“Gee. Sounds great. Sign me up.”
"So, unless you and me are both idiots, which I don't think we are," I add hastily, "there doesn't seem to be any contingency in the game design for a player to fall down in here and not die. Either the developers didn't think it all the way through, or it's another example of the corrupted code making its own decisions and changing how the game is played."
"Right. Like that missing clue at Helena's cottage."
"Right."
"So ... What are you suggesting? That we unplug and plug it back in? How are we supposed to reset the game?"
"Well, kind of." I hesitate and look away. What I'm about to suggest is a shot in the dark. "Like I said, there isn't any allowance made for players that survive down here ... So, what if we don't survive?"
“What?”
“What if we die? We already saved our new spawn point to this chamber, right? What if we let ourselves die so we can respawn up top with the others?”
“I …” She stares at me, her mouth hanging open. “I don’t know where to start. You want us to commit suicide in this game? And just hope it works?”
"Yes—"
"And even if we’re sure it’ll work, how are we supposed to do that anyway? Toterra Online doesn't allow PVP.”
“Well, actually it does allow some. Did you see Jargonaut knock down a bunch of us at the very start of the Challenge? Or when we were practicing our spells? Remember? I think it just won’t allow a player hit to drain all the health.”
"So then ..." She shakes her head in disbelief. "Even if I were to agree to this plan, even if I let you injure me, how do you propose tricking the game into letting us drain the rest of our health points?"
“Well, you just said it, right? We need to trick the game mechanics somehow.”
I look around; we are literally surrounded by rock. Rock walls. Rock floor. Rocks piles up all around us.
“Y’all taking a nap down there? What’s the hold up?”
Rocks even up above us on that ridge.
“What if something else kills us that’s just helped along by another player? Would that work?”
“Asher, I don’t know. At the moment I’m just frustrated and want to keep moving. I’ll try whatever you want to try.” She sits, leaning on one of the boulders. “If you can figure out a way to get us out of here, I’ll do whatever that is.”
I nod, steeling myself for what I have to do. Assuming it will work is necessary in order to make myself do this. “Okay. Okay. Let’s do this. I’ll go first. Let’s kill me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
I remove my armor, piece by piece unequipping it and stowing it in my bag.
“What are you doing?"
“I don’t know. Just in case. Maybe the rules here are different. Maybe they didn’t reset everything after the Challenge. I don’t want these bracers, for example, left down here at the bottom when I respawn somewhere else.”
"You think they'll be safe in your bag?" The corners of her mouth twitch.
"I don't know," I say more loudly than I intend. "This could all fail miserably and then we will have to logout and who knows how long they'll make us wait before rejoining full immersion and in the meantime the others are totally out of communication and we will miss our chance to be part of this and have to go home empty-handed. And if taking off armor is some kind of stop-gap against any of that, even if it's all in my mind, I'm going to do it."
I huff a big sigh—I ran out of breath during my rant and try to disguise it.
Erinocalypse only raises her eyebrows at my vehemence and says, "Okay."
"Okay."
I finish removing all of my weapons and armor and save them in my inventory. I stand in just the simple, plain burlap that we all started the game in. I hope the bag comes with me when I respawn; it wouldn’t have in the Camlan Challenge just yesterday. I’m self-conscious, now level twenty-two but appearing as helpless as a noob. But if this works I don't care.
"Tex," I call up. All four of our group's faces appear over the cliff looking down at us.
"What the blazes are you wearing?"
I ignore his question. "You guys still have those broken boulders up there, right?"
“Yeah.”
“I need you to push one over the edge and drop it on me.”
Silence.
“Come again?“
"Push one of the rocks off the cliff so it lands on me and kills me."
After another beat of silence, I hear a small ding in my ear, alerting me to a group message.
TexBadass: I'm sure I must’ve misheard you. What do you need?
SirAsh3r: Erinocalypse and I can't figure out how to get up there. So I want to see if we can get one of these stones to kill me so I can respawn at the top.
Balderdash13: Erin doesn’t have a spell that will work?
Erinocalypse: We tried. I could try again, but …
TexBadass: You're kidding me.
SteelFeather: What if we push boulders down to make a staircase?
SirAsh3r: What if they don’t land exactly where we need them to? It's gonna suck, I know. I can’t think of anything else that has as good a chance of working.
TexBadass: Yeah “suck” is one word for it. You know you won't respawn for thirty minutes, right? What are we supposed to do?
SirAsh3r: Yeah, uh ... Wait for me? Or don't. Whatever, man. I can catch up.
TexBadass: Good lord, Asher.
SirAsh3r: Just help me
TexBadass: I'll see what I can do.
With that settled, I climb back up on to the boulder near the wall, assuming the closer I am to the top, the better they can see me and so the better their aim.
I cannot believe I’m doing this, literally asking someone to drop a stone on my head as though I’m a cartoon character or something. It would be different if there wasn’t any pain when playing in Camlan Realm, but there is. Not a lot. Not as much as there would be in real life. But I am sure this is going to hurt.
Oh, god, I hope it works.
“Okay, SirAsh3r, you ready?” Balderdash13’s concerned face peers down at me. “You’re sure there’s no other way?”
"Let's just do this."
I start bouncing on the balls of my feet, nervously. I have to subvert every single survival instinct I have. I try not to imagine what a two-hundred-pound rock falling on me will feel like, but how can I help it? I shut my eyes, ball up my fists and wait for it to be over.
I hear a scraping sound high above me, accompanied by grunts of effort, shouted instructions and the low rumble of stone moving across a surface.
I hold my breath.
I hear the stone being pushed off the edge, knocking into the wall of the crevice ... and bouncing off, landing with a crash about four feet in front of me.
I open my eyes to see Erinocalypse doubled over with laughter.
“They missed you. You were hilarious. I was sure you were going to pee your pants.”
I smile grimly as I wipe my sweaty palms on my shirt.
“Let’s try it again, Tex? Same spot?”
“You got it.”
The disembodied voices make this all the more ominous. I climb across the gap in the stones to where the last one landed. I try to position myself in roughly the same place, but if these stones are going to ricochet off the wall, there's no telling exactly where they’ll land. Which means I'll have to keep my eyes open. I'll have to literally watch for the boulder to crush my head.
Can you get PTSD for something you plan for?
Once again, my nervous energy has me bouncing from one foot to another. They need to move faster, quickly, before I lose my nerve.
“Come on. I’m ready.”
“Here it comes.”
Again I hear the scraping and the physical effort, but this time I make myself watch as the boulder—bigger than Balderdash13—appears over the edge. Little by little, I watch the instrument of my destruction—hopefully—creep toward me. It seems to grow
larger as more and more of it hangs off the edge, until finally with one last heave, the boulder plummets toward me.
It takes all my willpower to force myself to watch it hurtling down. I make myself move a few steps so that I’m truly underneath it. At the last second, I close my eyes. The stone hits its target. My right shoulder feels like it has popped out of its socket, and my right ear feels as though it has been ripped clean off my head and that whole side of my body is drenched in blood almost immediately.
[- 6840 HP!]
When the boulder makes contact, my knees buckle and I can't seem to regain my feet. My health bar flashes a distracting red in front of my eyes.
"Again," Erinocalypse cries. "Hurry."
The pain is debilitating; I can't make my legs work. I can't find the words. Every bit of me wants to call out for a healing spell, but I know that's the opposite of what I need.
The moving and scraping sounds begin again as they ready a third boulder to topple down on me. I hope they're able to aim well enough. I'm not going to be able to move myself into position. I close my eyes and surrender to the pain.
Oh dear god, let this work.
I hear the thump of the rock as it’s pushed off the edge of the cliff. There's a small gust of air; Erinocalypse uses her spell to guide the stone to me. Excruciating pain overwhelms me as the world goes red. I close my eyes …
You have died! Thank you for playing Camlan Online!
Chapter Thirty-Four
With my eyes closed, my only sensation is a gradual lessening of the pain. It's not as quick as I expect it to be. I assumed I'd have pain one moment and none the next. When the pain completely recedes, I get a new message from the game.
Welcome back to Camlan Online!
I keep perfectly still. I'm almost afraid to open my eyes and see where I am. The sounds around me are muffled, so that's no clue.
Finally, I can't stand the wait any longer and open my eyes ... and let out a breath of relief. I have respawned up at the top of the chamber, in the mouth of the stairwell, in fact. Right where I need to be.
You may resume playing in sixty seconds.
Where did the other twenty-nine minutes go? Was I blacked out? The game and chamber around me is all in black and white. I can't understand a word of what they're saying but I think the group must have waited that thirty minutes for me. Maybe Erinocalypse wasn’t willing to risk her life if it didn’t work for me. Smart. I appreciate their waiting, no matter what the reason.
They still can't see me, though. TexBadass and Balderdash13 are standing with their backs to me, peering over the edge to where Erinocalypse must still be, while Callidus and SteelFeather kill time playing a modified baseball game with rocks and a sword. I check my attire. Thank goodness, I'm still carrying my bag and inventory. There's no reaction when I try to equip my armor, so I'll need to try again when my final sixty seconds are up. I don't want to surprise any of the others, so I hang back in the stairs to wait the remaining few seconds.
The room around me slowly regains its color and the conversation between Callidus and TexBadass becomes more clear as my respawn countdown reaches zero.
“I’m just saying wait another minute until we’re sure what happened to Asher,” the teenager protests.
“Well, how long do you think you want to wait? By my clock his thirty minutes is up.”
“I’m right here,” I say, interrupting. “I’m fine.”
“Asher.” Balderdash13 rushes over and throws her arms around my neck. I’m stunned and pat her back awkwardly.
“I’m fine. Really. I mean, it hurt but I’m okay.”
I extricate myself from the hug. It's a nice gesture and all but I kind of feel a little naked without all my armor on. Piece by piece I pull my gear out of my bag and reequip it all. Boots, pants, cowl … While I am busy doing that, SteelFeather and TexBadass start to move one of the larger boulders to the edge of the crevice.
As I pull out my next piece of equipment, my belt, I spot an item in my inventory I’d forgotten about. The Rope of Guarding that Erinocalypse and I snagged from the goblin during the Camlan Challenge.
"Wait!" I call, as the boulder gets closer to the edge. "Stop, we don't have to do that."
"Oh, now you stop us from killing someone?" SteelFeather says, bemused.
I pull out the Rope as I hurry to the edge, uncoiling it as I go. I hope it's long enough.
"Where'd that come from?" Callidus asks over my shoulder.
"Erin? I’m tossing a rope down. Can you reach it?" It's so dark down there. If Erinocalypse wasn't wearing such a light color, I'm not sure I would have seen her at all.
I feel a gentle tug when it reaches her.
“Is this Brew’s?”
“Yep. So that means you’ve got to make sure to have a tight grip. Once you’ve got the Rope wrapped around you, you won’t be able to cast spells at all.”
“Where’d you get this?” Callidus asks again, fingering the end I’m holding.
“Erinocalypse and I ran into a goblin during the Challenge. When we escaped I brought this with me.”
“It’s magic?”
"Yeah, it makes anything wrapped in it helpless. Useless. It can't be cut or broken. I can't believe I forgot I had it."
I hold on to my end of the rope with a firm grip, while Callidus and SteelFeather grab on in front and behind me. Erinocalypse isn't all that heavy and we shouldn't have any trouble pulling her up. I just hope the rope is long enough for her to get a good grip.
TexBadass eyes us, waiting to see that we’re ready to pull up the sorceress. I nod at him. He calls down to Erinocalypse.
"You ready?"
"I think so," she calls up from below.
"Pull," I yell.
The three of us throw our weight backwards and the rope is immediately taught. We pull and tug, inching backwards and pulling her up out of the dark. As her head pops over the lip of the pit, she tumbles forward, and TexBadass and Balderdash13 rush forward to help her.
Erinocalypse unwraps the Rope of Guarding from around her waist and arms where she had secured her grip. She rubs at her skin where the rope has chafed her raw.
“I’ll do that,” TexBadass half-heartedly scolds her. As he casts the healing spell, I realize that somehow this burly, country Texan man has become our den mother, fussing over injuries and insisting on rest. Maybe it’s something to do with Southern hospitality.
Bless his heart.
I hang back, saving the rope in my inventory and looking for our next steps. When the rock creature died, it fell in a strategic pattern, creating a stone path across the crevice to where the tunnel continues on the other side. Erinocalypse’s torches still burn, marking our path on the other side.
“So, how was it?” she asks, approaching me cautiously.
“What, dying? Oh, you know.” I shrug. “Hurt.”
“Yeah?”
“Hurt a lot, actually.” I laugh, embarrassed. “Please don’t make me do that again.”
“Hey, don’t tell me. That’s Tex’s job, keeping you alive.”
“Yeah.”
“But, um.” She crosses her arms in front of her. “Thanks for doing that. For getting us out of there and taking that risk. That was really cool of you.”
“Yeah, of course. No problem. Happy to do it.” Her overt gratitude makes me a little uncomfortable because, it’s true. I am happy to do it. I would have done the same thing if I had been playing by myself and no one else was involved. But maybe that’s the difference. Maybe other people would not go to the extreme of committing virtual suicide, no matter what the circumstances.
“That was a weird glitch, though, right?” Erinocalypse continues. “Especially now that we can’t reach Cho, any weirdness in the game feels, I don’t know. Dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
"Yeah, like it's more than just a glitch."
I think for a minute, mentally listing the errors that I know about from the Challenge. How one of the glitches
almost prevented Erin and me from progressing. How somehow Toyotom1 got convinced the rules didn’t apply to him and that took him out of the game. How each of these examples—and who knows how many more there are that we don't know about—worked to keep Jargonaut in the lead, and untouchable.
"More than just a glitch," I repeat. "Like, maybe ... some intelligent design trying to affect a particular aim?"
"You mean Cho? Or someone else?"
“The game itself. Or maybe even Jargonaut.”
Erinocalypse studies me, as though trying to decide if I'm serious or not, before she bursts out laughing. "Seriously, Asher? You suspect that Jargonaut has somehow figured out how to manipulate a game he’s not even playing any more?”
"No. Maybe. I don't know."
By now the rest of our group has gathered around to listen and Balderdash13 has something to add.
"I don't want to, you know, support conspiracy theory, but the game was a lot easier when we were playing alongside Jargonaut."
"I just assumed that was because it was him," SteelFeather says.
"Me too, but if you actually think about it ... you and I did a hell of a lot more than he did."
"So, you guys are saying the actual artificial intelligence of the game altered the design, game play and internal logic to make it easier for one single player to progress and harder for the rest of us?" Erinocalypse is utterly incredulous, looking from one of us to the other. "Why would it do that?"
"Maybe he's related to someone at Toterra. Maybe it was random. Maybe ..." Callidus runs out of hypotheticals.
"It doesn't matter why, and it doesn't even matter if it's actually happening that way," I insist. "What matters for us right now is we still have several chambers of this dungeon left and there is a distinct possibility that there is at least enough corrupted or damaged or not-quite-right code to make this harder than it needs to be. I might not be the only person that needs to die before we get to the end."
"And even once we reach the end, we still don't know how we're going to finish the quest Cho set out for us,” Erinocalypse concludes.
"Yeah. I don't know what to expect. I guess we'll just have to figure it out as we go."
Depths of Camlan Page 14