Scrambled Lives

by Rue Vespers

  Inner-World News: The trolls of Blue Mountain were once led by Glave the Destroyer. Captured as a trolling by the tennus of a gladiatorial school, Glave was brought to Galadras to battle in the rings. He became known as a fierce fighter. Escaping his confines one night, he fled back to his mountain home and seized control of his former tribe. Over the next year, he led the Blue Mountain trolls into many successful raids of the northern territories. Scrambling hundreds of innocents and warriors sent to stop him, he became infamous throughout Talvenor for his acts of pointless violence and cruelty. House Calastor finally took him hostage in the Raid of Oath Bridge and ferried him back to Galadras, where he was tried by the High Council and scrambled for his crimes.

  “Look! The wand is losing strength,” someone hissed.

  It was. The mighty gusts of wind had expended its energy. The crowned troll bellowed angrily as the Eldritch wand’s power died. Three of the palace guards returned to attack, two armed with swords and one with a Gregallan glove in addition to his sword.

  The battle was dismayingly short. The troll knocked them away by fist and foot. Then he stomped on, bypassing the entrance to the maze to kick through the green walls towards the tower at the center.

  “Good,” Commander Odelon whispered. “The tower is constructed of magically reinforced stone, so breaking through it will take time. We can use the secret entrance and come up through the underground level to the captive troll quarters, so we’ll be waiting for him on the inside when he breaks in.”

  “All of us, sir?” someone queried.

  “There should be prison guards within the Little Tower to aid us.” Odelon leaned back to count his warriors. There were only a dozen in total, and that was including Jenner and Odelon himself. “Gavvus Elora and Gavvus Axon, stay here and watch this side of the maze. Gavvus Stamper and Jenner, get to the far side of the maze and watch over there.”

  To hear this man speak his name was glorious, but warring with pleasure and pride was disappointment. Jenner’s mouth fell open with protests that he wanted to fight, not to stand guard while others fought, but he said, “Yes, sir.”

  Awaken . . .

  Jenner tensed, but the next whisper didn’t come. Odelon waved to the rest of his warriors to follow him.

  Their party broke apart. Gavvus Stamper pushed out ahead of Jenner with his sword drawn and the sun gleaming off his shaven pate. Both of them took care to walk softly as they skirted the outside of the maze. Not that the troll could have heard over the noise he was making, kicking and tearing at the greenery to get through.

  In another time and another place, perhaps over mugs of ale with Rosy and Ocelo and Dan the Troll, they would find it funny that this whole invasion had been for the purpose of saving a troll leader who was already scrambled. Nobody was behind this. It really was a plot these idiotic trolls cooked up all on their own.

  Right now, though, it wasn’t funny.

  The hedge maze was to their left, and a short lawn appeared on their right. Upon the grass was a bright, oval-shaped light standing on end. The people who lived and worked at the palace were certainly evacuating now. Terrified servants and scholars were fleeing into the Portal and disappearing. Dropped books and baskets of goods were scattered over the ground, nobody bothering to retrieve whatever spilled out of their arms.

  They honestly hadn’t thought the palace grounds could be breached. That was evident by their haste. Had one troll not been armed with an Eldritch wand, Jenner thought, it might have been a safe bet.

  Two robed wizards were the last to approach the Portal, the younger of the pair pausing before the light and crying, “What about everyone at the Great Tower?”

  His older companion tugged him on. “No, they all have their own Portals! Hurry!”

  They stepped into the light, which whisked them somewhere else in Talvenor and then winked out.

  Stamper vanished around the corner of the maze with Jenner right behind him. A modest contingent of palace archers was already stationed over here upon the slope that separated the Little Tower from the Great Tower.

  Then Jenner wanted to fight the troll from within the Little Tower! There was no purpose to being over here, away from the scene of action and just keeping watch on the perimeter. But he obeyed his orders. Along with Stamper, he joined the archers upon the slope.

  They waited.

  The troll’s head hovered above the maze as he tore the greenery out of the earth and chucked it aside to create a path to the Little Tower. With Jenner’s accentuated hearing, he picked up the sounds of tiny footfalls within the hedges. Warriors were creeping through the interior paths of the maze, closing in from different angles to converge upon the troll.

  Did he toss his orders aside to fight with them? It wasn’t like he was a member of House Armada anyway. Commander Odelon wasn’t the boss of Jenner.

  No. He stayed put, hating himself and agitated by the itch for blood.

  “I think it’s time to say goodbye.”

  Every mouth around him was closed; all eyes were trained upon the maze. Yet the man’s voice was so clear, like he was speaking inches away from Jenner’s head.

  He glanced down, and his heart sank. His body was flickering.

  “Jenner? Come on, Jenner, you’re almost . . .”

  “What is he doing?”

  “What?”

  “The troll! What is he doing?”

  Jenner dropped to his knees.

  Nobody noticed. Their necks were craning to follow the path of the troll, though whatever it was the beast had done was a mystery to Jenner. The sounds of hedges being torn to shreds continued without interruption.

  Feeling dizzy, he blinked as the others spoke in hurried whispers. “He’s not going to the Little Tower?” “Is he lost?” “No, he can see it over the hedges! He’s going over there . . .”

  Pause.

  “He’s heading for the Great Tower? Oh, shit!”

  “How much has he uploaded? Nurse, check the monitor!”

  “He’s not quite there yet-”

  “Jenner-”

  “-the Great Tower!” The horrified voice belonged to Stamper. “Commander Odelon took everyone else the wrong way! But why is he using the maze to get there?”

  It provides him with cover, Jenner thought as his dizziness subsided. The tall hedges not only shielded the troll from the torso down, but the confusing twists and turns and narrow passages made it hard for the warriors to attack him.

  “He’s still not-”

  “There’s nothing more we can do-”

  “Have they evacuated at the tower, ma’am?”

  “They should have, but we must be sure! You and you! Run to the Great Tower and tell anyone you find there to use their Portals now!”

  Footsteps thumped away.

  Jenner struggled back to his feet. He could not stay focused on the people around him, or track the orders being given. The archers were melting away to take different positions along the slope; Stamper was gone.

  The last archer saw Jenner down on the ground. “Are you hurt?” the man asked.

  “No, I’m . . .” The thought trailed away, and an odd sight kept him from chasing after it. “What is that?”

  The archer turned to follow his gaze to the object in the sky.

  It was flying in fast from the east. A dragon, Jenner thought, yet it wasn’t. As it came closer, his keen vision allowed him to recognize it before the archer did. Two white, winged horses were pulling along a battered old chariot. A trio of young wizards were aboard, their black robes flying back in the wind. A finger went out to the troll; a mouth opened in an excited shout.

  The archer squinted, gasped, and signed out of the game.

  That was an interesting reaction. Jenner gave the wizards on the chariot a harder look.

  They hadn’t been fighting on the wall, nor did they appear to be chanting necromancers. The guy holding the reins was doing a shitty job of it, jerking the horses this way and that so the chariot swung around
wildly.

  Students. They were students! Green braids were sewn upon their robes.

  Jenner gaped, understanding what was going on and wishing that he didn’t. These wizarding students were coming to take down the troll. They weren’t part of the palace guard or the upper-level battalions who fought at the Plains of Araholle; this hadn’t been planned by anyone; it was just two egotistical dudes and a chick with magical powers thinking that they would succeed where everybody else so far had failed. Pure, undiluted arrogance.

  It was ignorance, too. They didn’t know the troll had an Eldritch wand.

  And Jenner couldn’t sign out of the game.

  He hoped he never scrambled into a wizard. Hogdoor’s balls, magic wasn’t worth it!

  He wasn’t the only one to see them. From beyond the Feast Hall, two golden chariots lifted in the air. They were manned by wizards from the wall. Waving wildly as the horses soared over the ground, they touched their wands to their throats to project their voices. “Stop! Don’t shoot! Turn around and go back!”

  The students blithely ignored them. The driver flicked the reins and the students’ chariot flew lower. Passing the Great Tower, they raised their wands.

  This will be bad, Jenner thought.

  “Stop! STOP!” the older wizards cried.

  And then the students fired.

  Several things happened all at once.

  The spells shot up into the sky, where a storm cloud formed in a split second and discharged bolts of lightning. Even as the bolts were ripping down towards the crowned troll, one student wizard leaned over the side of the chariot to hurl another spell. A puff of violet-colored air turned into a gigantic net that flew over the maze.

  The older wizards flying in were also unloading spells, but their spells were to stop the students. Another bolt of lightning tore horizontally through the air to the winged horses, the student driver wrenching the chariot away just in time. A sideways tornado followed on the heels of the lightning, sucking up torn foliage as it spun around and around.

  As for the troll, all he did was lift the Eldritch wand.

  It drank down the spells hungrily. First it took in the bolts of lightning, the ones hurtling down to the troll’s head as well as the bolt thrown at the students’ chariot. Each bolt turned into a bead of light as it entered the wand, and those beads shot around the spiral. Next it absorbed the net, which changed back into a violet puff and vanished into the tip to form another racing bead. Last of all was the sideways tornado, which rerouted itself downwards and was sucked inside after the puff.

  The troll made a queer sound, a harsh and choppy kuh-kuh-kuh.

  He was laughing.

  All of the spells rolled down the spiral to the base of his wand, and then raced back in the opposite direction to explode outwards.

  Countless lightning bolts blasted everywhere, scoring the walls of the Little Tower, blasting away the eaves at the top, and chewing giant holes through the hedges of the maze. The older wizards threw up shields to block the incoming bolts and veered their chariots sharply away. The students didn’t react as fast, which proved to be their undoing. Bolts nailed their winged horses and the underside of the old chariot, all of which burst apart into the spells that created them. The Eldritch wand drew those spells in even while everything else was erupting out.

  The students screamed as they fell, trying desperately to conjure Portals. Whether it was due to their inexperience with the spell or that the power was immediately being siphoned away by the troll’s wand wasn’t clear. In any case, only one Portal was created: a dim, small oval appearing below one spinning wizard. The top half of his body fell through it. Gruesomely, the rest of him was severed by the edge of the Portal. His abdomen and legs continued to fall towards the palace while the rest of him was transported away.

  Bolts had also struck some of the guards within the maze. Cries of agony rose from out of sight, the smell of singed flesh tickling Jenner’s nose.

  All of this happened in seconds.

  Then Jenner was levitating.

  Gravity had lost its hold upon his body. He flailed about to grab onto something, but there was nothing to grab. Rising higher and higher until he was level with the top of the maze, he bobbed there amongst weapons, ampoules, liveried guards both alive and dead, a few soulless, leafy branches, and pieces of armor.

  The troll grinned meanly. Flicking the wand around his head, he walked through the blasted, smoking maze towards the Great Tower.

  The wand regurgitated the tornado, but at much more strength. Swept up in the sudden gale, Jenner spun helplessly within the funnel. He turned over and over at a furious speed, branches whacking him in the face and his ears popping from the pressure. The troll walked within the eye of the storm, which moved along with him out of the maze and up the slope to the garden around the Great Tower.

  Flowers and shrubberies and obelisks tore out of the earth to fly about within the funnel. Benches and statues shook and lifted. Even the water was scooped from a fountain, droplets splashing all over Jenner, and then the fountain itself was yanked from the ground.

  If it had been hard to attack the troll when he was protected by the maze, now it was downright impossible with him inside the tornado. An elf of the palace guard was struggling against the wind to draw an arrow as she was being whirled around. She loosed it but her aim was off, the arrow punching into the calm eye of the storm only to be sucked into the other side of the tornado. It flew past Jenner and was gone.

  His amulets slapped his cheeks. Level 50. It seemed so impressive at first glance. Until one was stuck in a magical tornado and just as defenseless as a Level 1 player. Nothing in the Zerotte’s inventory was any use to him.

  Darkness fell over the top of the funnel. He squinted and looked out through the debris, hoping that rescue was here. But it was only the shadow of the Great Tower, which they were nearing.

  “Kuh-kuh-kuh.”

  The elf was sucked out the top of the funnel and launched away, screaming as she disappeared. Laughing all the while as he walked along, the troll flicked the wand around. He was pointing it at various things within the funnel. The fountain was next to go, shooting after the elf, and several soulless flew after the fountain.

  The troll couldn’t just let the tornado drop, or he would end up in the middle of a heap of rubble and players. So he was getting rid of them first. Another guard went up with a cry; the corpses went up with none. Bushes and benches and armor zipped up and away.

  The wand flicked to Jenner, and he began to move upwards. It was his turn to get thrown and there was nothing he could do about it!

  Twirling around in the cacophony while he rose higher and higher, the Gregallan glove suddenly covering his fist, he lashed out on impulse for a line of metal struts.

  He grabbed on, not knowing what they were. All he knew was that they held steady. The gales almost overcame the glove in their wildness, tearing at his hair and clothes, his back struck repeatedly by items spinning around in the funnel.

  The troll laughed.

  Jenner caught a glimpse of the beast in the craziness. Far below, he was still waving around the Eldritch wand to rid the funnel of everything but that which was too small to bother with. Then he lowered his arm and the winds died, dropping only dirt, flowers, and water around his big feet.

  The garden was gone. So was most of the maze. The chariots had been driven far away. The nearest warriors were several hundred feet off and unable to approach as the larger contents of the tornado slammed into the earth. The only ones not taking cover were the soulless, who had no sense of self-preservation or any need for such a thing. In the rain of bodies and benches and statues, they moved forward until they were flattened by the flying projectiles.

  The iron struts in Jenner’s grip were part of the railing of a fifth-story balcony of the Great Tower. They creaked at his weight. The tornado had loosened the bolts holding the railing to the floor.

  He climbed up the bars as the troll bange
d the wand against his open palm. It was drained of power again, frustrating the troll since he wanted to use it for something else. Then he shrugged, let out another menacing kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh, and started to climb the tower. Already in the vicinity of thirty feet tall, the troll was nearly eye-level with the second story. Punching his fists and kicking his feet through the walls, he made his own handholds and footholds.

  Jenner pulled himself over the railing and stood upon the balcony. His left hand closed over his saber.

  A rustling of fabric made him turn. Glass doors were propped open behind him to a lavish apartment, white curtains rippling inwards with the breeze and parting to reveal a bright oval Portal on a tiled floor. Whichever member of the High Council lived upon the fifth floor of the tower had to be long gone, so why was the Portal still here?

  Jenner crossed the balcony and peeked inside. The Portal was standing in a beautifully furnished reception room so large it could entertain a hundred guests at a time. A book was hooked over an armrest of a sofa, and sitting upon a tray on the coffee table was a half-eaten meal. A drop of water coasted down the glass as if it had just been set down moments ago. Tucked up beside the sofa was a pair of boots.

  Then a wizard stumbled out of the Portal.

  His long hair was white and gathered together into braids pinned with jeweled clips. A water stain streaked the front of his black robes all the way down to his bare feet. Gripped in his fist was a smooth wand with an elaborately carved handle.

  Bare feet. The boots. This man was no ordinary wizard but a member of the High Council!

  His eyes bulged as he surveyed the reception room. “No!” he cried, slashing his wand at the bright oval. It vanished. The wand slashed through the air a second time. Another Portal replaced it and he charged through.

  Jenner was alone again, the floor trembling underneath him as the troll climbed the tower outside. Shouldn’t the Portal vanish now that the wizard was gone? It just stayed steady, and Jenner went to it curiously.

  The same wizard staggered out of the light.

  He threw up his wand. Then, putting together that Jenner was not a threat, the wizard cried, “Why isn’t my Portal working?”