit and signed out of the game. Two players scrambled themselves on purpose with their own weapons to be reborn somewhere far away from this battlefield.

  “Let’s dig under it!” somebody cried at the wall. People fell to their knees and began to dig in the hard, stony earth.

  Others thrust the points of their weapons into the ice to climb the wall. A low-level elf made it the highest, the girl using her arrows to haul herself up, but a dragon swooped beneath the lures and the commander of the 2s on its back clubbed her to the ground.

  Shocked and frightened to insensibility, members of the children’s battalion screamed at the man for help, their eyes refusing to make sense of what they had just witnessed him do to their compatriot.

  Undaunted, the elf began to climb again. The commander’s dragon swooped back and ripped her off the wall. Caught in its claws, she struggled as it flew upwards and then dropped her to her scrambling.