by Charles Dean
“I remember watching Stephanie work once. She was putting together a piece of technology, something simple, but the way she laid it all out, the way she methodically assembled each and every piece . . . It was different. I’ve seen hundreds of techies work. They move like ants assembling building blocks one at a time, stacking detail after detail in an effort to build their pyramids. When Stephanie worked, however, it was very similar to watching a spider weave a web.” Charles paused, his eyes flickering for a moment. “It inspired an odd feeling of terror and awe, as if the world she saw and the possibilities she considered were infinitely more complex than you or I could ever understand; yet, for her, they were almost tangible. Even after we are caught in her web, she’ll still keep spinning us around for her own purposes. She won’t sink her fangs in until she is good and ready.”
Kass stared at Charles blankly. It wasn’t illogical, and that made it even more horrifying to think about. This woman, the woman that was with Darwin, was the type of person that could both scare and impress Charles, one of the top businessmen in the world. It was almost enough to petrify Kass, but she still had questions that needed answering. “If she’s so terrifying, why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you have her followed? Why do you help her with her schemes?”
“Why do I help her with her schemes? Because, at the moment, our goals line up. She wants something out of me, and I want something out of her. I’m safe for the moment because I’m useful--but I will not mistake that as an indefinite pass. As for why I haven’t tried to have her followed before: I have. I made that mistake once, and a well-decorated, good man went to an early grave for trying.”
“She . . . She killed a man?” Kass gulped.
“Kass, she spent lifetimes in a war zone. She’s probably killed more men than you or I could count in a year. Do you think she cares if she adds one more body to the kill count? I pretended like I had nothing to do with the man, and she never let on that she suspected me, but I won’t take that risk twice.”
“So, going back to the original topic, what do you want from me?” Kass was now exponentially more nervous about her situation than when she first sat down. “Why am I here? Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m telling you this because your relationship with Darwin, and his relationship with Stephanie, puts you in a unique position. What I need you to do is to follow Darwin at all times, let me know if he slips up and lets out any details about Stephanie, or if she says anything in earshot of you. Anything. In exchange, I’ll take care of those money problems that seem to keep coming between you and your father so that you won’t need to appear on television again.” Charles leaned back in his seat a bit as if the conversation were near its end.
“So you just want me to stay close to Darwin and then snitch on Stephanie any chance I get?” Kass wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this. “And in return I get paid?”
“Yes. The most important detail I need you to be listening for is anything related to my daughter. If Stephanie ever mentions her to Darwin, let me know immediately.”
“Wait . . . Your daughter? Is she a hostage? Is that why she isn’t around? Did Stephanie steal your daughter?”
“No, it’s not like that, but I am worried it is a very real possibility that Stephanie will try to take her from her current location.” Charles frowned again. “Anyway, do you think you can do this? I can guarantee you $10,000 a month, and all you will have to do is play video games with your current guild master.”
The money was probably an insignificantly small amount to Charles, but it made Kass’s eyes pop open instantly. The only hitch was that this was the second time she had been asked to divulge information about people close to her for money, and it was even more unsettling this time than it had been before. She didn’t like the idea of taking money to be a snitch, but on the other hand, what Charles had said seemed disconcerting. Stephanie’s background and the reality that she had somehow managed to scare someone even as powerful as Charles made her uncomfortable--both about snitching and letting Stephanie’s plans go on unhindered. “Can I have a moment think about it? Maybe call my dad first and let him know I’m okay?” she asked, still not sure what to do.
“Your dad knows that you are okay. I had Alfred notify him last night that you opted to skip out on the television interview and instead called me to discuss employment opportunities. He believes that the interview carried on much longer than either of us anticipated, and that you didn’t feel comfortable driving home. Alfred told him that we would have you call him first thing in the morning.” Charles’s eyes flashed with a smile, but his face stayed flat. “He’s not so much worried now as happy. I told him that you had the job if you chose to accept it and that you would fill him in on the details--like the salary--yourself.”
Kass frowned. Now it’s going to be even harder to say no. Charles had put her in a really uncomfortable spot. Before she had time to finish moping, however, the doors opened and the food came in. Well, at least I can do my worrying about whether or not I’ll die at the hands of a vindictive demon on a full stomach, she thought, staring at the delicious-looking omelet. Even the smell of it was mesmerizing.
Darwin:
“Minx, Mclean, will you two stop eating our new minions?!” Daniel fussed for the fifth time during the walk home as the two continued to lick the yellow snow cones to death. Before they had left the indoor-ski-resort of a dungeon, the group had made it a point to farm dozens of the yellow snow cones so that they could use them as protection bots for the Demon army stationed at Lawlheima. Hopefully, the yellow shields would have the ability to almost entirely eliminate any casualties that future conflicts might bring. Knowing Tiqpa, there was a good chance that one or two players would eventually stumble across Lawlheima in the future thinking it was still an ordinary dungeon.
“I don’t know . . . We can always go get more, right?” Darwin shrugged. He didn’t see how one or two would make a difference. After all, players generally only travelled in groups of five to ten people at most. Any more than that and the item splitting would leave too many people either unhappy or simply under-geared for dungeons their level. It was the same reason why most game designers didn’t add raid-sized dungeons until players reached the level-cap: They’d have to run it multiple times just to satisfy the gear demands of each player.
“You know, this game is missing its true potential,” Mclean said, taking another bite of her helpless victim’s sugary corpse.
“How so?”
“Think about it: All you can eat of the most delicious sugary treats in the world, but no weight gain. Feeling hungry because of your diet? Hop on, spend hours eating the most delicious and delectable edibles imaginable and then log off in time for bed. Sure, you’ll still go to bed hungry, but at least when you crave cherry-glazed chocolate cheesecake, you can eat it without any health repercussions.” Mclean took another bite. By now, her lips were covered in the snowy yellow stuff.
“That’s not a bad selling point. I bet that would pull in more gullible housewives than organic stickers on bananas,” Kitchens added.
“You shouldn’t get organic bananas?” Minx looked surprised. “But mom used to always get them and you never said a thing.”
“Well, that’s because the couch really isn’t comfortable, Minx.” Kitchens patted her on the head.
The others may have laughed at the spectacle, but Darwin frowned as he remembered how the topic of Minx’s mom had impacted Kitchens before. Even though Kitchens was smiling right along with everyone else, he figured it would be best to get the conversation quickly moving again and away from that topic before it dug into the man further. “Well, the game might be missing its calling, but to be honest, some of the tavern food can be worse than a cheap diner that ran out of butter. It’s not surprising that no-one in the advertising department thought about it.”
“I certainly never did before now,” Mclean said. “This is really the first time I’ve tried food for the
sake of taste since I got here. I mean, I had some of the meat at the party after the big fight, but it was more to join in the celebration with the NPCs than it was to actually try out the delicacies.” Mclean had an odd, almost contemplative look on her face that Darwin didn’t recognize.
“Yeah, eating delicious stuff in the game is good and all, but I still don’t understand why you didn’t just take some of the red and blue ones to eat on the way home. Why are you eating the ones we need?” Daniel’s complaint picked right back up where he had left off.
“Oh, I have plenty of those. These just taste better.” Mclean beamed happily in a way that made Darwin think Minx was rubbing off on her. Is Minx’s silly personality contagious to the point that even the gruff ‘kill first ask questions later’ Mclean could be infected?
“So you are saving the best for last?” Daniel asked.
Darwin remembered the reasoning he had used as a kid when picking out the order of awful stuff at a school cafeteria to eat. After all, no one wanted those gross, pickle-infested hamburgers to be the only taste in your mouth for four hours until you got home to a toothbrush.
“Nah, I’m saving them for Alex and the group. We should have just enough for everyone to get one.” Mclean showed a surprising amount of generosity, and it made everyone’s mouth hang a little open from shock. Even Daniel, who had been complaining about her eating the yellow ones earlier, had no complaints after that reason came to light.
“I bet they’ll love it!” Minx blurted out. “Alex the ninja general will probably steal and eat his before anyone even sees him!” She loved the idea, and, given that she was actually eating a yellow one too, it was clear she had been in on the plan from the start.
Darwin had to admit that he was impressed. He had been second guessing what his teammates thought of NPCs for a while, but they had gone and done this thoughtful act of kindness without anyone even noticing. It was kind of touching.
“And I’ll bet we’ll get tons of EXP for it if we turn them in directly to Alex!” Mclean’s face lit up even more than Minx’s. “We’ll be a higher level than the old farts!”
Darwin found himself just shaking his head. For a moment, I let myself believe there were no ulterior motives. He sighed. It didn’t matter though. The net result was the same: the NPCs would get to eat a bunch of delicious treats instead of having to stick to a strictly meat diet. I can probably even get them to set up a farm in that other dungeon, and we could sell some of the excess snowballs to the town for gold. He realized that this might be a really good money-making scheme.
“Hey, do you hear that?” Kitchens stopped, extending his arm and stopping Minx too. “Lawlheima should be up ahead, right?”
“Yeah, it should be. What do you hear?” Darwin asked, more confused than anything. Kitchens wasn’t the type to make a big deal of small things, but he and Minx were both Felines, and as a result, they probably had much better hearing than the rest of them.
“I don’t know. It sounds like . . . It sounds like fighting!” He pulled out his sword and began to charge towards the cave in his usual tank-top-samurai fashion, leaning forward with his arms held motionless and ready for action with one hand on his sword hilt and the other on the scabbard.
“I hope we make it in time.” Darwin panicked, immediately dashing after Kitchens with the rest of the group towards Lawlheima as soon as Kitchens had finished speaking. He realized what was probably going on. It’s a raid! A group has come to do the dungeon, and they’re probably going to think the StormGuard Alliance members are just regular dungeon mobs to be farmed!
Mclean dropped her sugary treat and took to the skies with Daniel, flying ahead of the group and moving at a much faster pace than Darwin, Kitchens, Minx and Fuzzy Wuzzy could keep up with.
“It’s not looking good! There are almost thirty players up ahead!” Daniel shouted back to them, his voice trailing off as the distance between them grew greater.
Crap, crap, crap. Darwin’s panic started to freeze up his ability to think, and he struggled to come up with an idea. What do I do? What do I do? He was grasping for the reins of his runaway thoughts even as his feet propelled him forward with every ounce of speed his legs could muster. I won’t let them die again, he swore to himself as he burst out of the woods to finally see the fight up ahead.
Daniel’s count had been off. There weren’t just thirty players: there were closer to fifty in view as Darwin charged towards the fight. The soldiers, being led by Alex, were mimicking the same formation and tactics that they had used when they battled the Panda King but on a much smaller scale. The problem was that the attacking players weren’t all physical-type damage dealers. If everyone had just been standard melee fighters like before, the Demons’ strategy would have worked just as well as it had against the Panda King’s troops. It may even have worked even better since there were far fewer opponents on the field this time around. The problem, however, was the number of enemies taking part in this fight with ranged attacks and magic. As if right on cue to confirm Darwin’s fears, a giant fireball erupted on three of the front shields, burning the middle victim alive and knocking the entire formation out of order, rendering it vulnerable.
Darwin watched in horror as he raced towards the fight. Even a single missing member of the shield wall would render the entire formation useless. Thankfully, a group of Blue-Drakes circled around and blasted the ground between the shield wall and the enemies, buying precious time. Two fire mages in the attacking band shot additional waves of fire at the passing fliers, but the scorching blasts just helplessly fizzled out against the Blue-Drakes’ fireproof scales. Daniel and Mclean, taking advantage of the fact that the opposing force was focused on the fight in front of them, used the opportunity to quickly take out the two mages with a sneak attack from the rear. Their attack into the enemy’s rear flank only lasted seconds before they were already darting off into the skies again, the mages’ allies unable to enact vengeance.
“Get back in formation!” Alex yelled loudly enough for even Darwin, still a good thirty second run from the fight, to hear. The shieldwall immediately tightened back up. “Archers! I need a unit of you to shoot square 382 before that mage gets a second chance! The rest of you spread fire! Give us a spread four squares deep!” Within a moment, dozens of arrows flew out from behind the wall and covered the first fire mage’s body, turning him into what looked like a human porcupine. The warriors in the front, despite also being bombarded, remained almost unharmed as their shields absorbed most of the damage with only a few arrows getting through and wounding some.
“What the hell is this? The loot has to be crazy in there!” one of the attackers, a man with craggy, rock-covered skin shouted at his comrades. “Come on, guys! You gonna let a bunch of filthy, low-level mobs stop us from taking our cash?” He rallied the melee fighters, which amounted to well over half their numbers, and pushed forward. At last, their charge finally slammed into the shield wall. Most of them bounced off, but the phalanx was still knocked back half a foot. “Kill them all!” he shouted again and punched the ground, causing an earthen spike to shoot up from the ground and knock the soldier in front of him back.
What in the heck did he just do? Darwin wondered for a moment, but then shook his head free of distracting thoughts as he finally managed to close in on the archers. His sword cut through one of them before the man even had a chance to turn around. Kitchens, only a bit slower, managed to chop the one on his right in half before even enough time had passed to take a breath. The archer screamed as the top half of his torso separated from the bottom and slid off to the ground, leaving the player with only a moment of life before the game system notified him of his death.
As soon as Kitchens’ kill screamed, the twelve remaining ranged fighters turned around to see what had happened. They already knew that they had to watch out for Daniel and Mclean in the air. Even though they had been looking up, waiting to dodge their winged assailants--both Daniel and Mclean as well as the Blue-Drakes--th
ey had failed to notice much of anything at ground level.
“Crap!” another craggy-skinned fighter in the pack yelled as he turned around just in time to watch Kitchens split another one of his friends in half. “Kevin! We got PKs eating us up back here! These jerks are trying to steal our quest!”
The fighter who had been shouting earlier turned and looked. Then, after saying something to the others that Darwin couldn't make out, he and three other rocky-skinned warriors slammed their hands into the ground. Their allies automatically backed away from the phalanx, and a giant earthen wall shot up between their group and the NPCs guarding the dungeon. “Alright, men! About face. We have some dirty, loot-thieving PKs to handle!” he shouted, and then they all turned around and charged towards Darwin’s team.
That is absolutely wicked. Darwin actually paused right in the middle of stabbing someone to watch the earth shoot upwards and create a barrier between the two groups. Not wanting to waste time, however, he went to strike another one of the range attackers, but he was repelled by a now all-too-familiar yellow shield. He knew just from looking at it that this one wasn’t as strong as the ones he had dealt with back in the winter-themed dungeon. Crack, you flimsy thing, he urged as his sword crashed down on the barrier two more times. The axe-throwing trollish creature whom he was attacking threw his projectiles, which somehow appeared back in his hands after each throw at Darwin, but Darwin’s own protective shield blocked them perfectly.
“Darwin, I can’t find the shielders or healers or whatever they are that are stopping us now!” Daniel shouted from the air. “We need to find them before the melee fighters get back here and put us in a bind!”
“These thieves! They want to kill us? We’ve already killed seven of the guards for this dungeon. The loot is ours!” the leader shouted again, picking up a clump of dirt as he ran and throwing it at Darwin. Mid-flight, it transformed into a giant spike and shattered against Darwin’s yellow shield.