The Lag

by Alex Bobl

  "Why hasn't she... decomposed?" Beast mumbled. "Why does her skin look normal? Did this Ashileth use some of his magic on her?"

  Four tall candles in stone candlesticks stood at the corners of the coffin. Their pink lights seemed unmoving, like smooth little marbles surrounded by flickering bubbles of iridescent light.

  "Brace yourself," Wayfarer said. "It's the magic of the Elven candles that preserves Magdalene's body. But now I need to put them out."

  "Why?" Beast asked.

  Wayfarer reached for the nearest flame. Squeezing it between his fingers, he snuffed it out. All the other lights in the room flickered. The coffin jerked. Magdalene's face changed. It grew gaunt and sharp. Dark circles lay under her eyes.

  The coffin jumped. Attila thought he heard an echo of a voice — whether crying or groaning, he couldn't tell.

  Wayfarer put out the second candle. The light blinked again. The coffin shifted on its pedestal. The motionless Dwarven body groaned softly, the sound seemingly coming from another dimension.

  "Jeez," Beast stepped back.

  Magdalene's face was rapidly covering in scabs and ulcers. Only two candles were still burning. Wayfarer reached for one of them.

  "Wait," Beast said. "I know she's dead but still, how can I put it... I mean, her beauty is the only thing she has left. And if you put out the candles..."

  "She is naught but a binary code," Wayfarer snapped and put out the third candle.

  The room grew even darker. The body in the coffin stirred and emitted a groan. Attila tried not to look at its face any more.

  Wayfarer put out the last candle. Darkness filled the crypt. A thin strip of daylight reached through the open door but now it too had faded as if it were already twilight outside. Something terrifying was stirring in the coffin, groaning as it attempted to sit up, ripping the shroud apart.

  Beast sniffed and reached for the club slung behind his back. Attila whipped out his mythogun. The coffin screeched and slid aside on its pedestal, revealing a narrow opening and a row of steps going down.

  Attila and the other two hurried down the steps. As soon as they reached the floor below, the coffin screeched back into place. Wayfarer hunched in the low tunnel. Had Ashileth really been so short? Normally, Elves were tall.

  The straight underground corridor soon ended with another set of stairs. Attila could barely hear a far-off thumping upstairs in the crypt.

  "Is she thrashing around there, poor thing? Because we've put out the candles?" Beast mumbled uneasily. "Bummer. I know of course she's only a stupid NPC but still... I really feel for this awful Baby Magdalene. My heart just goes out to her."

  Wayfarer pushed open a trapdoor and climbed out. "I can't see anyone," he called softly. "You can come out."

  They found themselves in the Citadel courtyard, in a small nook between its wall and a small structure that looked like a sentry box.

  Attila's heart beat faster. That is, his real heart did — fluttering inside his body stuck in the virtual suit. But Attila sensed it anyway. The Citadel! Mysterious and unattainable by most — and they had just breached it!

  It was empty and dark. Sounds echoed from the black granite heavy like the Devil's fist. Attila ran his hand along the sentry box's wall. It was cold and rough to touch: tangible. Had he not known he was in a virtual world, he'd have never spotted the illusion.

  Wayfarer stood next to him, looking around. Beast scrambled out of the trapdoor and tilted his head up. "Gosh, it's really hovering over you, isn't it?"

  Attila tried not to look at the sinister eye that covered half the sky. He produced the Book and was about to order the God's Eye out of the bag but reconsidered. What if Alpha could use it to detect them?

  Suddenly the whole expanse of black granite rippled. Attila crouched, pressing his hands against the ground. The sky behind the wall lit up with a rapid sequence of flashes. He had to squeeze his eyes tight from their flickering. He expected a great rumbling noise but the scene unfolded in complete silence.

  Once the flashing stopped, he opened his eyes. Nothing had changed in the courtyard. As for outside, he couldn't really tell.

  "I know," Beast said. "This was Blacksmith detonating his mines. He... he's blown the whole location to hell and back!"

  "You can't blow a location," Attila scrambled back to his feet. His knees were weak.

  "You can, with the kind of physics they have here. This world is expendable. I'd love to know what's going on behind this wall."

  "If Blacksmith activated his magic mines," Wayfarer spoke, "it means things aren't good. Most likely, Alpha's army has breached River Castle's defenses."

  An arrow whooshed past and sank into the wall with a crunching sound, its head piercing the stone — not the crack between the slabs of granite but the actual rock! Its black shaft still shook; the blue feathers of its flights quivered.

  "There, look!" Beast shouted.

  Several clerics were running toward them from the gates on the opposite side of the yard. They were armed with staffs apart from one who held a longbow that left a shimmering purple trail in the air.

  Beast stretched out his hands and shook them. Two fireballs escaped his fingers one by one and volleyed toward the clerics. In a smooth motion, the archer ducked to one side. The cleric behind him failed to repeat his maneuver. The two fireballs hit him, enveloping his body in flames. The cleric's black silhouette bled through the fiery vortex, his clothes already consumed by the flames. Attila thought he saw a weird creature — a bit like a skeleton with an elongated animal head, large teeth and huge eye sockets. A moment later, the vision was gone. The cleric had vanished, leaving behind flecks of ash that floated down onto the flagstones.

  Wayfarer ran around the sentry box, away from the clerics. The gates of the Conclave Tower loomed before them. Wayfarer raced toward a steel door within the gate, swung it open and dove inside. Attila followed.

  A sharp pain in his left side made him wince. He pressed his hand to his waist. Beast continued to loose off fireballs as he ran; puffing and panting, he reached the gate and barged in.

  Wayfarer slammed the door close. Attila elbowed the bar into place. With a clanging sound, the black head of an arrow pierced the steel from outside, spreading a whiff of purple glow.

  The tower's lower level was empty: a large echoing hall with a high ceiling, done up in black. Torches burned on its walls. At its center, a few stone steps rose from a heap of collapsed rocks, left from the time when a spiral staircase once lead to the tower's top floor. Next to it stood a long mahogany table lined with throne-like chairs. Was this where the Conclave wizards had their luxurious feasts?

  "Do we need to go upstairs?" Beast asked. "Are the wizards there? But how can we get up if the stairs are... ah, I see!"

  Wayfarer nodded. "The vent," he said, hurrying along the concave wall.

  They stopped next to him and tilted their heads back, staring up at the cast-iron grill about ten feet above the floor.

  "The hall has no windows," Attila said. "There's no ventilation here. Logically, this should be the top-floor vent. Which means we can use it to-"

  "Wait!" Beast hurried back to the table. "Let's drag it over, this way we can climb to the bars!"

  Another arrow clattered against the door. And yet another. Shimmering purple spots began spreading over the metal, merging quickly.

  Wayfarer and Attila hurried after Beast. "What happened to Styx, their Paladin leader?" Attila asked on the go. "I didn't see him outside."

  He gasped, unable to breathe, and shut up. He just couldn't speak on the run any longer. His heart would flutter, then slow down; his left side was in stitches. To top it all, his hands began to shake. What kind of world was that? The virtual hands of a cartoon avatar — shaking!

  He remembered what the guidebook said. If you choose the full immersion mode, you will be guided by logic and intuition alone. A user's physiological parameters will affect his or her gaming experience." And affect them they did.

&
nbsp; They had barely managed to drag the table to the wall and help Beast climb it when the door collapsed in a shower of purple sparks. The clerics barged inside.

  Barged wasn't the right word, actually. They ran in one by one, all businesslike, moving their feet in synch as they fanned out into a neat semicircle. Then they stopped and raised their staffs, pointing them at the table. The staffs' tops began to glow with blue and purple light.

  The archer was the next to enter, followed by Styx with his black staff.

  The lights grew brighter, swirling around them.

  "I'll smoke the bastards!" Beast whipped out the golden jar he'd received from the alchemists. He ripped off the lid and hurled the jar at the clerics like he would a grenade.

  The throw was good. The jar shattered at Styx' feet.

  "Climb the table!" Wayfarer leaped onto the tabletop.

  Attila followed suit. The jar exploded, consuming the clerics in a raging tornado of energy. A few of the staffs had already gone off, but they were aimed away from the table. Bolts of light-blue lightning rushed around the room, hitting the walls and the ceiling and leaving spots of ice behind which continued to spread.

  One such spot formed next to the table. Icy hands reached out of it and began feeling around blindly. They seemed to be made of bluish glass — and they grew long lithe limbs as they reached further and further.

  "That'll teach them! Come on, I'll give you a hand," Beast knelt and bent forward, pressing his hands against the wall under the grill.

  Any other time Attila would have thought nothing about leaping onto his broad hunched back. But now he had to grab at Beast's collar, forcing himself onto his friend's back. Beast's club was getting in the way; Attila slipped and very nearly fell off. Finally, he stood up on tiptoe, reaching for the bars. Only then he realized they had a problem.

  Attila leaped back down onto the table. "We're idiots! How are we going to get past the bars? They're too narrow, aren't they?"

  Beast jumped to his feet and stared at him in bewilderment. Then he glanced up and whipped the club out from behind his back. Avoiding its swing, Wayfarer stepped to the edge of the table.

  The whirlwind of magic energy had subsided, having swept all the clerics off their feet, including the archer — but not Styx. Before the lightning had struck, the Paladin had wrapped himself and his staff in his cloak and crouched on the floor. Now he stood up straight, alive and in one piece, and began walking toward the table.

  In one powerful blow, Beast smashed the grill into the vent and dropped the club, crouching back into his old position. Attila climbed onto his back.

  A hand reached out of the spot of ice on the floor and grabbed Wayfarer's leg.

  By then, the spot had grown — it wasn't just arms that protruded from it now but entire torsos complete with muscular shoulders and glassy-blue heads. Two ice creatures grasped Wayfarer and pulled him off the table.

  Attila dove into the vent. His clothes kept catching on the bars' ragged stumps. Wriggling in the narrow hole, he turned around and leaned out, reaching out his hands.

  Wayfarer managed to struggle himself free of the icy monsters' grip. He leaped aside — and faced Styx. Wayfarer took a swing with his staff, aiming it at the Paladin.

  The staff's top traced a wide scarlet arc through the air. The red crystal exploded at Styx's feet in a cascade of blood-colored fragments. The soul of Kromik bellowed its fury, escaping its cramped year-long prison.

  The scarlet energy whirled to the ceiling, revealing for one tiny moment the ancient orc shaman's face. The room's floor turned into a lake of fire that consumed the Paladin who struggled, slapping the flames with his hands. Reaching out, he grabbed Wayfarer's waist and pulled him in, engulfed by fire. The table broke into flames like a dry twig.

  Beast hung on, clutching at the edge of the vent hole, his feet scraping the wall. Waist deep in flames, Wayfarer turned toward Attila and threw a small black book to him.

  "Press all the crystals!" he shouted. "Then throw it at the Firewall!"

  He collapsed. Two bodies thrashed amid the roaring tongues of fire escaping the burning lake.

  Attila shrank back, giving way to Beast who scampered into the narrow vent, shielding the light. Both struggled to breathe with the heat. Attila shoved Wayfarer's Book into his pocket.

  Beast pushed him deeper into the passage. "My butt's on fire! Move it, man! Ouch!"

  Finally Attila managed to turn round and crawled down the hole on all fours. Further on, it bent at a right angle. The floor began to rise. Behind him, Beast puffed like a steam engine climbing a steep slope.

  "What happened to them?" Attila asked. "Did you see?"

  "They were fighting in the burning lava like two chicks mud-wrestling. But... if even the staff didn't kill Styx at once, then I don't know... what if he smokes Wayfarer and decides to climb after us? Move it, man, don't stall! Oh, look, another grate. You think you can break it out of the wall? I wish I could get past you, there's no way you can do it on your own. Oh, I completely forgot! Wayfarer didn't tell us the bank account password, did he?"

  "Quiet now!" Attila slid the light grate aside and peered into the large round room.

  Seven bodies lay in transparent coffins that stood in a circle like the petals of a flower. The great Conclave Wizards didn't move. The Great Portal towered at its center, throbbing with a deep blue light.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Yanna froze, her fists clenched in her lab coat's pockets. On the other side of the street stood Baboon Face and Ginger, glaring at her.

  Just her luck! Imagine if they stopped her now, a mere few hundred feet away from her goal!

  The police station's door swung open behind her. The two riot cops who'd just flagged her through walked out.

  "Ah, that's a good girl!" the flirty one grinned good-naturedly. "So you decided to give me your number after all?"

  Yanna pulled a frightened face on — which didn't take too much acting skill. She leaned toward the man and blurted out in a quiet voice, "D'you see those two on the other side of the street? Just please don't stare! One with ginger hair and the other bald with a face like a septic tank."

  As the cop's gaze began scanning the street, she went on,

  "They're trying to kidnap me. That's why I came to the station, but they're too busy there, no one seems to care. And these two, I think they want to sell me into slavery... to some Arab sheikh..."

  "I got an eyeball on them," the cop pulled his partner's sleeve. The other one raised an inquiring eyebrow. "I think we've got a job to do," he began whispering into his ear.

  Then he turned back to Yanna. "You go, girl. No need to be afraid. We'll take care of them."

  Good looks shouldn't be underestimated, Yanna thought as she headed toward Attila's house, hugging the laptop. Money and good looks: those were the two most powerful things in the world. Both could make men act out of character.

  Baboon Face and Ginger were following her along the other side of the street, probably eager to put as much distance between them and the police station as possible. They didn't even notice the two riot cops who were crossing the street behind them.

  Yanna felt a wave of anger coming over her. You wait, you bastards! You'll answer for everything in a minute! You'll have to pay for every second of my fear and humiliation!

  She checked the road for any cars, waited for one to drive past, then ran across. Baboon Face and his partner walked faster. They'd probably catch up with her sooner than she could reach the corner.

  She glanced up at the street sign. Yes! This was Attila's house. She'd made it! She kept walking, pretending she didn't see her pursuers while checking inconspicuously their reflections in shop windows.

  They kept coming closer, hurrying toward her. Closer... only a few feet behind her. Baboon Face reached out to grab her...

  "Keep your hands to yourself, you creep!" the riot cop barked.

  Baboon Face swung round, reaching under his jacket. In a swift practiced m
otion, the cop sent him to the ground.

  "Hey!" Ginger whipped out a gun. The other cop grabbed his hand and twisted it, simultaneously sweeping his feet away from under him. Ginger's legs arced through the air as he thumped onto the tarmac.

  Yanna slipped round the corner and looked around. They couldn't see her anymore. She slid toward the building's locked front door. A list of apartments hung over the door, Attila's number among them.

  The door dinged, then opened. A woman backed off into the yard, pulling a pram. Yanna clutched the laptop under one arm and held the door for her. As the woman thanked her, Yanna slid inside and hurried toward the stairs.

  As she approached, the doors of a service elevator opened, as if inviting her inside. She stepped in and pressed the button for the 8th floor. This type of apartment block normally had offices and shops on the ground floor and ten flats on each level: which meant that with any luck, Attila's #77 was on the eighth floor.

  The elevator moved up. Floor numbers flashed on the display. Only now did Yanna realize she was shaking.

  The elevator stopped. She stepped out and checked the numbers on the doors. She was right! She hurried toward #77 and rang the bell, then pressed an ear against the door. All quiet. Predictably so.

  So how was she supposed to get inside? She had no plan. All her ingenuity had been spent on trying to get out of RussoVirt and escape the police.

  Attila lay behind the door, mere feet away, but... Desperate, she continued ringing. In an apartment next door a dog began to yap. Yanna heard the sound of shuffling footsteps.

  She moved closer and began banging her fist on the wall. The dog kept barking. A lock clicked. Yanna shoved the laptop under her lab coat and pressed it close to her body.

  The neighbors' door opened a crack. An unshaven man in worn-out sweatpants and a tank top peeked out. "Who do you want?"