by Paul Bellow
“I figured as much,” I said.
When we reached the front of the two-story City Center, I stopped. King Eddie did too, turning to look at me.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Are you sure we can complete this in a few weeks?”
“Trust me,” he said.
Unfortunately, I did. Things went horribly.
After the first six months went by with very little progress in getting Charlotte out of the network of tunnels running under the island, King Eddie returned to Gecko Isle. He only left half of his troops, saying I could sue him if I didn’t like what he was doing. I would kill him and claim his island before I did anything else.
He’d given me some information about the Tower of Gates, and it was good to talk OOC with another player for a while, but our relationship soured the longer it took to find, let alone kill Charlotte and her ever expanding army. While trying to root her out, she popped up in Kron and carried out numerous guerrilla attacks. My population dipped under fifteen thousand.
On the one-year anniversary of my alliance with King Eddie, he pulled all his troops off my island and returned them to Gecko Isle. He demanded I help him battle a few neighboring islands, but I declined. I’d given him our latest technology, but he didn’t have the infrastructure in place to keep experimenting and learning new technologies.
He blamed me for his failures, but I didn’t care. I even gave all my latest technology to the islands he was fighting, just to make him mad. He was furious when they suddenly had a fighting chance against him. Meanwhile, I kept pounding Charlotte, gradually decreasing the amount of territory she controlled. This meant having my people underground.
We found out that she was using what humans were with her, either as slaves or food for her growing spider army. Every month she survived, her numbers grew. At the same time, I kept pressing her into smaller and tighter spaces. Eventually, something would give. Until then, I needed to keep up the pressure while keeping the rest of my city alive.
Time passed as I worked toward my goal. I forgot about escaping the penalty level and finding the others. The only thing that mattered to me anymore was making Charlotte pay for all the headaches she’d given me over the years. We could’ve had so much fun working together to build the island instead of fighting each other. But the past couldn’t be changed.
If I’d learned one thing while trapped in the Tower of Gates, it was staying smart by continually moving forward and trying to improve myself. Not going crazy at the thought of being trapped in a virtual world took a lot of work, but I found myself getting better the more time I spent in the game—especially being further trapped on the penalty level.
The routine of the grind hit me.
Chapter 27
Death of a Dynasty
Sarah
Eighteen long years after appearing on the penalty level in the Tower of Gates, I felt like an entirely new woman. I’d spent as much time in the game as I had in the real world. The truth of that statement shook me to my very core, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. After a lot of back and forth, I convinced some of the other islands to help.
Charlotte hurt a lot of people in her quest for power, and a lot of them were more than willing to help me kill her. She would respawn as a new character, but I thought that might help her some more. I hoped she respawned as an easier person to be around, and not as a giant spider again. Everything about her freaked me out.
I stood in the park where the leaders of all our combined forces had gathered to hear me speak. Back in the real world I had hated public speaking, almost having to repeat my senior year of high school because of my reluctance to attend speech class.
“Thank you for coming today,” I said, my voice amplified by magic. “We’re on the threshold of a brave new age in our realm, this collection of diverse islands. By working together, we’ll show Charlotte and anyone who harbors thoughts like her that we’re not playing along. This is our world too, and we want to make it something better!”
I paused as a round of applause swept over the crowd. Hundreds of leaders up and down the chain of command stood in front of the stage we’d erected just past my backyard. I scanned the first few rows, looking for Keith. Seeing him always filled me with a sense of calm and a deep resolve to do better in life. He wanted me to be his wife.
“Together, we’ll dislodge Charlotte and make her pay for her crimes. Nobody should be a slave in our world.” I didn’t break character and mention they were only NPCs. “Everybody who lives with us deserves to have a decent life. I want to keep this short because we have so much to do. Today is a day that will go down in history. This is the day we kill Charlotte!”
“Justice! Justice! Justice!” the crowd chanted.
I hoped they channeled the enthusiasm to their troops. The only way we’d beat Charlotte is if everyone worked together like a well-oiled machine. We needed to operate like a single yet complex organism. I raised my hand a few seconds then turned and walked off the stage. Keith and a few visiting commanders met me in my backyard.
“Rousing speech,” Commander Jones said.
“Thank you. I just spoke from the heart. This has been a long and difficult war, but thanks to all of you helping, we’ll put an end to her.”
“She shouldn’t have stolen from me,” another commander said.
A few others nodded.
“We’ll get justice...soon. If you’ll excuse me, we should get going.”
I’d given all the commanders access to the communication magic I’d developed over the years. One person to another hadn’t been difficult, but as I added new nodes to the network, things had gotten complicated. It took a lot of math magic to make it work in the end, but I had a fully functioning system to communicate.
The technology, like a lot of the others I’d developed, would be a force multiplier that allowed us to swarm in and finish off Charlotte. We had her trapped in one quadrant of her cave system. Using a variation of her own defensive spells, we had taken away her ability to simply dig deeper into the earth or go in another direction.
* * * * *
Inside Charlotte’s cave network—the spider caves as we called them—I stood next to Keith. He is still my second-in-command after so many years, and I trusted him with my life. He may have failed in making me his wife, but I respected and loved him in my own way. He nudged me with his elbow and nodded toward Commander Jones from the Hearsay tribe.
“What’s his problem?” he snickered.
“Leave him alone,” I whispered. “He’s helping us.”
“You gotta admit, he looks kinda crazy with that yellow suit on.”
“It’s what his tribe of people wears during battle,” I said. “Who are we to judge?”
“Can we send him down the tunnel first to light the way?”
I cracked a smile despite my best efforts to control my emotions.
“There we go,” Keith said. “Let it out. I know you get the jitters before big battles.”
“A battle to end all battles is more like it,” I said then grinned.
“We’re ready up here,” a voice said.
“Copy that,” I said into my own block of wood. “We’re on our way. Over and out.”
Keith held his custom magic crossbow in his hands, fiddling with the switch to change the bolts that came out of both sides. He sighed, getting frustrated.
“You need to get rid of that old crossbow and take one of the new ones,” I said.
“This one has done me fine,” he said. “It has sentimental value.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Are you ready?”
“Let’s do this,” he said.
“Mount ‘em up,” I yelled. “We’re moving out.”
Commander Jones, decked out in battle yellow, led his dozen troops forward. As we pressed on, heading for Charlotte’s last stronghold, I wondered if we would finally defeat her. I had thought I’d done so many times before, but she always proved to be so resilient
. Would this time be different? If we succeeded, I would have more time to get off the penalty level.
Rumors had started stirring that Thomas the Quest Giver wasn’t the only person to hightail it off the penalty level. I wasn’t sure if I believed the people telling the stories, but any information gave me hope. Maybe it was false hope, but I would find out eventually.
Keith stopped and grabbed my arm.
“Pay attention,” he snapped. “We’re almost there.”
I turned to chew him out, but an explosion further up the tunnel stopped me. Several of Commander Jones’ men screamed then came running past us, acid melting their armor and the rest of them. I watched as a few of them collapsed to the tunnel floor, the acid still eating away at their bodies. The gruesome scene disturbed me.
“Defensive positions!” I yelled.
Commander Jones surprised me when he ran forward with his falchion raised. The approaching spider golems spitting acid took him down quickly. He lost his face so quick he didn’t even have a chance to scream. Fire Lance or Flaming Discs of Lava would be too dangerous to cast in the cramped tunnels, so I went with a trusty lightning bolt.
Your Lightning Bolt DECIMATES the spider golem for 36 damage.
You have [459/479] mana remaining.
The spider golem is dead!
As the electricity shot down the tunnel and slammed into one of the metal spider golems and stopped it, Keith and a few of his men ran forward in a shield-wall formation. Their brave move to cut off the spiders coming at me gave me enough time to cast again. Another spider golem sparked then stopped moving.
Your Lightning Bolt MAULS the spider golem for 29 damage.
You have [439/479] mana remaining.
The spider golem is dead!
I could’ve pumped more mana into each of the lightning bolts, but I wanted to conserve as much mana as possible. The final showdown with Charlotte would be intense. Another two spiders continued forward, spitting acid on the shields of Keith and his men. They dropped the disintegrating metal shields and retreated back a bit.
Not wanting to waste more mana on the last two, I ran then leaped over them. Their acid barely missed me as they shot. Some of it rained back down on them as I turned around. I yelled like a middle-aged karate instructor as I slammed the tip of my spear into the metal body of one of the spiders, not doing much damage.
Your strike HITS the spider golem for 9 damage.
Their armor class must be right next to impossible to hit.
“Watch out!” Keith yelled.
He ran forward and kicked one of the spiders just as it spit acid. The spider bounced against a wall then rolled down on its back. Keith screamed. I glanced over and saw some of the acid had got on his left leg.
“Be still,” I said, casting improved healing for forty mana.
I only had three hundred and ninety-nine mana left, but it would have to be enough. Keith didn’t deserve to lose his leg.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Save the thanks for after we kill them,” I said.
His men streamed forward, each of them striking the golem spiders. After a barrage of hits, both of them stopped moving.
Combat is Over!
You get 4,000 xp
You have 847,100 xp
You need 162,900 xp for level 10 Valkyrie Skyrider.
“We need to keep moving,” I said.
Keith and the others followed as I walked down the long, winding tunnel toward the area where we’d cornered Charlotte and the last of her forces. The deeper we went into her lair, the more I wondered about her real life identity. Had the Tower of Gates turned her into a psychotic paranoid who wanted to live underground? I recoiled at the thought.
“There’s something ahead,” Keith said.
I stopped, peering into the darkness beyond our magic lights.
“Do you hear that sound?” Keith asked.
Ka-Thump. Ka-Thump. Ka-Thump.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s so strange. Let’s check it out.”
The closer we got, the louder the noises became, and finally we reached an opening in the tunnel. I peered through and saw a dimly lit cavern full of long, wooden tables. A few partially completed mechanical robots sat on top of the tables with spare parts lining the walls.
“What is this place?” Keith asked.
“Looks like a workshop,” Commander Jones said.
“He’s right. We need to destroy it and stop her from creating more of these monsters. Everyone back into the tunnel. I’ll lob a few Flaming Discs of Lava in to set it all on fire. There’s enough wood and coal laying around to get it nice and hot, melting everything inside.”
After the others retreated, I stood in the entrance and cast Flaming Discs of Lava with ten mana for one disc. The blob of molten magic landed on one of the tables, setting it ablaze. As the fire grew, smoke filled the room, spilling out into the tunnel.
“Maybe we should’ve thought that through first,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”
“Spiders!” Commander Jones shouted, sounding frightened.
I turned and saw dozens of metal spider golems tip-tapping down the tunnel on their eight legs. Keith drew his spear as I raised my hands to cast. Commander Jones screamed one more time then turned and ran back the way we’d come.
“Double salary for anyone who stays,” I said. “Make that triple.”
None of the other men left as the spiders continued coming forward. I cast a Lightning Bolt with forty mana. The electricity bolt arced down the tunnel, hitting one of the spider golems before bouncing behind and hitting another. I only had three hundred and forty-nine mana left, but it should be enough to take on Charlotte—if we got through all the spiders.
“Kill ‘em all!” I shouted as the spider golems reached us.
We lined up four abreast in the tunnel, fighting the vicious magical creatures as they kept coming. Some of them climbed the walls, scampering over our heads before using webs to come back down to the floor of the tunnel. The soldiers behind us who had stayed after Commander Jones ran away in fear, fought them off while I concentrated on the others.
One after another, we dispatched them, shrinking Charlotte’s forces even more. During the battle, I found myself gaining more respect for Keith. Unlike Commander Jones and many other men, he always fought by my side. As shown by the acid attack earlier, he would give his life for me. I kept fighting, vowing to make it up to him somehow.
Combat is Over!
You get 12,000 xp
You have 859,100 xp
You need 140,900 xp for level 10 Valkyrie Skyrider.
“Everyone okay?” I asked, turning around after the last one fell.
A few of Commander Jones’ men laid lifeless on the floor of the tunnel.
“I could use some healing,” he said, pulling a potion out of the sack at his side.
He drank down the contents as I stared further down the tunnel.
“There’s another opening up ahead,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”
I led the others down the tunnel, cautiously moving. We reached the opening on the side of the tunnel. I looked in and saw another spider golem workshop. This one was empty. Maybe they were the ones who attacked us?
Smoke from the last fire still drifted through the caves, so I resisted the urge to burn the second workshop. How many did she have going?
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” I said as I continued forward.
The tunnel went on what felt like forever. My sense of time always changed when underground. Knowing Charlotte was lurking somewhere made things worst. I was calm but at the same time, I felt a tense knot in my stomach. We eventually reached the end of the winding tunnel. It opened into another grand cavern and this one wasn’t empty.
“Spiders!” Keith yelled, pointing.
I saw hundreds of smaller spiders scurry to the center of the cavern. They didn’t form together into a larger version like ours, but they would still be dangerous and tough to fight. I s
aved the rest of my mana for Charlotte. She would be tough to kill on many different levels. The fight would be one of my biggest during my long years in the Tower of Gates.
Keith and the soldiers from another island fought with me against the seemingly unending hordes of spiders. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, each of them with a different magic offensive weapon. I went through all six healing potions I’d brought with me as I fought them off. They almost killed me more than once, but we defeated them.
Combat is Over!
You get 27,000 xp
You have 886,100 xp
You need 113,900 xp for level 10 Valky rie Skyrider
The experience points were nice, but ridding the island of Charlotte and her creations would be even better. I glanced around at all the non-moving metal spiders strewn all about the cavern. Could we use them for something? I pushed the thought aside, knowing we had to keep going. I sensed Charlotte nearby. Could she sense me too still?
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’re almost done.”
I headed across the cavern to a second tunnel. Keith and the other men followed. They were more tired than me, but I needed their help and couldn’t send them back topside. As I walked down the tunnel, I noticed the walls becoming smoother and more defined. Strange smells wafted through the air, getting stronger as we went.
“That smell’s going to make me barf,” Keith said.
“Please don’t,” I replied, without glancing over at him.
I stopped and held up my right fist to get the others to stop as well. Down the tunnel, I saw a bright light as it opened into what I expected to be another cavern. Was this it? The moment of no return? Could I kill Charlotte or had I been fooling myself the entire time? I stepped forward, as ready as I ever would be.
When I reached the end of the tunnel, I stopped and stared out at the cavern. Charlotte stood on a boulder in the middle, surrounded by several new adolescent spiders. I stepped forward, spear clutched in my hand. They threw up defensive shields as we rushed in to attack them. I wasn’t using the magic crossbow or spells, so I didn’t care.