Melanie’s characters Delrael and Vailret had gone on a quest to create a vast river as a barrier between the east and west sides of the map. As that had happened, the four outside players watched a blue line suddenly trace across the painted wooden game-board where the flow of water would have gone. Then, in the battle at the end of the evening, the dice started rolling by themselves, bouncing up and down. By magic, the magic they had put into Gamearth.
During the following week, all four players experienced identical dreams, watching other parts of the Game unfold even when they were not playing. The Sorcerer Enrod took the Fire Stone and tried to destroy the land on the other side of the Barrier River, only to be stopped by the Deathspirits. They had never played out that scenario—yet all of them remembered it.
David had planted a creature called Scartaris on the map—a force to absorb the energy from Gamearth, to bring it back to where it was merely a role-playing game, where it was safe: just a painted map and made-up characters, all put together for fun.
But Gamearth reached out and played Melanie like a puppet. She bent and twisted the rules in ways that David had not considered. In secret, she had added a part of their real world into one of her characters, a golem named Journeyman, like another ancient character, the Stranger Unlooked-For, who had ruined David’s first attempt at defeating Gamearth.
But that had been before David got serious about his own mission. And now that he understood some things, he could use the same tactics.
David cleared away the family room floor, made an open spot where they would play that night. It was his turn to host. The fire snapped. The earth-tone carpeting seemed to absorb the warmth. A gust of wind rattled the windows again.
Gamearth was waiting. It was anxious to play, to manipulate them again. And as it became real by itself, Gamearth would no doubt come out to this world, the real world, and begin to Play them. Gamearth would retaliate for all those things that David and the other players had done to their imaginary characters.
He could not let that happen.
David considered simply not showing up. If he didn’t play, then the others couldn’t play—and Gamearth could not go on. It was the four of them, the synergy of the four distinct personalities that came together to play, week after week—that had caused Gamearth to come alive. If he didn’t play, the same ingredients wouldn’t be there.
David frowned, then ran his hands through his dark hair, finding his fingers damp with perspiration. As chilly as it was outside, he still felt sweat from his own fear.
This could be simpler than all his plans to incapacitate Gamearth. His attack with Scartaris had weakened the Game greatly. The map itself was fragile now, and he sensed that Gamearth grew ready to use desperate measures.
If he was here when the others arrived, together they would somehow convince him to keep playing. He knew it. They had always done that before. But if he cancelled the game, claimed that he was sick—not too difficult, since he had been having nightmares all week. Inside his head he envisioned Gamearth characters looking more vivid and solid to him than any of the people he truly knew.
He couldn’t face another night of this.
Before he could change his mind, David stood up and went to the telephone. He would call them all, tell them the Game was off, tell them to stay at home. If it worked, the Game would be off forever. A stalemate, perhaps, but better than an outright defeat. . .and the loser would lose all if they kept playing.
He picked up the phone. It felt hard and clammy against his hand. He would save Melanie for last—she would be the difficult one.
David started to dial Tyrone’s number, but nothing happened. He listened, but got no dial tone. He hung up again and tried punching buttons. He could hear no response; the phone was dead.
Moving stiffly, David went to the other phone in the kitchen. It, too, remained silent. He flicked the cradle up and down several times, but he got no sound on the line.
He felt a shiver up his spine, and he turned to stare out the kitchen window at the slick driveway and the street beyond. In the dimness, orangish streetlights had flickered on. The storm didn’t look very bad, but maybe some falling branch had shorted the phone lines.
Something inside him knew that wasn’t the case.
He pulled on his black denim jacket, grabbed his car keys, and went through the garage to his old car in the driveway. Fine, then—this was going beyond courtesy.
He simply wouldn’t be there when the others showed up. He made sure he had all the lights off in the house, all the doors locked. David would be gone, at a movie somewhere, or maybe just out driving.
When he stepped outside, drizzle spattered his face, making him squint. He grabbed the handle of the driver’s-side door of the red Mustang, got in, and pulled the door shut. The hinges squeaked. But inside the car he felt safe and comfortable. He could smell leftover scents of the rain, candy wrappers on the floor and in the ash tray, the old odor of upholstery—it all seemed reassuring to him. A gust of wind rocked the car frame, like a giant invisible hand of some outside player ready to pick it up and move it.
David slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The starter made a single click as it cranked, but otherwise the car made no other sound. Again and again, he twisted his wrist, jamming the key around. The keys clinked together, and the wind made noises outside. The engine remained dead.
“Come on! Start!” David hissed through his teeth.
But the Mustang refused even to try. David kept it running in perfect condition. It always started for him. This was no coincidence.
With a balled fist, David pounded the cold dash and gritted his teeth. In angry despair, he dropped his head against the steering wheel, then jerked back up as a blast from the horn startled him.
He could walk, he could go somewhere else. He had never tried hitchhiking before. But he knew Gamearth wasn’t going to let him get away. No matter what he tried to do. The Game held him. He had to play.
Blinking back needle-sharp tears, David got out of the car and slammed the door again. Standing in the driveway as the drizzle came down on his cheeks, he felt the wind in his hair, cutting through the denim of his jacket. He growled under his breath, “All right then, damn you! I tried to end this. I tried to cut my losses and yours.”
He sucked in another deep breath. “You better be prepared to win, because this time I’m playing for keeps!”
He waited for some sort of answer, but the rain only whipped up harder and colder.
1. Prisoner of War
“Such monsters I have seen, Victor! It makes me doubt the Outsiders have even the slightest understanding of biological principles. But no matter how fantastical these monsters may seem, they are certainly dangerous, beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
—Professor Verne, Les Voyages Extraordinaires
(unpublished journal)
Professor Jules Verne had a difficult time maintaining his self-respect as the Slac guards hustled him forward. He stumbled, and his legs were weak and shaking. The monsters jabbed him in the ribs with their sharp knuckles. They cast him on the flagstoned floor in the main hall of Tairé.
Verne bit back an annoyed retort and allowed himself only a muffled grunt of indignation. Over the past several days his captors had pummeled him with the polished ends of their clubs every time he became too vocal in his complaints. Now he merely thought up extravagant insults instead.
Verne stood up and cleared his throat, still keeping his eyes closed. He brushed at the front of his indigo and brown plaid greatcoat, but the coat would need serious cleaning and pressing before he could feel presentable again.
In front of him in the firelight waited Siryyk the manticore, rumbling deep in his throat.
The leader of all the monsters towered twelve feet above the floor, though he remained seated on his haunches. His huge, maned head showed a smashed and distorted human face, with two curved horns protruding from the forehead. Siryyk’s body was built like a lion’s, but
was as massive as an elephant. His front claws glittered like curved knives, and the segmented tail curled around his legs was silvery, wider than a man’s thigh. A wicked stinger tipped its bulbous end, like an enormous scorpion’s. Flickers of blue lightning traced the stinger and the tail, as if the manticore could barely control the power it contained.
The venomous tail flinched when Verne gazed up at Siryyk. Sparks snapped against the flagstones, highlighting other blackened spots from other times the beast had twitched his tail in anger or annoyance.
“I brought you here, human, to give you the honor of assisting me in winning the Game.” Siryyk’s voice was deep and liquid, as if he were gargling with some caustic substance. He reached forward with one forepaw and scraped his claws against the stone.
Verne blinked in shock and cleared his throat. “But that’s not why I came here at all.”
A bright light and an explosion echoed from the floor as the manticore smashed his tail down. “I don’t believe I asked your preference.”
Verne tried to hold his ground, but he felt overwhelmed by everything he had seen and done in the last few turns. Under dreams and guidance from the Outsider named Scott, he and his colleague Professor Frankenstein had constructed a new kind of weapon. Verne had driven a steam-engine car all the way from Sitnalta to where the growing, destructive force of Scartaris appeared ready to destroy Gamearth. The Sitnaltan weapon would surely eliminate Scartaris—but it was also so powerful it might destroy Gamearth as well. That thought had not occurred to Verne until much later.
He had driven his vehicle to the desolate battlefield where Scartaris had gathered his horde. Verne set its detectors on auto-pilot, adjusted the timer for his weapon. But a meddling ogre had appeared out of the battle, intent on something else entirely, and had tossed Verne out of the car. Taking over, the ogre rode the steam-engine vehicle on its way toward Scartaris.
The Sitnaltan weapon had never gone off as expected.
Verne, perhaps too perplexed for his own good, but obsessed with gathering all information he could about the performance of his own device, remained behind. Before returning to Sitnalta in disgrace, he had to discover what had gone wrong.
The following day, he tried to find the steam-engine vehicle in the wreckage of the mountains. After hours of searching, he had found it intact among the broken rocks with the weapon still primed. But before Verne could look at the mechanism and determine anything about the malfunction, other scavenging monsters had captured him.
At times, he felt like kicking himself for his own stupidity, his own naivete. After the giant battle during which the Earthspirits and Deathspirits appeared and defeated Scartaris, Verne had not concerned himself with the remainder of the horde or what they might do if they found him. They seemed of no consequence to him. He couldn’t be bothered with details like that when the question of the failed weapon loomed so large.
Unfortunately, the monsters didn’t see it that way.
A troop of reptilian Slac had surrounded him among the deep shadows and broken rocks, drawing weapons. One of them carried a sputtering torch, and Verne could see their slitted eyes in the light. For an instant, the professor thought they were going to execute him without even attempting to communicate.
Several Slac drew dull black arrows; one pulled out a pronged knife. They hissed and drooled and stepped toward him—all Verne could do was stand, gaping in disbelief. He had not thought his predicament through, and he hated to die while looking so stupid. The Sitnaltans admired his ideas, but some had chuckled, with good reason apparently, at their “absent-minded” professor.
But then the commander of the monster band, a powerful general named Korux, had ordered them to stop their attack.
“All of the other human characters have disappeared. Their army is gone. This is the only one of the enemy we have found.” Korux looked at the Slac while Verne stood frozen, waiting to hear what he would say. “Take him. With minimal damage.”
The Slac general stood staring at Verne and narrowed his yellow yellow eyes. “We must squeeze information out of this one. We can learn what happened here, and learn how we could have been so badly defeated by an army that doesn’t even exist!”
Professor Verne did not resist when they grabbed his arms and prodded his sides with the blunt ends of their weapons. He watched with great dismay as the misshapen creatures grabbed the delicate Sitnaltan weapon—so close to its detonation—and passed it among themselves as the spoils of war.
Korux ordered his underlings to take the steam-engine car. Verne twisted his head to glance back at the once-beautiful red vehicle of Sitnalta, with its cushioned seats, the tattered canopy to shade him from sunlight during long days of driving, the great brass boiler that provided the car’s power. The others pushed the vehicle along the blasted terrain, grunting and struggling against the rocks and broken ground.
So Verne had been taken prisoner, sweating, dirty, and hungry. Bound in rusty chains, he could barely move as his captors hustled him along, treating him like a piece of walking baggage.
The horde had gathered itself together once more under the leadership of the hulking manticore, and they marched westward, away from the dawn and toward the city of Tairé.
Verne spent several days in confusion and despair. His captors forced him to eat the bubbling black porridge they slopped in front of him. It tasted of sulfur and ashes; the water they gave him to drink was warm and brackish. His hands were bound, his legs were shackled.
The professor’s mind remained free, though—a powerful advantage to him. But he had no resources, no way he could invent a means for himself to escape.
Finally, after the monster army reached the city of Tairé, Siryyk the manticore took time in the evening to summon Verne, his prisoner of war.
Without explanation, two hulking creatures with leathery shrivelled skin and pinched faces hauled Verne from where he had been trying to sleep against a broken wall. They dragged him forward, pushing, elbowing, jabbing, forcing him to stumble as fast as his legs would move. He had given up asking questions of his captors—he just watched and waited, cooperating as little as possible, as much as necessary.
His escorts led him into what appeared to be a great banquet hall supported by stone pillars. The walls were painted full of colorful frescoes showing humans at work building a city. All of the pictures had been defaced, by white skittering claw marks or splatters of black tar, smears of ash or excrement.
The hall looked empty and damaged. The vaulted ceiling left skylights open to a cold, star-studded night. Along the rafters hung glazed clay pots, some broken, some holding scraggly dead plants.
Firepits had been built deep in the floor, burning oil-soaked support beams from demolished buildings. Dancing orange flames reflected on the painted wall, making sharp shadows. Verne blinked in the thick, smoky air, trying to clear his vision.
Siryyk the manticore growled down at him, leaning forward and showing his sharp teeth in the firelight. Verne kept his mouth shut. He knew how delicate a line he walked as a prisoner—any time Siryyk liked, he could order Verne’s head sliced off and leave his body for the other monsters to feed on. The other characters in Tairé had not been so fortunate.
Beside the manticore, the Slac general Korux stepped out. He was clothed in a black, oily garment; tassles marked the sleeves, and glints shone from blood-red gems stitched on one breast. Verne got the impression that Korux had risen in rank because of the professor’s successful capture.
Korux spoke from beside the manticore. “We know who you are, Professor Jules Verne of Sitnalta.” The Slac voice sounded thin and rasping after the manticore. “We know why you came here.”
Verne straightened in surprise, trying to keep his expression neutral. Was Korux bluffing? Verne had never spoken about his past—in fact, the monsters had never asked him, or interrogated him in any way. He thrust out his chin, making his gray beard bristle.
Korux raised his left hand and clicked the claws toge
ther. Two other Slac appeared from outside the scarred banquet hall, grunting and carrying between them the small but extraordinarily heavy weapon that he and Frankenstein had built. Verne’s eyes widened as he saw the polished cylinder of whitish metal taken from the ruined Outsiders’ ship, a set of red fins, a bullet-shaped brass top with lights and dials and gauges that might tell Verne what had gone wrong with the detonation. And also how many seconds remained on the bomb’s timer.
Scrawled on the side in black grease-pencil stood the number 17/2, the patent number that Professors Verne and Frankenstein would have obtained for their awesome weapon. But they had sworn never to build another one. They had intended for the device to be used only once, only to destroy Scartaris.
The manticore spoke up. “We have found your personal journals, Professor Verne. They are very interesting. Les Voyages Extraordinaires. Is that some kind of code? Everything else is in plain language.”
Korux reached into his slick black garment and removed a battered volume. The cover looked bent; some of the pages were loose and shoved back into the binding—Verne’s own account of his extraordinary journey and the thoughts he had had while traveling across the map to reach Scartaris. It told everything about his mission and about the Sitnaltan weapon.
Verne stared at the journal in astonishment. It had been pounded into him throughout all his years of education that, for the posterity of other characters, he must keep records of all his ponderings, all his ideas, all the inventions that he might envision. The ideas concocted by any Sitnaltan inventor were for the benefit of Gamearth.
It had never occurred to Verne that those ideas might fall into the hands of an evil creature such as Siryyk. He had not imagined the possibility that, even if that happened, the manticore could actually read and comprehend the information!
“I am a fool!” he muttered to himself.
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