“Sounds delightful,” Eliandra scoffed. “Is it our only option?”
“Our best one,” Ronin said. “Nils has the exits and exterior well fortified. We’ll flee through the dungeon and have Tammagan pick us up in my ship.”
I tugged the Marauder’s Map from my pocket and passed it to Eliandra. “That should get us to the entrance.”
***
The corridors, fire poles, staircases, hidden passages, and balconies blurred on by, my sense of surroundings fogged by a headache that throbbed in time with my pulse. I lost whole patches of the journey; sometimes I walked and sometimes Ronin propped me up without complaint.
Once we passed below ground level, the air grew damp; the chilly silence of the subterranean caverns was punctuated only by a sporadic echo of water plinking from stalactites into pools.
Eliandra and Ronin’s conversation finally roused me from my semiconscious march. “Remember last time you carried me?” Eliandra asked, glancing back at Ronin, who had my arm slung around her shoulders. “Hauling me away from the angry mob you’d just beaten half to death.”
“You’d just turned forty,” Ronin said. “Ran away because you wanted a birthday party.”
Eliandra groaned. “It didn’t have to be a party. I wanted the slightest taste of my heritage, and instead you took me to the burned-out tower and told me, ‘You’ve got enough breadth in your shoulders for twenty more pounds,’ and loaded that damned knapsack with my bodyweight in rocks.”
“You’re the one who begged every night to save your mother.” Ronin adjusted my weight with a roughness that betrayed her irritation. “I had to push.”
“My mother told me a hundred times about her cotillion ball; the new set of ivory combs, the dress, the sweaty-handed human boy she danced with. Forty was just another reminder of everything Dracon stole from us.” Eliandra’s face twisted in pain. “I didn’t run to Amyss so I could have a party, you know.”
“I do know,” Ronin said. “You went to buy supplies and weapons. You were going to save your mother and your people.”
Eliandra shot a look over one shoulder. “You knew?”
“I followed you. You really think I just stumbled along when that mob surrounded you?”
That settles the question of how she came on the enchantoids so suddenly, I decided.
Eliandra spun to face us. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
I winced as Ronin eased me onto the ground and faced her adopted daughter. “You needed to feel the world against you; to realize Dracon’s bounties made it impossible for your people to live free. Break their chains, and a mob just like the one that surrounded you would sell your family a second time.”
Fists to her sides, Eliandra straightened and glared fire at Ronin. “So you let them bind me and spit on me. A wise move. That was the night I realized I’d never free my people without the force of law and an army behind me.” Her eyes were glassy and she blinked a few times. “I was always a good little agent for you after that, wasn’t I?”
“How many times did I tell you I could do it alone?” Ronin asked. “And how many times did you swear you couldn’t sit idle while your people were enslaved?”
“Yes!” Eliandra shouted, arms in the air. “It was my choice. Always mine! You’re blameless and I’m an irrational zealot. We’ve covered this ground again and again, at every conceivable volume. Now pick up the damned wizard, who will hopefully be a more effective weapon than I’ve been. We have ground to cover.”
“I didn’t carry you like I do Isaac,” Ronin said evenly. “I held you in my arms.” She made a gesture, as if cradling a baby. Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. “I cleaned the cut they put on your brow, bandaged it, and washed your hair.”
“You’re not the one who was meant to do those things. My real mother is a slave, and I tire of her unfeeling replacement.”
Eliandra had already turned, and didn’t hear Ronin’s sharp intake of breath, or see the way her arms still cradled the air for a moment.
Her arms lowered and she lifted me back to my feet. The rest of the walk, a heavy silence hung over us.
Chapter Six: For Want of a Double-Cheese Pizza
“This is the place.” I folded the Google Dungeons map into a small rectangle and slipped it into an extra-dimensional pocket for safekeeping.
We stopped where the roughhewn cavern dead-ended at a forty-foot goblinoid face carved into stone, glowering down at us.
“Please don’t tell me we go in through the mouth,” said Eliandra.
“We go in through the mouth,” I said.
“Grand.”
What looked like a giant briefcase lock was embedded in the wall below an inscription: “A riddle to throw you in circles.” I remembered the combination to open the carving’s jaws was “314.”
While my headache had improved, my eyes watered from tiredness. Eliandra’s staff was our only light, so I checked my watch to confirm it was late. “I’ve got to rest. We should bed down.” I realized I had no bed, and shuddered at the thought of how perfect a warm comforter would have felt in the cool underground.
“Oh, humans,” Eliandra sang teasingly. “Such lazy creatures.” She perched on a boulder. Ronin eased onto another, facing the goblin door.
“Right,” I said. “You two don’t do the ‘full night’s sleep’ thing.”
“No,” they both said. Eliandra added, “We’ll just wait eight hours while you turn your funny little brain off. It’s not boring for us, by the way. At all.”
Back to Know-it-all Eliandra. My favorite. “You still sleep an hour or so. And don’t you dare call it ‘trancing.’ People don’t snore while meditating.”
“I do not snore,” she muttered.
I looked to Ronin. “What about you?”
“I don’t sleep.”
“Ever?”
Ronin’s stare grew icier the longer I held it, until I was forced to look away. I realized for all I’d learned about her, I still knew nothing about who—or what—she really was.
I sighed. “Look, this funny little brain needs sleep to function.”
“Do what you need to do, caliyar,” Eliandra said.
From Ronin’s glare, I could tell caliyar was not a term Eliandra was supposed to use, but she found it amusing and I was a white kid from Ohio, so I didn’t even know how to be offended by derogatory racial remarks. I still needed to get away from them, though. Ronin’s mood had dropped below freezing and something about her presence catalyzed Eliandra into a little “elves rule, humans drool” snot.
“I need to use the bathroom.” Excusing myself, I backtracked to a deep alcove, scaled an incline, and squinted through the dim illumination still available from Eliandra’s distant staff. I slid the orange computer stone from my vest and it lit my path.
Thinking back on what I’d seen, I wondered if Eliandra’s rancid attitude was jealousy. Ronin had worried over me, which seemed to be what chafed the elf. Is a 103-year-old queen really giving me the jealous-big-sister treatment? Except that would make Ronin my “mom,” and ew.
I peed, looked around for the sink and hand soap out of habit, sighed, and walked a little farther. I sat on a stony outcropping and stared at the computer stone. Exhaustion overtook me. I can’t do this, I realized. I was living in the dark without sleep or food; I had a throbbing head injury; cleaning supplies had nearly killed me. The most selfish thought in the whole world overwhelmed me and I stared at the stone, its insignificant weight in my palm the only connection to the life of ease and relative comfort that I remembered. “I want to go home.”
Saying it out loud made the longing more real, doubling my misery. The danger had been constant since arriving in Rune, but before, it had been coupled with magic, flying ships, and beautiful women. It made me feel lower than shit to know all it took to make me quit was an empty stomach and the loss of pride that came with losing a battle to a mop. But there it was.
I couldn’t go home, of course. Dracon had the exit po
rtals locked down. They were one-way only. I shouldn’t contact my dimension, either, since I’d vowed to cut off Dak in order to save him the worry. But those vows were easier to keep when I didn’t need someone in my corner.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I fished the transmitter from my vest, snapped it open, and hesitated one brief moment before flipping the dial from RUNE to EARTH. The action synchronized our dimensions, so that time no longer passed at a 100-to-1 disparity. I dialed my best friend and wasn’t sure whether to pray for him to pick up, or for him not to be there.
Reception turned out good for a cave, magic being in every way superior to Wi-Fi. Dak answered with a large bag of Doritos on his lap, fingers dusted in nacho-cheese flavoring. My headache had blunted my appetite, but the sight of snack food woke my stomach in force.
“I thought we were talking tomorrow,” Dak said. He was reading from a textbook, flipping pages with his free hand, not looking up.
I tried to remember what we’d last talked about eight days ago. He’d accused me of making up the story about Rune and using it to play a practical joke on him; he’d called me an asshole. That argument was probably still fresh for him. It had been eight days for me and less than two hours for him. “I should have waited to call you,” I said, unable to look up. “I just needed to see something familiar.”
“You sound awful,” Dak said. I could feel him inspecting me through the video chat. “Did someone hit you?” His voice was one part concern and two parts anger at whoever might have done it.
I swallowed, despising that I had to bend the truth; but he was better off still thinking this was a LARP he hadn’t been invited to. I fingered the bump on my temple. “The foam came off someone’s padded sword. I got knocked unconscious for a few seconds.”
“You could have a concussion.”
“Yeah. I sort of want to come home. This isn’t fun anymore. I almost died today.”
“You should go to the hospital.”
I smiled faintly. “Wish I could. I’m hungry, I’m tired, I want to sleep in a real bed. I’m realizing how easy it is for me to die here. I’m about to enter a dungeon. One with freaking ogres and goblins, who have sharp weapons and who eat humans, and this isn’t Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t have hit points. If I get stabbed or filled with arrows, it’s going to hurt and I’ll probably die.” Shit. Shouldn’t have mentioned that.
“Man, you have to decide whether you want to be in character or out.” Dak dusted off his fingers and leaned forward. “Take a break. You want me to explain this in a way that won’t get those fascist gamers you’re with in a tizzy? Fine. Draw yourself a ‘magical portal’ home, take a nap, put yourself back together, and portal back next weekend. Or whenever. Split a pizza with me tonight. We’ll go over your character sheet together and I’ll get you ready for your stupid dungeon run.”
I guffawed. “You want to break this game, don’t you?”
“Son, when I’m done with you, the ogres and goblins will take one look at you and order Chinese. They will wave you through their territory and apologize for being green.”
Now I was chuckling, partly at the image of kowtowing goblins, partly because it was good to joke with my friend again. That wistful moment was like a warm light at my center, and its glow gave me enough strength for the next part. “I can’t come home yet. Even if I had a way to ‘portal,’ I can’t abandon the game early. They need me.”
“Just a one-night trip, then. Have pizza, sleep, drink some cold Coke.” He presented the bottle from his desk. “Okay, lukewarm, I guess.”
The thought of caffeine made my brain whimper. “Do you have ice for the Coke?”
“Half a bag of peas in the back of my freezer.”
“That’ll work.” I sighed. “Except I can’t make portals that take me home.”
“For in-game reasons?” Dak asked.
I winced. “Yes.”
“Tell me why and maybe I can work around it.”
Dak was, in fact, the greatest rules lawyer to ever memorize a book and the bane of game masters everywhere. I caught him up on what had happened, including the part about Dracon sealing all exit portals to Earth.
“How do you know Dracon’s sealed them?” Dak asked.
“Ronin told me.”
“The same Ronin who lied to you about her gender, let you get beat up to see how good you were at fighting, manipulated her adopted daughter into becoming Queen, and knows that if you leave, Dracon becomes twice as powerful? That Ronin?”
“You think she’s lying.”
“Gee, why would the liar lie about something that gets you to do exactly what she wants?”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “She always gave Eliandra a choice. Also, she’s saved my life a lot.”
“Because she needs someone to play the wizard class, obviously,” Dak said. “Look, try the portal. If it doesn’t work, you know she’s telling the truth. If it does? Screw her, she’s just manipulating you for the XP.”
I shook my head. “Even if she’s lying about the portals, she’s not wrong about Dracon. I can’t let him have this world all to himself.” Sometimes I needed Dak to convince me to do the wrong thing; to personify my id. That way I could fight him on it.
“No,” he said, beckoning with his hand. “Come to the dark side. Warm bed. Cold Coke. Large double-cheese pizza with bacon.”
My mouth watered. “But you hate double-cheese. You always insist the pizza guys are scamming us by only giving us a regular amount of cheese, since we can’t tell the difference.”
“So we’ll order a control group and see if I’m right. Come home, Isaac. It’s delicious here.”
Goddamn, he was good at being my id. “A compromise. I’ll draw a portal, but only so you can toss me a bottle of Coke and some snacks through the gateway. Oh, and my pillow and blanket.” I frowned. “The downside to this plan is that it’ll probably convince you this isn’t a game.”
Dak glared. “Wasn’t funny two hours ago; not funny now.”
We had gotten to the point where I either demonstrated this wasn’t a prank or risked alienating my friend. I realized I couldn’t do this thing alone, though. “Hypothetically,” I said, “if I were actually in danger, would you rather know, or prefer I keep it to myself until it had passed?”
“You already know the answer to that.” Dak folded his arms. “If you hadn’t told me about Tucson-girl inviting you to visit her—if I hadn’t stopped you—I honestly think she would have hurt you.”
“When will you stop bringing that up?”
“When you stop making stupid decisions.”
“Suppose this were real. Would there be anything I could say or do to convince you to try this portal idea? That I’m not recording this? That it’s not going up on YouTube later?”
He set his jaw. “Occam’s razor.”
“It’s easier to believe I’m being an asshole than in multiple universes?”
Dak collapsed back into his chair. “Technically, you’d be an asshole either way. If it weren’t real, for thinking I’m an idiot who would fall for it. If it were? For not bringing me there right away.”
“That’s not fair.”
He locked eyes with me. “Swear on your mother it’s real.”
I didn’t waver. “I swear on my mom and my dad. It’s real. Just give me some time to prove it and I will.”
He scoffed, but for the first time I saw doubt in his eyes. “Fine. Okay. Prove it.”
“You’re going to freak out so hard,” I said, freeing my sketchpad and working quickly for fear Eliandra or Ronin would come looking. My Japanese dictionary had a kanji for “door,” which I used to create the gate stone; I designed it to orbit within my transmitter next to the computer stone. I doodled more Ikea figures to specify that the gateway connected Earth to Rune, depicting a man in a modern top hat stepping through the gate and appearing on the other side with a fantasy helmet. The magic seemed to work more to my specifications when I did this.
I chatted with Dak while I worked. “I could use some Advil, too. Are you getting me a bag ready?”
“Yeah. But if this ‘portal’ turns out to be someone standing outside my door sent to bring you this overnight bag while making magic sound effects with their mouth, we’re getting a divorce. Hey! Don’t forget to make yourself a character sheet.”
I left off polishing the gate stone to blink at him. “Why?”
“I told you, we’re tricking out your character tonight. I want to see your stats.”
“I told you, this world is real,” I said.
“Assuming it’s real—which you haven’t proven—that doesn’t mean you don’t have a character sheet. Or that we can’t add a bunch of stuff to it.”
“That’s… not a horrible thought.” I started a character sheet, including stats like strength, intelligence, and skills for sword fighting and other fantasy talents. “We’ll see how it works.” I wrote in what I figured my own stats would be, which was sort of a depressing enterprise.
I had the character sheet and stone, along with the Ikea pictures all drawn on the same page, so I tried to blow on them selectively and pull them one at a time. Unfortunately, my breath spread across the whole picture at once. The violet portal stone emerged from the page, filling the cavern with a purple glow that offset the orange one from my computer stone. My character sheet, on the other hand, came out glossy gold, its reflective polish so perfect I could see my bruised face between the letters and numerals.
“Was that light show your ‘proof’? Because that could be faked.” Dak no longer sounded so sure.
“We’re just getting started.” I pressed my pencil to the golden sheet and realized the problem. It featured my own statistics, all right—but everything was permanently inscribed. I couldn’t modify the record of my skills and talents, although I did notice there were categories I hadn’t written down and some were different from how I’d recorded them. My intelligence was rated a point higher than I’d thought—I’d been guessing based on class rank. I also had a “magic” score set at twenty out of twenty.
Mistakes Were Made (A Pygmalion Fail Book 2) Page 7