Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  But a sick feeling in his stomach told him this invention would work just as intended.

  But at least the cannon would be far less devastating than the Sitnaltan weapon. By giving Siryyk a new toy, perhaps Verne could hold off other catastrophes. He wondered what Frankenstein would think of his decision.

  A gurgling howl broke through the background noises. Verne turned to see the burned hairy creature suddenly stabbed from three sides with barbed spears.

  Beside Verne, General Korux smiled as best he could with hard reptilian lips.

  Siryyk the manticore rumbled in his sleep, churned by nightmares of the Outside.

  An explosion of power and falling rocks brought him away from his dreams. He raised his massive shaggy head, clearing his throat with a liquid cough. His scorpion tail still throbbed from the detonation.

  In his nightmare he must have tossed and lashed out, striking one of the rock columns in the open ampitheater. Blocks of stone collapsed on his lion's body ― each of the blocks was large enough to squash a human character into a smear of blood and meat, but they only bruised him.

  It reminded Siryyk of the blow the treacherous stone gargoyle Arken had struck against him during the battle on the threshold of Scartaris.

  Smoldering blazes in the firepits lit everything with an orange glow. Siryyk blinked his eyes as he sat up. Slac guards stood around shivering, fearing what the manticore had seen in his nightmares.

  Siryyk heaved himself to his four feet and shook his head. He looked again at the broken column and the swath of stars overhead he had exposed by collapsing part of the criss-crossed ceiling.

  He had dreamed of the Players again. Outside, sitting in their cozy dwelling, they looked down at the map and manipulated Gamearth. Siryyk felt himself moving within the Outsider David's mind ― David was young and weak, with trivial thoughts and concerns overlapping with images of giant hands and puppet strings. Whimsical decisions ― and growing fear.

  Siryyk knew he was just a creation of these weaklings. But the Outsider David had begun to suspect how powerful an opponent he had created. The manticore was supposed to be David's ally, but Siryyk had thoughts of his own.

  Siryyk had fun with the battles on Gamearth, as the Outsiders expected all monsters to do, to gather forces and strike across the map. Scartaris had intended that. The Outsider David meant to devastate Gamearth, leaving nothing for the others to Play.

  And when Siryyk marched with his armies, David would think the manticore warlord cooperated with him. But Sirryk had Verne's Sitnaltan weapon now, and the professor would create other gadgets for him. The army would strike at the human Stronghold and get back the great Fire Stone lost by Enrod when he went to attack the other side of the map. Siryyk had learned of other Stones ― a total of four, three of which were already held by the human character Delrael.

  Siryyk would strike against Delrael's forces. But not because the Rules of Gamearth demanded it. Not because the Outsider David wanted that to happen. But because Sirryk desired the Stones. With the Stones, and with the Sitnaltan weapon, he would have enough power to strike back against the Outsiders. He would make them notice.

  The morning sky hung blue and transparent enough that when Verne stared up, he thought he might be able to see the edge of Outside.

  Off to the west, dust clouds churned in the ruins of the map by the final battlefield against Scartaris. No one dared venture there anymore, not after hexagons had fallen away into nothingness. The map itself had been damaged all the way through, leaving a great void, jagged edges, and broken Rules.

  No one knew what happened there. No one dared to go near.

  Twenty three muscular Slac, garbed in clinging black robes, worked together as they hauled Verne's cannon through the collapsed section of Tairan wall and out into the desolation terrain where they would test-fire it.

  The cannon would have been functional two days before, but Verne had insisted on polishing the exterior and mounting bronze handles ― "support struts" he called them, but they served no purpose other than as decoration. Korux had melted down one of the bronze Tairan statues for the metal.

  The great cylinder rode on metal-shod wheels as tall as Verne himself. The cannon was long, the bore smooth on the inside, black and shiny on its surface. Several goblins kept busy using pumice daily to remove any oxidation.

  The wheels of the cannon left deep grooves in the ashen desolation as the team of Slac rolled it away from the city. Their own footprints left puckering indentations on the ground.

  Verne limped along, accompanied ― no, guarded ― by Korux and two other Slac. The manticore strode into the daylight, taking ponderous yet agile steps. He looked as big as a small dwelling. Siryyk kept his slitted eyes turned up at the sky, then down at the cannon. He appeared pleased, which meant Verne would survive a little longer.

  Siryyk carried the huge cannonball himself; both Verne and Frankenstein together could barely have lifted it. The manticore's scorpion tail stood erect behind him and ready to strike. All the monsters knew to stay well away from him, in case he had an accidental twitch.

  Verne had commandeered dozens of the exploding firepots from the monster army, scraping out all the firepowder, which he would use to propel the projectile from the cannon. General Korux had objected to losing some of his valuable bombs, but Siryyk ordered the firepowder to be released. If the professor's cannon worked properly, he said, it would outdo any number of exploding pots.

  The 23 Slac stopped hauling the cannon out and then turned it around, back toward Taire. On the side of a tall building, they had used ash and grease to paint a broad target. Standing behind the cannon, one of the Slac swivelled and cranked the bore so that the barrel pointed toward the bullseye.

  Verne had no doubt the cannonball would smash and collapse any building it struck.

  Korux carried a torch and stood at attention as the monsters dumped firepowder into the cannon and took the ball from Siryyk's paws. Verne watched them do everything properly. He knew it would work. This time he did not feel the joy he always experienced upon watching an invention tested for the first time.

  "Now we shall see, Professor Verne," Siryyk said and took the torch from Korux.

  But as the manticore stepped behind the cannon and stared toward the target on the building, he hesitated and looked overhead again. His face twisted in what seemed to be either a grimace or a smile.

  Siryyk used his other front paw to push down on the back end of the cannon. The handle of the altitude-adjustment crank spun around as the gears turned. The manticore kept pushing until the end of the barrel pointed toward the sky.

  "We can destroy buildings ourselves any time we wish," he said. "Let's show the Outsiders just what we can do."

  With a deep bass growl, Siryyk touched the torch to the fuse of the cannon. The Slac, Professor Verne, and the other monsters took a step backward. But the manticore remained behind the weapon, without flinching.

  The fuse hissed for just a second, then an enormous explosion rang through the still air. Verne cringed and then looked up.

  Belching smoke curled from the end of the cannon, as expected. But the metal cannonball sailed high into the air, where it disappeared against the glass-blue sky.

  Verne squeezed his eyes shut and refused to watch where it landed.

  ――――

  INTERLUDE: OUTSIDE

  The Game continued without apparent complications.

  David sat back, tight lipped, and watched as the adventures went ahead, the characters moved on their quests. Tyrone looked just as possessed as Melanie, but in a different way. To him the Game seemed like a drug, and his eyes shone with the depth of his delighted smile. Scott had relaxed. They were all playing together ― this reminded them of old times, when Gamearth had been just a simple game.

  But it was more than that now. And David couldn't keep pretending.

  Between turns, Scott went into the kitchen and pulled open a new bag of chips. With a rattling sound he
dumped them into a bowl. "You guys want anything else to drink?"

  David stared into the fire, watching the flames dance like sharp broken edges of heat. He heard the crackle. He felt a sharp claw tickle his spine.

  As his eyes blanked, he saw not the fire in the family room but a smoky blaze in the firepits of a dark ampitheater. He saw soot stains on the wall, defaced paintings, friezes chiselled into stone columns.

  David blinked his eyes, and he felt huge lids come down and up again. His chest filled with rumbling breaths. As he moved he sensed something incredibly massive, bunched muscles like steel rope, an enormous body. He turned his head, expecting to see claws the size of pencils. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Go away!" He said the words in the back of his throat, keeping his mouth shut so no one would hear. The alien thoughts poked around in his head, playing, exploring.

  It was Siryyk. David had set up his own schemes to destroy Gamearth, adventures to be played out to the end ― the monsters would devastate the map or just wipe out Melanie's characters, he didn't care. And the thing he had planted in the southeast, much as Melanie had created her golem character Journeyman, would keep her other team of questers from helping. Together it would be enough to stop Gamearth.

  But his own characters were no longer willing puppets. He had given too much power to the manticore, too sharp a mind, and now the monster had crawled outside, into David's thoughts. He didn't know if he could resist long enough for his complicated plans to come together. He wondered if this possession had happened with the other players as well.

  He saw how they were paying little attention to him.

  The fire continued to burn, warming the room.

  It struck him that it would be so simple. Enough of this weekly arguing and suffering through nightmares, trying to fight in subtle ways against the Game. Gamearth was never subtle.

  David would take his own action.

  "What are you going to do next, Mel?" Tyrone asked, hunkering down beside her.

  When she had her head turned away, David rolled to his knees and snatched up the painted map on the floor. He lunged to his feet. Dice clattered off the hard surface of the map and plopped to the carpet. He twisted, yanking the map away as Melanie reached out to grab it.

  "Hey, Dave ― !" Tyrone said.

  Scott came out of the kitchen.

  David jumped to the fireplace with the big map in his hands. He had to get the glass hearth doors open ― if only he could shove the map into the flames, the wood would burn, the paint would bubble and blacken, destroying the hexagons. He had to hold the others off for only a few minutes.

  "No!" Melanie screamed.

  She grabbed his arm. He gave her an elbow in the jaw and heard her teeth click together. But she grabbed onto the map and pulled. He heard a splintering sound, and a handful of bright blue hexagons fell off, pattering to the stones around the fireplace.

  David kept silent, wrestling with her for the map. Tyrone pulled on his shoulder. He squirmed.

  He had gotten the fireplace door open now. The flames seemed to flare up, eager for new food. The heat blasted him. He was going to do it.

  Gamearth would end once and for all.

  In the kitchen the telephone began to ring in one long steady bell, like an alarm. But David knew the phone was dead ― Gamearth was just trying to distract him.

  "David, what are you doing!" Scott stopped, holding glasses of soda in his hands.

  David's eyes glistened with tears from the strain as he fought. He stared down into the dizzying kaleidoscopic colors of terrain on the map. He seemed to be falling down into it. He let out a cry of terror as the map tilted.

  With one last push he attempted to hurl it into the flames, but Melanie and Tyrone both had their hands on it now.

  A flash of light came from one of the brown hexagons of desolation terrain, a puff of smoke and a barely heard sound. A jolt of pain sliced across David's cheek, just under his eye.

  Crying out, he cast himself away from the map. He stumbled aside, holding his hand to his face. Blood dribbled between his fingers.

  Melanie grabbed the map to herself, hugging it, and took it back to where the dice lay on the floor.

  Stunned and defeated, David bowed over. Scott and Tyrone both saw the blood. "Hey man, what happened?" Tyrone said. "Are you nuts or something?"

  David glared up at him. Blood dripped from his fingers.

  "You got a bad cut there, David," Scott said. "What did you hit?"

  "I didn't hit anything," he answered. "Gamearth shot back at me."

  "You mean Verne's cannon! Wow!" Tyrone came close to look at David's wound.

  Scott gave him a wadded handful of napkins, which David pressed under his eye. Blood seeped into it, but he held it there. The stinging pain made him focus his anger. He had failed.

  "That's cheating, David, if you're trying to end the Game," Scott said to him. "I thought you knew better by now."

  He stared into David's eyes. Scott's glasses had slid down on his nose. "I don't even want to think what might happen if we throw away the rules. Because when you start breaking them yourself, Gamearth can too. It's bad enough when we know what the Game's limitations are."

  David stared at him and understood what Scott meant.

  Down by the fireplace, he saw a dozen broken hexagons scattered like colored tiles on the floor.

  ――――

  Chapter 12

  NIGHT RECONNAISSANCE

  "I cannot imagine how I would ever grow weary of seeing the streets of Taire. Or the characters standing high and proud, defying the desolation on which it sits. Taire is a monument of all that is hopeful on Gamearth."

  ― Enrod the Sentinel

  Jathen squatted down, resting his back against the sharp edges of rock. He drew his knees up and folded his numb hands around them, staring down the eastern side of the Spectre Mountains.

  He sat apart from the others in Delrael's army, but he felt comfortable with that now. As night deepened in the mountain terrain, he gazed across the sprawling map.

  The rest of Delrael's army made exhausted noises as they set up camp, handing around blankets and building small fires in the shelter of rocks. Old Siya wandered about, muttering that they should have taken more blankets along, that they should have brought warmer clothing.

  Jathen shivered once, but he clenched his teeth together. He cleared his mind, washing the cold from his thoughts. He had survived other things; he had been through worse than this. Much worse.

  The army had trudged across the map for days, crossing hexagon after hexagon, through forest and hills and finally the last two days of difficult winding mountain paths. They traversed snow and narrow tracks through the ice, but the fighters had crossed the pass and looked down on the opposite side, where Scartaris had reigned only a short time ago ― and where Siryyk's monster army still lay encamped.

  Jathen remembered crossing that distance with other survivors who had fled Taire, running from the monsters, closing their ears to the echoing screams of all the characters trapped there.

  Jathen squeezed his eyes shut, then shook his head slightly, feeling the pain against the stiff muscles in his neck. He tried to find the blank spot in his thoughts again, the place he had emptied of memories.

  Delrael came up beside him, crossing his arms over his chest. His brown hair blew back in the brisk wind; it had already tangled at one side, and his cheeks looked spotted with a red flush from the cold. Steam came out of his mouth as he spoke.

  "We can see the fires of Taire from here." He pointed with his chin. "Siryyk is still encamped in the city."

  Jathen had already seen the orange glow marking the city terrain. Cooking fires, encampments, perhaps even a burning building or two. He didn't know. They didn't know why the monsters had remained in Taire for so long.

  Jathen said nothing, nor did he stand up. He felt just uncomfortable enough where he was.

  Delrael continued, "We thought the manticore would o
nly pause there before marching across the map. But if they made a permanent settlement in Taire, maybe we've got more time. Maybe they decided not to march against us."

  Jathen scowled at the thought. Delrael kept talking.

  "Now I don't know what to do. We don't have enough characters to fight them all down there. I've sent scouts to look for likely ambush places in the passes we crossed in the last few days."

  Jathen continued to stare at the dull glow of his city. Off to the side, he saw Enrod standing on a rock, not even chilled in his thin white robe. His dark bushy hair lay matted and unmoving in the breeze as he also gazed down at Taire. Jathen had no idea what confused images passed through Enrod's mind.

  "Then send scouts into Taire to see what's happening." Jathen kept his voice low, but he knew Delrael heard him.

  Delrael frowned. "Too dangerous. I wouldn't ask any character to do that."

  Jathen couldn't tell if Delrael was simply being coy, or if the idea truly hadn't occurred to him. "I'll go, of course. And I wouldn't doubt that Enrod will want to come with." He finally stood and turned to face the distant firelit hexagons. "That was our home."

  In Jathen's mind, the mountain wind hooting around the rocks sounded like the moans of all those Tairans who had died because of Scartaris, those who had fallen by Jathen's own hand in the tannery. He tried to find the empty, peaceful spot in his thoughts again, but somehow it was all filled up.

  Enrod responded with as much enthusiasm as Jathen had expected. The Sentinel stood by one of the large campfires, fixing his gaze on the bright flames. He didn't even blink his eyes.

  "He and I can survive there. We know Taire. We will learn ― "The fire popped, apparently breaking his train of thought. After a moment of silence, Enrod finished his sentence. " ― what Siryyk is doing."